
Stop passing on the hard cases immediately. Kila Baldwin reveals how to find 8-figure payouts in the catastrophic files that other lawyers throw away.
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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.
B
What happens when your courtroom reputation is so intense it literally stops a trial in its tracks?
C
I will never forget this as long as I live. We're about to start the trial and the defendant doctor was looking over at me and I'm warming up my microphone to start. He had a heart attack in front of the jury. Trial stopped, trial rescheduled. Needless to say, the case settled.
B
Thankfully, the doctor survived. But the courtroom legend has already been born.
C
Maybe a year later, I happen to be in Pittsburgh again and some woman comes up to me and she's like, you're that lawyer. You're that lawyer from the courthouse who gave that man a heart attack. And I'm like, oh, my God. She's like, that was awesome.
B
Today's guest has put up some massive numbers on the scoreboard. We're talking verdicts of $80 million, 57 million, and a recent 20 million verdict against Honda. How does she do it? By finding eight figure paydays in the exact cases everyone else throws away. And today, we're going to hear how she does it. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings IO, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. Today we're speaking with Kyla Baldw, a partner at Anna Pool Weiss. We talk about spotting hidden liability in catastrophic cases, getting early on mass torts, and the extreme trial prep required to win multimillion dollar verdicts. Let's get into it. I'm so excited to speak with you by the way doing the research, you've put up some major numbers, some scoreboard, big numbers. Verdicts. 80 million, 57 million, 40 million, 20 million hit against Honda 11.6 med mal against a neurosurgeon. I mean, like, those are huge and I want to dig into some of those. But like, what's a recent win that you're really excited to share? Just something in the business, something that just comes to mind.
C
Gosh, I mean, that $20 million verdict against Honda was fairly recently. And, you know, understanding the facts of that case, it was a really tough kind of crashworthiness case. It was unbelievable. If you want me to share with you the facts.
B
Yes, I would love. Let's hear the story.
C
Yeah, we had a really young African American gentleman who was driving motorbike illegally on the streets in Philadelphia and he hit a trash truck. It was his fault. The accident was his fault. But in the course of the accident, after he hit the trash truck, the gas cap on the top of his motorbike popped off and he burst into flames and he got third and fourth degree burns all over his body. So we sued Honda, alleging that there was a defective design of the gas cap. And it really was. The case was my partner Larry Coben's baby. But I was able to participate at trial with him. But it was really just an amazing win because when you hear about it, you're like, this guy was driving illegally, he's driving a motorbike. It's not even street legal. He hit a trash truck. But because of the defective design of the gas cap, we were able to get this great verdict against Honda, which was really awesome.
B
So I have a bunch of questions after that, like, is this one of these cases that, like, most attorneys would have just been, like, looked at it, but like, nah.
C
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that I guess we specialize in or that I do is I get a lot of cases that other lawyers, you know, they try to get expert support for. They look at it, they can't handle it. They don't understand what to go or where to go. And we give it a second or third look. I've handled a bunch of birth injury cases that way where, you know, somebody gets a case, they don't know what they're seeing, and they hand it to me, like, can you make anything out of this?
B
So that's incredible. I mean, that's. It's wild. So it just wasn't screwed on properly. Like, what the.
C
I mean, the way the cap is designed, it can Pop off in an accident sequence. It just didn't screw in in it in a properly designed mechanism. I don't know how to say it without getting real technical and talking to you about the different variants of gas, which is. Could have bore everyone to death. But just, you know, if you're riding a motorbike illegally, make sure you have your gas cap on.
B
Wow. Unreal. Well, congrats on that. Yeah, Moving on. You know, attracting cases, getting these opportunities, getting these, you know, these major injuries, these wrongful deaths, these, these big cases. Like, how do you think about, you know, the firm, their positioning? Obviously, Annapolis, you know, they had. I remember I talked to Soul a while ago. I think he had one of the prison, big prison cases. Like, like, you know, long standing record of litigating. But like, how does the firm think about attracting cases?
