← Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
396. The Engineering Mindset: Systems, Intake Optimization + Viral Social Media w/ Mark Breyer
00:29:22
Mark Breyer shares why he hired an Industrial Systems Engineer to run operations like a manufacturing plant and why he puts retired trial lawyers on the phone.
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- [00:01]
Mark Breyer
Everyone that's listening to this, if they are part of a personal energy law office, is losing money on intake. Every one of them.
- [00:09]
Chris Dreier
Intake, it's the silent killer of law firm growth. You spend millions on marketing, you hire the best attorneys, but the case is lost before it ever gets to them.
- [00:16]
Mark Breyer
There's no room for mistakes on intake. None. You don't treat someone well on intake. You haven't developed any trust. They're gone.
- [00:24]
Chris Dreier
That is Mark Breyer, co founder of the husband and wife law team. He's gone from working with just his wife to running a multi state personal injury powerhouse by treating intake more like trial prep and operations more like a manufacturing plant. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris dreier, founder and CEO of Rankings IO, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. Today, Mark Breyer shows us why he puts retirement age trial skills on intake calls, why he hired an industrial systems engineer to run his firm, and how he went viral on TikTok and amassed over 300,000 followers. But first, we talk a little about his presentation at PIMCON 2025. First of all, props to you for doing the break dance, to doing the moves on the stage.
- [01:10]
Mark Breyer
That's amazing because what I was gonna say may not have been good. So we gotta at least start with getting some attention. I don't know if I'm allowed to share this, but I'm gonna share it anyway. When you go to these events, any event, we've all been to a million of them, right? And some are great. I reject the idea that if you get one thing, it was worth it. No way. I just don't agree. So we're there. It's information overload. You know, some people resonate with you, some people less, but you know, you're listening the whole time. What was amazing about what you did, that I have not seen done was the lights and the music. And it changes the vibe. Right now when someone's up, they're speaking, they're just speaking. But when you can get a little energy going just by the framing of it, I really think it changes it and it breaks up things really well. And I'm totally stealing it.
- [01:59]
Chris Dreier
Thank you. Thank you. That's a huge compliment. It's the show, right? It lends itself to energy and I think when we're excited, when we're paying attention, like things, you know, we collect information, we see things a little differently. So thank you for that. I appreciate you sharing that. That's awesome.
- [02:14]
Mark Breyer
You earned it. That was. I have my team knows it. I just happened to be on with you to share it.
- [02:20]
Chris Dreier
Walk me through kind of how intake used to work for the firm and then how it's kind of transitioned to the future and where it's at now, like some of the big changes you made.
- [02:29]
Mark Breyer
So, Chris, I'm going to do it, but you're going to have to cut me off. So when our whole team is together or when big parts of the team are together and we're talking about the operation, we're increasing communication. I am not shy about saying that intake is the most important part of the operation, but I want to explain it right. I explained it to the team. I explained it then. Clearly nothing is more important than the legal team producing an amazing product in two ways. Getting the clients better results and treating the clients better. You can't replace that. You can see the difference. The average consumer may not know the difference, but in terms of the outcome and the experience, those two things, there's no room for mistakes on intake. None. You take 15 minutes to talk to someone in intake, they may well be gone. You don't treat someone well on intake. You haven't developed any trust, they're gone. So it is near and dear to my heart. I know there's a lot of people out there talking about. I'll just say it as an owner who's gone from just my wife and me literally. Not just the only lawyers, the only employees. Now we're in two states depending on when, soon we'll be in three or four. And so here's what, what intake has changed. First of all, everyone that's listening to this if they are part of a personal energy law office is losing money on intake. Every one of everyone. We are so intentional and it just helps us lose less. And it is amazing to me how often I talk to people will put so much effort and time and money and thought into their marketing without putting at least as much into the intake. It's like, you know, one hand clapping here. I have a leader of intake and I have a leader of marketing and they have to have their own meeting every week because they are mutually dependent on each other. So what we used to do, and I'll tell you a quick story, Chris. We had a team member who answered all the calls. And let me tell you about this team member. Bright as you can get great with people. Everything about her was an A player. So one day on a Sunday, we used to work Sundays. All the