← Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
432. Starting a Successful PI Practice from Scratch: Joe Volta’s no BS Guide
00:18:40
The turning point that led Joe Volta to leave a secure attorney role and start his own personal injury practice
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- [00:02]
A
We have a limited number of PIMCON 2026 tickets left for Tier 2 pricing. Now is the time to buy your ticket before pricing goes up. PIMCON 2026 is going to be incredible. This is where serious PI attorneys come to level up with actionable sessions, elite networking and unforgettable social events. We just recently announced that Amanda Demanda and Brian Lebovic will be presenting on the pimcon stage, sharing how they scaled their practices. They'll break down the systems hires and that drove that growth. The kind of playbook you can take back to your own firm. You're not going to want to miss that. Join me Danny, define along with some of the best minds in legal marketing and execution at PIMCON 2026 in Scottsdale, Arizona, this October 4th through the 6th. Get your ticket now at PIMCON.org before prices go up. That's PIMCON. O R G Visit PIMCON.org and grab your ticket before it's too late. I'll see you there.
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B
I brought in a million dollars to the organization. I only took home 400k.
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C
That moment. The gap between what he made and what he kept was the start of everything. That's the question every successful associate eventually faces. Today's conversation is for the rainmakers, for the listeners who have mastered getting cases but want to know what really happens when you apply the talent to building something on your own. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreier, host for founder and CEO of Rankings IO, an Inc. 5000 company for the past seven years in a row. Joe Molta made the leap where he went from employee to empire builder, from asking permissions to giving direction to creating opportunities for 20 team members who now work on his terms. He did it without sacrificing his family, without the 4am wake ups and midnight emails. What did he know that most rainmakers don't? This conversation might be the reason you finally stop hesitating. Let's begin.
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B
I was being told, like, look, man, you're valuable. You can bring in your own business. That's the hardest part, right? Getting cases, getting people to know you. But there are a lot of things that go into starting a firm that you don't really realize the benefit of being at another firm. You don't automatically have a website and they just put a picture up with you on it. You automatically have email or maybe they've been using for five years because it's a new firm, but they still have form documents that you don't have.
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C
A lot of people have, you know, different areas, strengths, and you, you've been able to bring it in. You know, Legion, social media. Let's talk about in particular social. I get a lot of heat for social because I see so many PI attorneys doing social and it's like a check the box item. It's not a lead generation strategy. I think they're, they're approaching it incorrectly. So I guess let's just briefly talk about Legion, like, like how you're thinking about social things like that.
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B
I've kind of pulled back from creating a lot of content because just trying to find that time and now that's such a relative word.
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C
Right.
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B
We make time for things that are important. Right. But on my side of things, like things that are important are my family. Right. Spending time with them. So I'm not gonna do the whole Alex Hormozi working 20 hours a day and sleeping four. Right. There is a place for that. But I'm not 20 years old with no girlfriend, no wife, no family, no other interests. Right. I didn't get a law license till I was 30. I had zero social media presence, just even friends on a Facebook account until 2020. So I use like social media as a strategy to meet other attorneys and basically was shopping myself as you. I can help you and you do nothing and you make money. And that's been a great source of helping me get cases. And back to the Legion side of things, people that use an SEO company like yourself, they might be getting personal injury cases for 1500 to 3K a case. I'm getting personal injury cases for much higher.
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C
Right.
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B
If you're sending me a case that we get settled for 100k, I paid 11 grand for that case.
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C
Right.
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B
But I didn't pay for it up front. And so I'm not, you know, using marketing money on March 5 and not getting that marketing money back until, you know, December 5th.
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C
Right.
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B
Because that eight month life cycle of the case, sometimes longer. Right. But I'm paying a substantially higher premium for the case.
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C
I hear that a lot about, you know, the trial, the litigators. And hey, we don't, we don't pay for marketing. But, but you do through your, through your split, your referral commission because you're, you're paying that piece for them to originate versus yourself. But, but again, the, the upfront cash flow, you don't have that. So there's some advantages there. And yeah, I think you're going about it. Right. I think the website looks good. I was looking, I was checking out your rankings, you're, you're already starting to rank in Charlotte. I think all of it kind of compounds and works together. I think the individuals that I see to have at least who I work with that have the most issues is like they'll pick one channel and, and that channel goes down and they were just relying on it. I think the omnipresence is. Continue to expand and, but not diluting too much. There's, there's like that balancing act, right. Of becoming good and doing the social right. Yeah.
