← Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
434. The $41M Walmart Verdict: Overstaffing Intake and Fighting AI Fatigue w/ Arash Khorsandi, Arash Law
00:25:03
Arash Khorsandi on taking down Walmart for $41M, surviving AI fatigue, and building a human-first law firm.
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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
Imagine taking on one of the largest corporations in the world after a horrific preventable attack on your clients and winning a massive $41 million verdict. But securing a win like that takes more than just great lawyering. It takes a well oiled machine. It takes a team that knows how to adapt, how to handle the changing tides of AI search behavior and why sometimes you actually need to overstaff your firm to succeed.
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C
Foreign
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B
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 I'm joined by Araj Khorasandi who secured that staggering $41 million verdict against Walmart. It's an unbelievable case with some wild facts about a massive corporation putting profits over people. Let's dive right into how this case came in and the shocking details that led to the verdict.
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C
The verdict was out in June 2023 and we are currently, as we sit here right now, sitting on appeal. The defense has appealed that case and so that case is still technically live and it is still technically active because we're waiting on the appellate court to make their, you know, ruling on the defense's appeal. So let's start with the intake part. Everyone loves the intake. It's sexy. This one is actually referral by a friend of ours in the Valley here in Los Angeles. He's got a great law firm, Gary. And Gary called us with this weird fact scenario. So the fact scenario for people that don't know the case is our clients As a husband and wife, they're shoppers at a Walmart. And this particular location had, you know, a lot of issues with security, safety, so on and so forth. And they sell a lot of bats, baseball bats there. Okay. Like at all of these places. And there was a, another individual in the store who came and walked around the store for a long period of time and he was clearly visibly not, you know, not okay. And he picks up a baseball bat and he assaults our two clients, the husband and wife, in a very brutal, graphic and horrific way. Okay. And the injuries are obviously very catastrophic. Our clients are very lucky to be alive, frankly. And till today. And this is, you know, the trial was in, the verdict was in 2023 case, I think it was a 2018-19 case or something like that. So we're already like, you know, six, seven years post the incident date. And it's such a graphic scenario. These bats are really. You could kill someone with a bat and not. You could people have killed people with bats. And they're not locked, they're not secured, nothing. Security, forget it in the store. These stores have a history, a real deep history across many, many issues. And a lot of that came out in the trial where it was shocking to everybody, including obviously the jury. And they were just, you know, really baffled by the lack of care and safety and accountability, so on and so forth. So, you know, there's a lot more that goes into that. That trial is like six weeks long. I'm narrowing it to two and a half minute.
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B
Lock up the deodorant, but not the bats.
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C
You know, you, Chris, you hit the nail on the head. The deodorant, the woman's hair products, the shape, you know, when I go buy razor blades, they're locking that stuff up. I can't get to it. It's the classic putting profits over people, safety out the window, whatever. Who cares about the bats off to kill someone, who cares?
- [04:37]
B
It's wild. So, you know, best of luck continuing on that case and wish you the best. Thank you for sharing. Let's kind of move on to just marketing attracting cases in general. You mentioned you got a nice case of referral. So that's part of your strategy and actually trying these cases and not just, you know, doing the pre lit. How do you think about marketing attracting cases? It's so fragmented. The channels are so fragmented today. Used to be broadcast television, Google, and that was about it, but now it's. There's a lot of options.
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C
The field from a marketing standpoint is changing dramatically. Obviously Everyone knows. And the sexy topic is AI. It's not just AI, it's the disruption that AI brings and the consumer behavior that has changed the clientele and how what they call search behavior, right? My search behavior, your search behavior, everybody's search behavior. Like you said, you know, pre, let's just call it 3, 4, 5, 6 years ago, search behavior was more limited, right? Yeah, you got Google, you got Yahoo, you could go to Bing's, Microsoft, you know, you could kind of whatever and you were kind of in a lane and it was the, the browsers, right? And you had your phones and it was either iPhone or Android and that was kind of it. And everybody was good. Nobody knew what else that was it. That's all we knew. You don't know what you don't know. And so the AI component has disrupted search for all of us and our behavior and what we're talking about. My five year old right now says chatgpt it, right? And my seven year old, when she was like five, she would say Google it, right? So you see the different dynamics now because they hear it and us as well, like, you know, I'll search on AI, but I still rely back onto Google, you know, that's just me. And everybody's different. So what's happened now is the search behavior has changed, consumer search has changed. And then you add obviously the fragmentation that you're talking about in general with marketing. So my personal approach is diversify and kind of try to maximize as many channels or verticals as you can as far as marketing goes. We're actually not a traditional referral based firm yet. Right. Less than 10% of our cases are attorney referrals anyways. Okay. The Walmart case is just, you know, really a, an outlier as far as the marketing side goes and getting cases. I work with people that I know I like and you know, it makes sense. But now, right, it makes a lot of sense to focus on a lot of these different, I call them the buckets. Right, different buckets. And it's good to explore what it is that you are really good at. You know, I love premise cases in general. Auto is auto, but primus cases, you know, have a different flavor. They're, they're a little bit more intense. You know, of course this one is the most intense. It's not your run of the mill, but in general. So I think diversification, looking at your buckets. So this AI and the search behavior and the fragmentation is kind of a shakeup and it's kind of a, hey everybody needs to wake up. You know, there's a lot more going on and personally, I don't know. I can't predict the future. I think there's going to be a lot. Nobody really knows how the AI search is going to shake out. Everyone thinks there's some experts out there that might know more than others. Sure. But I don't even think they know exactly. For example, the ad side of AI, right. The paid portion of AI hasn't really shaken out yet and some people think that it's going to be subscription based only. Some people, you know, Google's obviously testing their version and ChatGPT's testing their version of paid ads and sponsored ads. But I don't believe for a second that we, we the normal folks have any visibility into really what they're planning and what they're testing. There may be more surprises down the pipe.