time was just my wife and me were there on a Sunday and all of A sudden my wife goes, let me go through these intake calls. I started listening to this employee's calls. I lost my flipping mind. Chris, we were losing money with a great employee and here's why. It would be things like I got a ticket and do you help me with the ticket? But what they weren't asking was who was in the car with you. So we had one of those calls from that time that literally that where my wife heard and they called the person, where the person happened to mention I'm in the hospital with my sister, who is in the passenger seat who's badly hurt. So it was a huge injury case from a sister who had significant insurance that she would have wanted to help her sister. So we had a great employee. But if you're not listening in and now with some of the tools, I don't know if we'll get into it. We have spent a lot of this year delving into AI right now, AI is great for some things, but for a lot of the promise, it's still promise. In my opinion, we have dug pretty deep into this. But when it comes to intake, there are some AI tools, several, many that can play a backup role that actually can help your intake team and some of these things. So I don't think it's ready on a number of things yet. I think it's making its way there. I think it still has tons of inaccuracies. I think if you rely on it, you're going to regret it. As of today, when I'm talking, I think that will evolve. But for intake, there are a lot of ways to protect yourself. So what do we do? Every call is recorded as it comes in. It has an AI background that is listening in. So it then updates you. We have a series of questions that are filled out in our program so that you're not requiring the intake agent to know. Every call goes to a lawyer or doesn't go to a lawyer based on injuries, not liability or causation or ability to pay. Let me explain that call. In a lot of tape cases, people take their literally lowest paid team members and let them decide which cases we sign up and let them decide which cases talk to a lawyer. But any lawyer on this call knows that there are exceptions to rules. Like God forbid someone has a horrible brain injury and it's five years after the event. Well, their statute of limitations told. If you start teaching that to someone who doesn't have the experience, the know how. If you do teach them that, they start applying it to the wrong things and make mistakes. If you don't teach them that they're making mistakes. So if the injuries are bad enough, we have a lawyer available. Another thing we do that people will think is too expensive, but it's been very helpful for us is that we have a retirement age trial lawyer and we have many of them because now at our size, but it started with one, now we have a whole team of men and women who are mostly are at ages. They have stood in the well, they have tried cases, they have been there and we put them on the phone with potential new clients if the injuries are bad enough. Why? Because when you're competing against a non lawyer or paralegal or a salesperson and now they're talking to our team member and our team member is a lawyer who's been there, there's a credibility and we're much more likely to make the right decision as well.
- [07:47]
Chris Dreier
I'm going to do some rapid fires on this because I want to go to the engineering but like so are you Salesforce, Amazon Connect? Are you doing speed AI Balto?
- [07:57]
Mark Breyer
So interesting you should ask. So right now we've been running Ring Sense to do our AI. Ring Sense is a side product to RingCentral.
- [08:05]
Chris Dreier
Yep. Great. I got one more for you to test this Balto in the future but yeah, I think that's amazing. So that me Are you overlaying on lead docket? Is that what you're seeing?
- [08:14]
Mark Breyer
Yeah, we have the docket which I can give you my pluses and minuses of lead docket. Lead docket's an incredible program. Harlan Schillinger and you know was hugely involved in writing it. It's great. I don't think it's built on as good of a platform as Filevine and lit A5, which of course has the Salesforce advantage. But in terms of from my tech team, which is not me, sometimes there's limitations, but overall great program.
- [08:41]
Chris Dreier
There's a massive difference between answering the phone and intake. Mark realized that a friendly voice isn't enough to capture high value cases. To maximize your chances, you need a legal iq. That's why he pays for retired trial lawyers to handle calls. It's an expensive front end investment that pays off in conversion. But signing the case is just the first step. Now you have to move it forward. This is where Mark deviates from the standard approach. He didn't hire a seasoned legal administrator to run operations. He ended up hiring someone who doesn't view the practice as a law firm but as something closer to a manufacturing plant. You hired like A systems engineer and basically rebuilt your operations. So talk to me about this. First of all, this is not a common legal role. You might have an OPS person, but this has taken it to another level because first of all, you got the word engineer. And if you have a director or anything in front of it, you're talking an investment here. So it won't say cost. So talk to me about this role, how you applied it.