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B
So yeah, I, I would say like social media is strange to me. Like it's, I've gotten to a place where now with it where like. And I've gotten a lot more comfortable in my own skin. And I, I won't say that I'm, I'm fake on social media because I, I do post a lot of real stuff or you know, I go in there and, and make a funny complaint about something that I find is stupid. But because I'm so reliant on, on, you know, a lot of the relationships I have and trying to manage different people, it prevents me from being 100%, you know, authentic with some things. I probably say I'm about 90 and then I keep 10 to myself. Which maybe isn't necessarily a bad thing because at the end of the day, social media is just the highlight reel. I need to buy that book Fireproof. And I don't even know Mike. I'm not even trying to, it's not even me about like trying to rep that book. Someone just told me to like that's exactly what, that's exactly what he went through apparently. And I don't want that to happen to me because we've grown the organization from 2023. When we started, we had, it was four of us and now we're at just under 20. I think we're at 16 or 17 team members now. You know, we have like four virtual assistants, six case managers, two intake people, an office manager, two litigation folks, three attorneys. So whoever's listening can do all the math on that because I can't do it.
- [06:45]
C
Yeah, I don't know that I got to 20 people for maybe the first three or four years. So 20 people quickly. Are you and Michael basically recruiting yourselves? Are using like third party recruiting company? Do you have HR helping you? How did you staff up so quick? I mean that's, that's pretty fast.
- [07:02]
B
Yeah. We have over 700 cases in our inventory right now. I'd probably say, you know, about 400 of them are Active, like in the middle of treatment. And then we probably have about 10% of our cases in litigation. So we listen to our team and we obviously I do. I read and look into a lot of ways of maximize operations. We've used a recruiter who I'm kind of like, friends with. He helped me get a job when I first moved to Carolina. So I'm like, friendly with him. I mean, obviously we pay him for his services, but I've used a recruiter, given that I give him, like, stringent guidelines on, like, what it is I'm looking for. And then, you know, we interview folks and we've made them offers. Our lead case manager, I found her. My wife found her on one of those mom websites on Facebook. She was helping people answer que, like, legal questions and even saying all the right stuff. I've gotten people off listservs before. Is another good place. You know, you just see random posts like, hey, so and so's firm's closing has staff looking for a job. They're qualified with X, Y, Z qualifications, so found somebody that way. And then the virtual assistants, I just know a couple of people that I've reached out to that I know own, you know, staffing, remote staffing companies.
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C
Last time we talked on the previous podcast, I'd really encourage everyone to listen because we, we really go into details about social media and your strategy and everything you're doing there. You're already originating some cases through referrals through. Through digital. When, like, how did you, like, think about and approach intake? Because I know I knew at some point you were. You're managing your own DMs and doing that thing, and maybe you do a portion of that still. But, like, how do you manage, how do you think about intake at the firm?
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B
If you send me a DM on my Instagram at High Voltage Law, it's only me at response, so. And it's only me to blame if you don't get a response back.
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C
Even up is a specialized proactive AI built for personal injury law firms. Personal injury is in their DNA. Visit evenuplaw.com to learn more.
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B
But anyway, so like, the intake part, when we really started ramping up in 2023, it was too much for me to handle. I mean, when I first started, I did the intake calls, I called leads, I vetted leads, I set clients up for medical treatment. I did all of that myself. And so if you're young or you're new, like, you do need to do all that and you should want to know how to do all of that because then you know you can't run your company if you don't. But we transition to. I have two women that all they do all day is call call leads. And we have. We use. Lead docket is the platform that we use. We use case peer as our client management system. They don't link up perfectly because lead docket is a file on property. But they link up okay enough. And to be honest, I don't have it in me and I don't think my team has it in me for me to change case management system. So I'll probably be case pure until I die or until my firm closes or until I sell my firm just because I don't think I have an enemy for the change. Well, we have it set up where they are, the ones on the phone. We use teams for inner office communication because we have a hybrid model firm. We have people in the office, people in different states, and that's how we run all the leads, Looking at reports daily, checking on our metrics. And leadoc is great because it puts things in different buckets of the actual intake life cycle. Right, because you have a full case life cycle. But intake is this kind of own, you know, can of work. You have the initial. The initial lead, then you contact the lead, they might not answer. So then it goes into another bucket kind of that we call Chase. So then you're trying to call that lead, and you can mark how many times you've chased the lead. And then you can move it to whether it's been signed up. You can move it to a hold status. And if you need to get more information, if you're not, you know, understanding what the client's saying, and you're like, I need to see a crash report. I need to see some photos. You can kind of put the case on hold and not necessarily sign it right away. There's a whole bunch of different things that you can do to kind of break out the life cycle of an intake case before it actually hits the case management system. And you're helping clients, getting the treatment, opening claims, et cetera. So it's been. It's been a game changer for us. It's just trying to run it through case beer when we. It just wasn't. It wasn't the best for what our firm needed. I'm not saying it doesn't work for some other firms that I know use case beer for everything.