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B
That's so fair. I agree with all of that. We're on the waiting list for Chad GPT's ads. And you know, the thing is it's like, I think every business, even our own, it's like you want to subscribe to these LLMs, whether it's Claude or Gemini and ChatGPT and it's like I keep telling my team, like let's, you know, pump the brakes on these year long contracts because you know, Claude comes out with the next update and it's better. Then OpenAI comes up and then it's better and it's like it's hard to, you're kind of in this hamster wheel.
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C
If you were paying attention right now, two months, three months, four months ago, if you were even looking at the stock market, right, and you saw the disruption that each cloud anthropic announcement had. It was like everybody on a mass scale now we're not talking about, you know, the normal folk, we're talking about Wall street, you know, just institutional plus other investors that were like swinging by the cloud and, and anthropic and all this other announcements and software just took the biggest hit. But there were, you know, so just like you said, you put the brakes on it because every other day is like, oh, look what we got, it's a new shiny toy. Another shiny toy, another shiny toy. And I think people are starting to feel a little AI fatigue as far as products goes and announcements goes. So I share that same sentiment with you Chris.
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B
I was wanting to ask because like, you know, to carry that Walmart case, it's like you're carrying it for years and we're not talking like Look, I have no idea how much you've invested in this case, but between expert witnesses and all this, but take a guess. I would imagine. I mean, six figures for sure.
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C
Way high.
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B
Yeah, I'm not an attorney, so I got you.
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C
Look. How cool.
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B
Quarter mil.
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C
Way more. Way higher. And the problem with that is going back to finance. But because you live with this case for so long and it just, it just keeps going and going and going and just, you know, there's always this and there's. And it just adds up and adds up and adds up. And then trial is unpredictable. Timelines, experts, costs. You know, you have someone scheduled for one day, judge goes early, judge goes late. The guy, you know, it's crazy. So it is not for the faint of heart for sure. And it gives me a lot of heartburn. And, you know, all this stuff that nobody really sees or necessarily appreciates, you know. Behind the scenes,
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B
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. Carrying a $41 million catastrophic case for years takes a serious financial Runway. And the only way to fund those long drawn out wars is a relentless, predictable pipeline of new cases. To keep that war chest full, you need marketing that adapts to constantly changing search behaviors and an intake team that has extra bandwidth to give every caller the time and connection they need to trust your business. You're managing over 3,000 clients, a massive volume of leads, you know, to get over a billion dollars in recovery. This isn't like a basic intake team. So talk to me about your approach to intake team composition, tech, stack, like how do you think about intake?