- [09:42]
Mark Breyer
The role was not intentional. We were looking for a director of operations. Someone showed up who's an industrial systems engineer and like most industrial and systems engineers had worked in, in manufacturing environments. That's, that's really how think where they're meant to be. By the way, as quick aside for any of the readers out there, there's a book called the Goal and I'm trying to remember the name of the author. I'll try to look it up later.
- [10:06]
Chris Dreier
Worst cover ever.
- [10:07]
Mark Breyer
Oh, so you, you read it?
- [10:08]
Chris Dreier
Yes. Yeah.
- [10:09]
Mark Breyer
In effect, that's like systems engineering for dummies.
- [10:12]
Chris Dreier
Right?
- [10:12]
Mark Breyer
Which I'm the dummy. Right. But it was a great book because it helped me ask more questions. But. So he raised his hand, he said, and basically he said to me, I don't know if I can help you because I've never worked in this environment, but I think I can. And I said to him, I don't know if you can help me either and you might be great. So we made a deal on a 90 day trial. He had just left the manufacturing, in effect, and we said, let's try this for 90 days. You don't have a job. This sounds like it might work. Absolutely. Has revolutionized everything about what we do. So, you know, let's start. You want a happy team, Everyone I talk to people. Oh, I got great culture. I got great culture. Ask most business owners, how do they know they have great culture? So and so tells me we get to do anonymous surveys of our team, which you can do in any way. We do a Net promoter score. We track our retention rate within our team, both voluntary and voluntary. We do a lot because I believe that it is an investment in people to put more into training, more into hiring, more into onboarding. It's upfront costs, but having people who stick around and love it I believe has huge value even for something as simple as the team. It's game changing. How happy are our clients? Well, we survey every client and every potential new client you call our office and for a divorce case, because you see the husband and wife law team, so you just assume that's divorce, which has happened many times each week, from what I'm told. So we send you a survey. We know how happy not we know how happy not only our potential new clients are and our clients, but with our potential new clients. We know who you talk to, what lawyer, if you talk to a lawyer, what intake person. You're talking intake person. We track them everywhere. So we're able to see how happy, how are we serving our clients, potential new clients. Internally, we have this team, the business intelligence team here, led by this engineer who now has another engineer on the team in addition to others he's trained. But these engineers or this group have created things for efficiency. So everyone on my team, we've built our own platform. And by obviously we doesn't mean me. I couldn't write a single line of code. So everyone on the team pulls up their dashboard. They can see every single deadline in green, yellow or red. Their managers can see every single deadline in green, yellow and red. Not just individually, but in phases. So if a case should move, we do a lot of more serious injury work, but we also a lot of cases that aren't. So if someone's lucky, not lucky that they're hurt, but lucky that it's not serious and they're in a typical case, then you probably Want to know 90 days in, you probably want to know, are they done treating or whatever you make up. But we're all relying on our team members to remember how much better if we can not only show them that, have it pop up, which filevine can do as well. But in their dashboard, we can track and go, hey, does this lawyer move his cases stage by stage in the expected amount of time? And we can do it by case type, because God forbid someone's hit by a tractor trailer, you know that unfortunately, on average, that stage of that case treating stage, in this example, it's going to take longer. We can track stages, we can track individual deadlines, we can track individual performers, we can just see. I had a conversation today. One of our team members in intake has had great potential. New client, happiness scores forever. She's great. Over the last 13 weeks, she has dropped to one of the bottom boards. So the manager is going to go talk to her now. You couldn't even see that. Now, to be clear, someone's been great for you, but I think she's been here maybe three years. Someone's been great for three years. He's not going to talk to her to threaten her. He's going to figure out what's going on and how to Support her, but she hasn't raised her hand. Generally this happens when something else is going on in their life. But it could be something here. And here's a chance to show up and say, hey, I care enough about you to say, this is drop. That's not like you. I know you're great. What do we have to do to support you? Couldn't even go help that team member without these analytics. So I'll just sum it up by saying this. Am I saying everyone should go get a systems engineer on their team? No. But I would say this. We brought him in. I think we had about 25, 30 people. It was a risky move. I would now say to anyone out there, as you start getting to those numbers, maybe you can get a little higher now. Because now, you know, if you have file line like, we use full fledged Domo, which is a lot more than Filvine's tweaked version of Domo, much more limited version of Domo. But now if you're on Litify or Domo, and I'm sorry, Litify or filevine, you probably don't need what we brought in as early as we need it. But if you keep growing, I would argue you might need it. And even before that, man, if you could get somebody with that kind of background to start helping you earlier, maybe split it with three firms or, or bring in someone fractional. I will only say from our perspective, we have served clients better. We have our. Served our team better. Our growth has been better. The amount of things that analytics can do when collected correctly and presented correctly is amazing.