C
Sure. I mean, the firm itself, we do a lot of mass torts and we're in leadership and a lot of mass torts. And then I'm kind of on the other side, which would be the single injury trial side. But I think one of the most important things that you have to do is actually try cases to attract cases. If you want to be, you know, a law firm and not. And not a referral firm that refers cases out. Some folks advertise their brand and want to refer cases out, but we want to work the cases and litigate the cases. And one of the best ways to get cases is to actually try cases so people know who you are and what you're capable of. I think that would be kind of the best thing out there.
B
Let's talk about that. So when you, when you have a big case like this, like, is there a component to it? Do you hire a PR team to announce the win? Do you. Is there a strategy to like get the visibility to your peers? Right. So that they know that you had the success?
C
Sure. I mean, we work with the digital media team, Escar Digital Media. I'll give them a shout out. They're great. But they do all of our, mostly all of our PR work for us. You know, they take care of our website, they issue press releases, the, you know, they do all that kind of stuff and try to get attention around when we have big verdicts or big wins, you know, sometimes it can be difficult because many cases do end up settling. They won't let you in the courtroom. You make some outrageous demand and they'll get paid. And that's tough because oftentimes those are confidential. So they've got to think of new and Creative ways to get the word out about the firm.
B
Fantastic. Yeah, I've always, I've always wondered that. Like, I always thought, you know, I see a lot of these firms advertising digitally and they'll put their numbers on the website. Like, I don't know that I would put those numbers on the website. I would probably focus on the number of cases. Like we've handled X amount of cases or. Yeah, you know, because it just don't have the big numbers. Like, so I don't know. But maybe the consumer isn't aware of what's big, what's small.
C
And I think consumers are aware just talking to my clients, I mean, they know I've gotten big results because I have plenty of clients who call me and say, I want you to get me the same result you got in this case. You know, I want $57 million. And I'm like, well, you know, not Everybody has a $57 million case, so.
B
Very true, very true. Everybody wants it, though. And then talk to me about the, the split. So you got, you said the mass torts, the single event side, the strategies to get the tort cases, obviously being on the committees, probably get a ton of referrals. The strategies to get those just because they, they start, stop a lot of paid. Probably different than your traditional brand advertising. Just. Any thoughts on any of that?
C
Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of what we do on the mass tort side is try to be on the forefront of mass torts before they get rolling so that we can be early into the game. I think early entry is really important. A great example of that is the Depo Provera litigation which just came around in the last year or so. It's alleged that Depo Provera, which is a birth control caused meningiomas in women, and we were one of the first firms to get out there, advertise and say that we were accepting referrals. And I think that helped us to get ahead of the game so that when other firms started getting them, they knew already that we were in the game and they could refer us the cases.
B
So that's before the MTMP conference where they announced Stepper significantly before.
C
Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we were just. As soon as we heard about it, we looked at the science, you know, we did our due diligence on that end. But, you know, I think first entry is often important to getting the cases.
B
What about the kind of moving on from the marketing and your reputation? You're getting a ton of referrals and like you said, the moving on to the intake side, just briefly, like, do you have two intake departments? You have one that's single event and one that's the tort related. That's the stricter script versus maybe a framework a little looser on the single event.
C
I don't want to say we have departments, we have individuals who handle intakes for different types of cases and they're trained on those different types of cases. So for instance, much of our work here at Annapol Weiss is sexual assault. And we have intake people who are trained on how to do those. It's obviously very sensitive and you have to be prepared for someone who's been through a very traumatic event. So those folks would handle all of our sexual assault intakes. We have folks that are trained on our birth injury intakes and they know what questions to ask about, you know, whether a woman had preeclampsia, what her prenatal testing was, you know, whether she had an abruption, what her strips look like, you know, all these medical terms. So we have different staff that are trained on kind of the different types of litigation and that really helps the process flow better so that the attorneys don't get bogged down too much, you know, sifting through intakes.