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C
So I'm a big believer. I'm an old school guy just by heart and soul, so I'm a really big believer of in office, humans touching intake as much as possible. Of course there's tech and you want to be embracing tech. And I think there's ways to have the tech and the humans live really nicely and harmoniously together to advance and elevate the humans. Right, Meaning humans within intake teams. But I really believe in the human touch because the person calling your office, in the field that we're in and most fields generally of law, they have a problem. Right. And nobody's happy to be calling a lawyer for the most part. Okay, you do divorce family law. Nobody's happy to be calling a lawyer. They have a varying degree of a problem. Some are worse, some are medium, some are on the lighter side. Right. But some are the worst of the worst, which is someone died, someone a family member, someone loving. It's the most tragic day and experience of someone's life. It's the worst things that you would never wish upon anybody, that you wake up in the morning and you thank God and you pray for safety and health. And with that, you can't lose sight of that, despite how many thousands of leads and calls and takes and things you're doing. So I'm a big believer on the human side of things with intake. So we try. And right now, we talked about it yesterday, I overstaff the intake team, okay? There's more people on the intake team than, quote, unquote, required, whatever that is, right? So you talk to experts, you talk to people, you talk to data people, you talk to number crunchers, and everyone's got their thoughts of proportions and ratios of calls and this and that and how many. So whatever that number is, I like to overstaff that part because, you know, you owe that to your audience. You owe that to your potential clients. And frankly, it's a win win. Because on the flip side, you will, on a long enough timeline, reap the benefits of that, I believe, because you'll be able to give more time to an intake, you'll be able to have a higher conversion rate, and that conversion rate differential will, in a long timeline, pay for or cover the expense and cost of an additional two or three humans in there. So that's kind of my philosophy on that.
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B
I couldn't agree more. I tell our clients, I'm like, look, if you're gonna hire one intake specialist, always hire at least two. Because, like, then there's competition, immersion, all the different things. And. And then, like, there's always something that an intake specialist can do. They can always chase a lead that's within the statute. They can always, you know, make the experience better and nurture that referral relationships with the. Whatever. It could be everybody, you know, they
- [14:33]
C
can also circle around. If it's a smaller office, they could circle around for reviews after the case settled. On the settled side, if they got downtime, you know, hey, let me go back and call some of these happy clients and tell them to help us out with, you know, testimonial, even, you know, on an iPhone, whatever.
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B
That's great. That's great. I want to kind of move over to team a little bit. You're really passionate about it right now, and that's your focus. You got a couple of phrases I love. I'm gonna call out a couple of them. You know, one of them U turns are allowed, you know, so. Meaning you make decisions fast and if you recognize a failure, you reverse course immediately. You know, I love the kind of the visual aspect of that, but talk to me about, you know, that philosophy and maybe a few more.
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C
I'm a super visual guy in everything. It's crazy. It's. I just. That's just how my brain functions, right? I just. I have to. So all my analogies and everything for myself is always visually. So U turns are allowed. That actually came from my dad. That was his advice that he's always told me growing up. Now today, he's one of the wisest people I know, and he said, u turns are allowed. So how that applies in practicality and practice today for us is really understanding. I'll give you an example. We had a person who was hired as a case manager. Okay. She applied for a case manager position. She wanted to be a case manager, or at least that's what she verbalized. Right? And I'll get to that in a second. And within three weeks, I realized, oh, my God, she's a horrible case manager. Okay, you know, we're busy and this and that. And my initial inclination was like to bring her to the office and tell her, hey, look, you're not cut out for this. I'm sorry, it's just not a right fit. You need a slower pace, whatever, and just, you know, explain it to her and part ways. That was kind of my initial inclination. So I started doing that and I brought her in and we. And I was going down that route, and then I said, wait a second, remind me again. Because it was like six weeks ago. I'm like, remind me, what were you doing before? Right before you started here? I don't have your resume handy. I don't know. What were you doing? She was like, oh, I was doing sales and intakes, so. Okay, so, you know, why did we even put you. Why are we in this position? She's like, yeah, I applied for the case manager because that was the job that was blah, blah, blah. And that was what I thought it was going to be good. And I had case manager friends and I had this that. I said, okay, so you really do even, like the last three weeks? And she's kind of like, no. And I'm like, why don't we move you over to intakes and sales? And so we did, and it worked out tremendously great. Okay? And so the U turn there now coming back to teams and, you know, the magic or the secret most people don't tell you really what they want to do, okay? Most people are not transparent at the jump because it's a stranger relationship. You interview someone, you interview them twice, you move three times. What does it matter? You just came into their lives and vice versa. No matter how your interview process is, no matter who it is, right? But a month ago, you two were strangers. You were not in each other's universes. And now these two universes collide and most people have their guard up or whatever, or they think that's the better job, it's the better pay. Better pay. There's a million elements of really understanding what it is that people want to do. Okay? And then there's a second component of people sometimes don't know what their strengths and weaknesses truly are, okay? People really, truly believe, hey, like, this is really what I'm good at. Well, in fact, they might be really good at something else, but they haven't identified it. So there's the first component of really breaking down the, the guards and having a real transparent and honest conversation, trying to figure out what it is that they really want to do, right? What makes them excited and happy and passionate. And then the second part is, okay, try to match that with what are they strong at. Hopefully you can align those, but it's usually not usually, But I'd say 50% of the time it's not aligned. There's a lot of maneuvering that has to be done with this person, and that's a collaborative process. And so that's the magic hard part. Sauce, whatever you want to call it, is getting those two things going. And then once you figure those two, if you can figure those two things out, hopefully now you've got a really good strategy and plan of implementation to put them in a position of success and putting them in a position of, of growth. And, you know, all that good stuff that everyone really wants to do. You know, I'm not good at a lot of things. And it's like, so I'm not going to take myself. I'm five, seven. I'm not going to be on a volleyball team, okay? So I could practice 10,000 hours, you know, playing basketball, volleyball, I'm never going to make the team. But golf, if I quit tomorrow and did 10,000 hours of golf, probably be pretty decent at it. I don't need to be 6 foot 2 to play golf, you know, I got lower center of gravity on the golf side, you know, decent swing. Practice my ass off. I'm going to be a decent golfer, you know, so it's a Lot of that on the team side.