- [15:05]
Chris Dreier
There's so much here.
- [15:07]
Mark Breyer
You know, last time I. Chris, I'll keep it short.
- [15:10]
Chris Dreier
Yeah, I, you know, lead docket. Domo is pricey, but it has the most capabilities. But it's also very challenging to use versus like a Zoho or a tableau that you can overlay. But you're right. I mean, it has way more capabilities. And some of the biggest, you know, these Fortune 100 companies use it. Right. See, I can hear the professor's voice, you know, when I'm reading to myself in that book on the constraints to throughput. Were there just some clear, like, okay, we're not getting the demand out, or we're just clear constraints that you identified that moved your cash acceleration forward, that you're like, oh, boom, this makes a big impact because I can reinvest. Is there any that come to mind?
- [15:51]
Mark Breyer
You get to see it. Right. Because there's constraints in our system all the time. So I don't think the speed of the case is what's most important to clients. I think clients want the best outcome, which isn't always the most money, but it's often usually the most money, and they want to be treated well. However, I think the speed at which we move their case matters a lot to clients. To most clients. I just don't think it's as big as those first two. And so the ability to see where we're backing up has been helpful, and these tools allow it. And again, when I started doing this, we were on needles. Love needles. There's still some things that needles did that the newer programs don't. You know, as. As interesting as that may be, but the ability to see some of these things allows us to see constraints within our system that otherwise would just be kind of a gut feeling and see not just constraints firmwide, but to see individuals. Like, we have people on our team and their only job is to get medical records of bills. Being able to see who makes. And I'm making it up, you know, twice as many calls a day is good. You could see that off your phone system. But who has on average does twice as good, and that's a big number. Twice as well as someone else at actually getting the records and bills in, you know, assuming similar providers. And that's game changing. You can actually see and go, what are you doing that the rest of us need to learn from that. You know, it sheds light on it. So I feel to some degree like I should probably chill on this because I know that maybe, you know, a lot of people are going, well, you know, I'm in a great firm, but there's six of us. I can see everything. You know what, you can't see everything. But I agree with you. Like, I would not go. No, my seventh hire, if tomorrow I started a new firm or I was advising a new firm, I would not hire a systems Engineer@hire7, but I would try to avail myself of the tools and see if I could find somebody, you know, do you need the full fledged Domo? It's expensive too. So you know that that's, you know.
- [17:49]
Chris Dreier
Yeah. What, nine, ten grand? At least, right?
- [17:52]
Mark Breyer
Yeah, it. It is. I think we have like 20 some seats. I don't remember. They come in groups of five, so maybe like 25 seats. And it, it's because I want all of my leaders to have Domo and then I want everyone in the organization, especially my frontline people, to have the platform my team built so they can see. Because the thing about Domo and tableau and Power bi and all these things is that they're really built for the owners and leaders of a company. That's great. But if I'm on the front line and it's my job to get something move, why aren't we giving me the ability to see what's there as well? In a way it's laid out like that and that's why we built, you know that proger.