B
Yeah, so like on this, the, this, this case that you, you just had the success on, I mean, is that where the intakes, like, you know, it's a little questionable and then they bring on someone like yourself or an intake attorney and say, hey, actually, you know, thumbs up, let's, let's go for it.
C
Yeah. As I already said, all the shout outs go to Larry Coban, my partner. He really manages our crashworthiness practice here. But with those crash worthiness cases, so these really unique ones, those ones oftentimes require an attorney to look at them firsthand. Like, here are the facts. Sometimes you gotta streamline past the paralegals and get it right to the attorney. On some of those tougher cases, you
B
know, there's a, I had a client of ours asking if, you know, they were questioning whether or not to have all attorneys on the intake. And I'm like. And I see many that don't have a single attorney. Right. They're just, they're hooking them and then it goes through a review and it's, it's like. Yeah, I think sometimes they're.
C
Yeah. Oh, I didn't mean to cut you off. But I think people, when they call a law firm, they need to talk to an attorney. I think that's really important and that's Absolutely. Part of our process. I mean, they go through a paralegal first, but they need to talk to an attorney. Sometimes the attorneys just know what questions to ask.
B
I agree. I think you could maybe spot something that other individuals couldn't. Right. And absolutely. 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. Generating referrals and finding mass torts early is a great strategy, but if your intake department is disorganized, you're going to bleed cases. When Kyla joined Anapol Weiss, she watched the firm grow from 12 attorneys to nearly 35 in just three years. You simply cannot scale that fast without an airtight system for them. Intake not as a general call center, but as a highly specialized trauma informed first line of defense, with attorneys making the final call. Let's dive into how Annapol Weiss handles operations at scale. So, you know, there's a ton of things going on in the space. There's consolidation all over the place. You went from a large PI firm, you started your own practice, and then you made the decision to join Anapol Weiss. Like, talk to me about that decision. Right. Cause you've done it all right? You worked at a big practice, then you went out on your own, and now you're with Anepul. So talk to me through that decision.
C
And sure, I mean, the decision was easy at the time. It just wasn't the place for me. I wasn't happy. The decision to leave was easy. I went out on my own, just kind of not sure what to expect or what to do. And then things were chugging along fine, a little hectic. But actually, Anapol Weiss approached me and asked if I'd be interested in joining them. And they essentially bought me out, which was a good deal for me financially, obviously, but it's been really great here. It's nice to have a network and a foundation underneath you of a very large firm. You know, when I went out on my own, we were starting out very small and hiring as we needed to go, but we've actually grown Anapol quite a bit. When I got here, I think we were at 12 lawyers, and now I think we're at close to 35, including some folks that we just hired. It's crazy the amount of growth we've had in just under three years. It's unbelievable.
B
Well, I had these notes on my paper here. I said 12 attorneys to over 30 attorneys in seven states. Yeah, let's, let's talk about that. That expansion The. There's operational bottlenecks. There's a lot of training involved, finding the right talent. First of all, let's start with the talent. How do you find 18 solid attorneys, you know, with all this competition?
C
Yeah, it's a lot. But we get approached by people, I think, because of our reputation and our ability to handle cases. And we made some, I want to say, strategic acquisitions of some partners and some shareholders in these three years, and that's how you attract more good legal talent. You know, we were fortunate enough to have Chrissy Feden join us as a shareholder. Richard Gollum joined over here as of counsel. Alex Walsh joined as a shareholder. And with them, it brought a whole host of other attorneys that we're really, really thrilled to have on board with us. You know, and talent attracts talent, and good lawyers attract good lawyers. And I also think it's really easy to get people in when you have a nice working environment and a good place to work. I think the people here generally like it, which is so important.
B
Yeah. You know, that community, that's. That's one of the things that I miss about. I have a remote company. It started from inception being remote, but that's one of the things I miss. It's like kind of crickets in here right now. I'm the only one in the office, and it's like, oh, people, right. So you end up going to the coffee shop just to engage and have these weird conversations. You're like, that was awkward.