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B
You know, I, I'll just share briefly. We got a few minutes left. The combo. I'll show briefly a situation kind of on the flip side. And it makes me sound more like an ass when I tell this story. Let's just say, you know, I think of it in sports. I've got this great pitcher. They're phenomenal pitcher. They're the A in that role, but they want to be a second baseman. And my team's like, well, let's put them over second base. I'm like, no. I'm like, no, they were hired to be a pitcher. You know, I'm not going to disclose the role because they'll, they may, you know, catch on to this. But, but I had to have that hard conversation. It's like, look, we. This person's proven that they could do this. I was like, you know, if they want to build up and then they're off time, like prove they can do this other role and like above and beyond, like, like, maybe we'll entertain that. But.
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C
So Chris, that's actually a great point because that's something that happens, I feel like for all of us. Every again, every industry, every field, every business, every environment has that exact situation of someone is really good at something, but they think or they want to be something else within the, within the organization. But you're like, no, no, you are. This is your calling. You're doing great here. This is what we need. This is what we hired you for. So on and so forth, everyone. And that's a challenge. It's a challenging position to be in. You're not. I don't think you sound like an ass. It's a realistic scenario that comes up, I think in everywhere.
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B
I think.
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C
I'm sure Google has that problem.
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B
You know, in sports it's really simple. You wouldn't expect but like when it comes to business, it's like, it's just a little different. Sometimes, just briefly, just want to touch on this, you know, your location. It's a bloodbath for talent. And then talent, it's sales, right? It's talent acquisition team and like tracked in the right getting them in the pipeline, building up that. How are you finding, retaining top talent in your market, Your market particular. It's just, it's just a bloodbath.
- [21:09]
C
Hyper change as I like to call it. Right? There's a lot of that. So I'm fortunate and blessed that I am accessible and I enjoy people and I really do enjoy getting to understand and learn about People and what they like and what they're good at. So naturally I'm very accessible to people when they want to talk to me about whatever, even if they want to brainstorm. And, you know, how does it look like if I come there? How does it look like, you know, if I'm on the defense and I've never done plaintiff, you know, and people that are trying to make a switch or first year, brand new baby lawyers that are just barred. We just hired, I think three or four of them in the last couple months and we're hired three post bar clerks yesterday that are pending. And, you know, so the accessibility, the deep conversations, deep meaning, like spending time and understanding helps a lot. Of course, from a just practical standpoint, just keeping your overall reputation, your name, your brand, clean and honest and good. It is a small community at the end of the day. Right. And word travels fast and people know, you know, for the most part what they're getting themselves into to some degree. So all that plays and comes into play, you know, on the talent acquisition side of things.
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B
Couldn't agree more. Rush has been fantastic. I really enjoyed our convo. Great meeting you. You know, for our audience listening that has a question, wants to refer a case. Best way to get in touch with you.
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C
Yeah, I mean, my cell phone is always accessible. You know, it's shocking, but my cell phone is 310-600-2541. And then email is always good. It's akrosh law.com so, you know, and of course you can call the office, but that's probably the worst way to get a hold of me, you know? Yeah.
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B
Rush, this has been amazing. Thank you for coming on the show.
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C
You got it. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate you.
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B
Landing a $41 million verdict isn't just about what happens in the court courtroom. It's about having the right team in the right seats, making quick U turns when things aren't working, and building an intake machine that is built to provide excellent service. But none of that matters if your phone isn't ringing with high value cases. If you want to attract more of the cases you want, you need the right marketing partner that truly delivers for you. Rankings is the relentless marketing agency that helps PI firms dominate their markets and sign more cases. Head on over to Rankings to learn how we can help you capture the market share you need to succeed. I'm Chris Dreyer and this has been personal Injury Mastermind. We'll see you next time.