- [18:27]
Chris Dreier
I love that. One of the things I liked about the domo is like seeing all the reps activity because it leads itself to kind of a competition scenario on the signups, things like that. But I'm by no means an expert other than just interpreting the marketing and intake data. Pimcon is back.
- [18:46]
Unidentified Conference Attendee
Pimcon I feel like is really taking approach that no other conference that I've been to does, which is you want a good law firm operationally but how do you build it out and what is the long term vision for you in terms of when you hang up the end of the day and you're done practicing, like what is it that you want to look back on, on what you built? If you want to be a niche
- [19:05]
Mark Breyer
attorney or if you have a market
- [19:06]
Unidentified Conference Attendee
you want or if you had a type of case you're looking for. You have the playbook after being here and it's really, really been great and very different I think than other conferences I've been to.
- [19:16]
Chris Dreier
Catch me Chris Dreier in Arizona along with some of the best in the industry. Get your ticket today@pimcon.org that's P I M C O N.org. Mark drives his firm like a formula one car. He relies on that dashboard data to shift the perfect moment to cross the finish line faster. Now you might think a guy who hires industrial engineers and tracks throughput is a stiff corporate robot, but you'd be wrong. Mark found out the best way to feed his highly engineered machine learning wasn't by pretending to be the perfect TV ready lawyer. It was by being completely unapologetically himself. It all started with a little trial you might have heard of. We got to talk about social media authenticity. Before I even knew who you were Mark, I was like the Johnny Depp thing hooked me. I think a lot of people during that time period got hooked and just it was such a. I mean it was like it was such entertainment and you know, just what you've been able to build. I got on TikTok before this. I'm just curious. And there's tons of accounts like you have your master account, then you have different clips and talk to me about the impact for you on from the B2C play. And then also, I'm really curious, just the impact overall, but, like, I'm sure you get cases outside of Arizona and your. Your core market. Like, how do you. How do you deal with those scenarios and handle the messages?
- [20:40]
Mark Breyer
So, first of all, I need another Johnny Depp trial, and it probably won't happen. There's ever a massive trial, and you are a trial lawyer. I don't care if you have an account or not. Get on it. Get on it. Watch a clip and talk about it. It was amazing. We went from this tiny account to 330,000. We had tried for years to do social media. And other than the Johnny Depp trial, where it was wildly successful, like, if I was at the grocery store during Johnny Depp, someone would be like, I saw you on the. Talking about Johnny. Don't you think he's innocent? You know, like. But outside of that, we never really got a lot of traction. We got some leads, not a lot of leads. We had someone, the beginning of the year, came in, started working for us, and he was like, listen, just be you and I'm just going to follow you around and we'll see what happens. Well, anyone who's seen us on social, a lot of our social now, and this will probably keep evolving, but it's. It's our morning meetings or now we just have fun hype meetings where we get the team together in the middle of the day. Who wants to join a hype meeting, you know, in 30 minutes? And then we just. We just have fun together, but for 10 or 15 minutes. But that stuff started when Covid happened. Everyone went home and everyone was freaking out. We wanted to, you know, it was crazy time. So we said, hey, let's just all get together on this new thing you've never heard called Zoom. On Monday, we got on. We're like, that was pretty cool. Let's do it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And that's never stopped. And somewhere early on, because I'm ridiculous, I started playing music and singing along the music. Probably literally week one, but I don't remember. Then it got posted, and then it even posted a couple times over the years. We didn't really think much of it. It did well. But whatever, this guy was here, started posting it all the time. So what has it done? It has been great in our market, first and foremost, because if you and I walk down the street in Phoenix or Tucson or Albuquerque or Santa Fe, you will know immediately if someone recognizes us, someone recognizes me, you will know immediately if they know me from TV or social media. Because when it's TV it's hey, I know you from tv. And when it's social, they come up as if they know me. It's a different tone, a different conversation because the truth is on a dumb 30 second TV spot you can try to be you, we try to be real, but it's 30 seconds social. I can be whatever idiotic version of myself I am at that moment, it's literally them following me around. And for people like, well, I don't have the time and everything else, maybe I can't speak to that. But if you don't care if someone on your team just comes and goes throughout the day and you can trust them to not post anything that you know is outside of what you would want posted, which stiff for everyone, its biggest impact is, is in the markets we're in because now the people already know you are more likely to watch that. And now if God forbid they are someone they love or someone they know well is hurt, it's you know what, I've seen their social media, they're great. That's much more likely to get you hired. And yes, we do get calls. And I'll tell you one other thing, although this may not be true for everyone, it's not just clients or potential clients, it's also people we want to add to our team. They don't know what it's like to work here, but they get a sense of who we are. And you know, we're not for everyone. We are absolutely in every way not for everybody. Which are the best in the social media comments like I quit and I don't even work here. Like you know, it's. But for the people who would want to work for you, whoever you are, whether you're super serious, you know, whether you wear a suspenders like it's still the 80s or dress in a T shirt, whomever you are is a fit for potential team members. And we all know that getting the right people on the team is vital so they can actually get a sense of who you are. So I'm not advocating it for everybody and I think I'm not an expert in it. I'm just told what to do. But mostly I just go, I'm just me. And then someone who actually knows what they're doing decides how to put that into a 10 second to 2 minute video.