- [11:24]
C
So. So a lot of times we get mem, you know, guests on here and they'll say, their CRM, but they don't talk about like the utilization, the phases, the chases. And so I appreciate the breakdown. I think that'd be helpful for the audience. A lot of times it's like getting those average fees up. And, and, and there's one part, it's like originating the lead in the case for a cheap price, but then the next is like getting your average fees up. And I saw on, I believe on Social you mentioned securing a $3 million settlement on a case where the initial offer was, you know, 750k and you guys are willing to litigate and you know, go to the final hour. Tell me about that decision. You're hiring another trial, dedicated trial attorney now and how you're approaching like maximizing the case values.
- [12:07]
B
I had to give all the credit to my partner on that case. I mean we bounced ideas off of it was his case. I by no means want take credit away from him. He did a killer job on that case. Yeah. Michael Chandler. Yep. He's, he's my law partner. He was kind of my mentor when I was working for him. That was a case he originated. But to your other point of how are we maximizing value? And, and yes, we, we do take cases to trial. We do put cases into litigation. And a lot of that it just. When you're setting up a firm, you have to decide on what kind of firm you want to have. Right. Or do you want to be pre lit focused? Do you want to do try exclusively trial work? And you have to make the decisions based on that pre lit focused. You have more cash flow quickly. You typically also have a lot of lower end cases. And I'm not saying that people's injuries aren't legitimate and I'm not saying that their lives or their cases don't matter. It's just someone that doesn't have a whole lot of treatment and they're, and they're back to quote unquote, feeling normal after two months. That case obviously is not worth what a disputed liability death cases were. What type of firm is it and what type, what kind of life do you want to have? Litigation obviously takes much longer to do high end litigation, even longer to do than just your regular soft tissue case. And so we have certain criteria that we set out within our firm whether we're going to litigate the case or if it's a case that we don't feel good recommending the pre lit offer to the client, referring that case out to other firms that are newer or that they've had more success you know, litigating lower value soft tissue cases to just kind of keep the time on desk moving along. And then with respect to managing the cases, we kind of have a, a protocol of how to help guide clients when they ask what they should do for medical treatment, whether or not they have their own doctors or where to go that help build the case value. Because at the end of the day as a plaintiff's attorney, it's our burden to prove our injuries to an insurance carrier. And most of the ways that you do that is through the medical documentation. Because if not, how would. I don't really want to be defending insurance companies, but how would they guard against fraud if anyone could just say, oh, I have a broken back. Well, how do they, how do they
- [14:21]
C
know that pre lit does have the cash flow, the cash acceleration advantages? And you know, I know a lot of pre lit only shops think they're getting those maximum values for, for cases, but they're really not. I mean you've probably seen it with your data. The, the, the closer you go to trial those numbers just keep going up. But it, it's, it changes the, the operation to keep a good trial lawyer. Now you gotta think about profit share or equity. They have a unique skill set and, and all those different components like paying em really well and for, for their, for their value for those that maybe get an out of jurisdiction case and they getting in the Carolinas and they don't have, you know, they're not, they want to refer out like, like tell me about your firm. Tell me about the Carolinas. Why you're a good, good option for those individuals.
- [15:12]
B
I'm licensed in both states. North Carolina and South Carolina are, are just, they're very different in how they go about things. I mean right now there's a tort reform bill that's going on in South Carolina. Hopefully we can keep fighting that and not have that go through. And then in, in North Carolina, tort reform hit in 2011 and I was not licensed there then, but they're very different states in that. I guess the, the two biggest things that are different about them is North Carolina, they have contributory negligence. So you know, 1% at fault, you recover nothing. And I always find it funny. Sometimes you'll see like crazy trial verdicts across the country with famous, you know, trial lawyers that handle the case and they're like, they're only 30% liability on my client. My client's gonna recover 70 million out of this $100 million verdict. And I chuckled to myself because I don't think that there are any worse trial lawyers. I'm like, they wouldn't even take that case in North Carolina because they would get zero with how contributory negligence works. Right? So it's 1% at fault. You get nothing. South Carolina has comparative faults. So it's a little bit, you know, easier and it has, you know, better, more plaintiff friendly laws, at least for the, the time being. But, you know, I'd say that, you know, you choose us in the Carolinas because I always tell, I always tell my clients, well, referral partners, I always tell the same thing. You know what I mean? You can, you don't have to do any work and I'm essentially sending you mailbox money and you're able to monetize the case you otherwise could potentially mess up.
- [16:40]
C
Whether you're thinking about making a leap or looking to refine your existing practice, Joe's experience offers valuable wisdom. Start. Start with your strengths. Build infrastructure intentionally, and never lose sight of what you wanted independence in the first place. If Joe's insights have sparked your curiosity about starting your own firm or improving your intake systems, you can reach him directly@jvoltaoyercarolina.com that's J V O L T A@LawyerCarolina.com this has been Personal injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreier and in the until next time, remember the talent that makes it rain for others and create an ocean of your own.