C
Don't get me wrong. I love a good Friday afternoon, sitting at home in my sweatpants on my computer, having not seen anyone all day. Like, I do enjoy the flexibility that Covid brought us and the ability to work from home. But I think in the practice of law, I think it's so important to have an office where you can just walk around and knock on somebody's door and say, hey, let me run this by you. I mean, they call it the practice of law for a reason. There aren't 100% answers. And I think you need. You miss that if you're not in person, in the office at times. And so I encourage all of my attorneys to get in here, and I try to show up every day of the week for that reason, even if I'm not here for a full day and I have to run to a kids event or something, you know, I'll just come in for the morning.
B
Things like that, that immersion and then competition. Right. You want to be the best in the office. Talk to me about just the things that you or Anapol does to be that top 1% trial. I mean do you have mock courtrooms? You do big data? Do you do focus groups? What are some of the things that come to mind that just make Anapole what Anapol is?
C
I can tell you preparation is key and putting in the hard work early. Jim Ronka and I are starting a trial next October and in three weeks we are going to deliver our openings to the paralegals and attorneys in the office to see what they think of them. And it's a very large crashworthiness trial. You know, it very well could settle between now and then. But getting ready early I think is so important and being prepared and that's something I stress all the time. You got to put the time in. I am an early riser. Anyone who knows me knows I get up between 4 and 5 almost every day of the week. And I put probably an hour or two in just reading and doing the quiet hard work before I get distracted by emails and questions and phone calls and all that other stuff. So you know, I think it's important that you put in that deep work and it merits the results.
B
I couldn't agree more. And that is a ton of pre work. Right on that. What's involved in the pre work is it just you're looking at the opposing side like this is the angle that they may take. You hear the openings. You do multiple openings. Is that where the focus groups and things come in? Is it?
C
I've never actually used a quote focus group. There's companies out there that you can hire to do focus groups. I have never ever done it. I've just, you know, I'll give my spiel to my poor husband and my kids. You know, I'll make all the paralegals in the office listen to an opening and tell me what they think. I do very informal focus groups. It's worked out so far so, so well. But a lot of the prep work, I've always thought of a trial as more like a tennis match. You know, I'm going to serve the ball. How are they going to serve it back? How are they going to defend this case? And you have to spend a lot of time anticipating what the defenses are so that you can kind of get around them when the ball's in your court.
B
Well said, well said. And yeah, I, I'm. This is. These are just things, you know, from the non attorney perspective. Just, just wondering because your guys numbers are just incredible. What about just the selection and it's kind of back to the intake but like, you know, these expert witnesses and the commitment, right. You're going to spend so much time, it's an October case like, like I imagine it just the criteria changes what types of cases that you're going to take. Is it just hey, you know, for maybe a new firm listening? Maybe the soft tissue case is like, hey, maybe you should contact Animpole because maybe they got some cases that they're just, you know, I think it's important,
C
you know, as a firm owner that you recognize what kind of cases you specialize in and you can take. Like we wouldn't take those soft tissue cases. I don't handle a lot of rear end auto accidents. I don't take little slip and falls. You know, our injuries are truly catastrophic and so we have to streamline everything. But we do refer out a good amount of work for the kind of cases we don't handle. And so, you know, you have to be experienced in knowing what you're good at and where to stay away from so you don't waste your time and effort. Scenarios that you know, aren't your forte. You know, if you have a small auto firm that's fine, but then you shouldn't be messing around in the world of say like complex med mal because you're just going to waste time and energy and not know what you're doing.
B
Yeah, and talk to me too about like the team, right? So you've got your 30 plus attorneys. Do you have, you know, the, the paralegal, the lit paralegals. Do you have the, the case managers? Like what support staff does that go into? Or, or is it like, hey, I'm full cycle, I'm working. Oh no, I'm working Soup to nuts.