- [24:41]
Chris Dreier
I guess I have to imagine like the person walking up to you that's seen you on TV versus maybe singing Jeezy, you know, put on that comes up, starts rapping with you.
- [24:51]
Mark Breyer
It's the best. It is the best. Not just for that, but my wife and I are on a lot of them together. Like it is a lot of fun. And as someone who loves talking to people, it's good either way. If someone goes, I've seen you on tv, that's a fun conversation. But the people have seen behind the scenes stuff. It's just better.
- [25:07]
Chris Dreier
This has been incredible, Mark. You know, where can people connect with you? Follow along the husband and wife law team. What's the best way to get in touch or learn more?
- [25:16]
Mark Breyer
Listen, I am not that hard to find the husband, wife, law teams right now. Again, we're growing. But husband, wife, law team, you can put that, whether you put that into a web browser, Chad, GPT or any of the social media platforms except Chris, except Twitter. Outside of that, you know, we're pretty easy to find. And let me say this because I know a lot of the people who listen to you and a lot of us who believe, you know, that you have a lot to offer. Do what I do. If anyone here is just like, you know, I'd really like to know it. I understand the way it's normally done, but I still try cases, I still talk to clients. I am very involved in game planning cases. And the reason I say that is it could be easy to hear what I'm saying go, well, that guy's just a mill that puts money over everything. So I would ask him, but it doesn't connect with me. Whether you're one person by yourself or a larger firm, if you're kind of a values based, it's more than just the money, obviously. Money and profit and growth are super important to me. I don't minimize that, I don't avoid it. But it's about something more and bigger. I'm happy to talk and bounce things around. Like if I. I'm not saying I can be a value, but I'm happy to try.
- [26:24]
Chris Dreier
That's incredible. Thank you for that offer, Mark, and I'm sure some of our audience will take you up on that. It's been a pleasure having you on the show.
- [26:30]
Mark Breyer
Thanks for inviting me, Chris. I'm sorry I turned your total of four questions into this whole episode.
- [26:35]
Chris Dreier
But look, I'm a trial lawyer.
- [26:38]
Mark Breyer
Talking is my thing. Right.
- [26:39]
Chris Dreier
Love it. Mark Breyer showed us that intake isn't just a barrier to overcome. It's the single biggest place you're losing money right now. He proved that operations done correctly is about engineering a machine that exposes every bottleneck. And he reminded us that you can be dead serious about data and still be real enough to rap on TikTok we started this episode talking about Mark's 2025 PimCon talk, and now it's time to book your tickets for PIMCON 2026. PIMCON is the personal injury event for voices, ideas and connections that help you win in that crowded market. If you want to build growth that lasts, then come join US in Scottsdale, Arizona on October 4th. Get your ticket@pemcon.org that's P I M C O N.org I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury mastermind
- [27:31]
Mark Breyer
Sam.