C
Yeah, well, each of the different mass torts that we're involved in, which is, you know, almost everyone that's out there. But like the Depo Provera team is separate from the Roblox team is separate from like the Illinois sex abuse team is separate from the social media team. And they have their own paralegals and their own attorneys that work on them, if you will. And then once a month or once every two weeks really I should say, we have a mass tort meeting of all the attorneys that are on the mass torts and we go through sort of the inventory. This is what's happening in this case and this case and this case. So everybody's aware and we all know and that's been a really great system there. And then on the single injury side, we sort of set up teams of Two attorneys, and they have their own caseload. So they might have. I have one team of attorneys who handles mostly birth injury attorney birth injury cases, you know, children with HIE or encephalopathy, things like that. One team that does a lot of products liability work. They're handling, like, our auto products cases. You know, they handled a defective lawnmower case, things like that. And then I have another team that handles some of our medical device products. You know, we've handled defective neurosurgical devices, defective mesh implants, defective graft implants in the head, things along those lines.
B
And I guess, you know, to have the cause. These are very specialized. That what you're referring to, right? These different areas, it's like, hey, you get one of these cases, have the big result, and then. Then you tend to get more similar cases because, hey, Annabel's handled an HIE or cerebral palsy, what have you case, then you get more. And it helps facilitate that growth.
C
Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, we've just had some good outcomes in birth injury cases. And I know that I got one. Gosh, it was about three years ago. I got a case from an attorney out in Pittsburgh. It was a deceased infant, and he couldn't find an expert for the case. So I managed to get an expert on the case. And then right before trial, I filed a motion to amend, and the court actually granted our motion to amend. That allowed us to plead punitive damages against the doctors in the hospital, which was a huge win. And I will never forget this as long as I live. We're about to start the trial, and the defendant doctor was literally, you know, looking over at me, and I'm warming up my microphone to start. He had a heart attack in front of the jury. Trial stop. Trial rescheduled. Needless to say, the case settled. But that was one of those ones.
B
Wow.
C
But I tell you this, not about the story, but, gosh, maybe a year later, I happen to be in Pittsburgh again on a different issue, and I'm standing at Dunkin Donuts getting an iced tea, because I'm an iced tea addict. I'm always drinking unsweetened iced tea. And some woman comes up to me, and she's like, you're that lawyer. You're that lawyer from the courthouse who gave that man a heart attack. And I'm like, oh, my God. She's like, that was awesome. And I'm like, oh, wow. Thank you. So that was a really cool story, but. But I guess the legend grows, and we get work that way.
B
Oh, you, you gotta have a social media video for that.
C
It. I don't know what was weirder, the heart attack itself happening. That poor man, he must have been so distraught. I felt awful. Like, I felt like I was going to vomit. I felt so bad for him. And then I felt like a terrible person. And then this woman coming up to me a year later, I'm like, what the heck? Like, the story's going around.
B
So you went through this growth and we talked about the 12 to 30. Is it like 12 to 30? I mean, that's a bunch. That's 18 lawyers. And then look, the headcots for the attorneys are not. I mean, they're. It's a higher cost. Is it? Hey, we, we had these, you know, you're just reinvesting back into the firm. Is it like, what really was the catalyst? Was it the big verdicts and like, hey, we're going to double down in these areas?
C
Like, well, you know, when I came on board here, I think things were changing. Sol Weiss was getting ready to retire. They had some attorneys that really needed to move on and things were changing. And then I came on with a team of like, gosh, I guess I think at that time I had two lawyers or three lawyers with me. But then I instantly needed more help. And, you know, my practice was growing rapidly because I had just left my former firm not very long ago. So my practice was growing rapidly, which enabled us to hire some more lawyers. And then, like I said, the strategic acquisitions, when we brought in some pretty big shareholders, enough counsel, you know, they brought a team with them to manage their caseload. And, you know, as we've grown and the momentum's grown, there's just been more and more of a need. And it's funny, we have two really great law clerks who sit outside my office and we just gave both of them job offers. So I'm excited to have two more lawyers joining us shortly. That's great.
B
That's amazing. Having that nurture program. And then just briefly, and I'm kind of hitting this over the head, but when you do these acquisitions, does everyone kind of merge and use the software and Paul uses. Do you have like a particular trial method? Like, how does the integration work? The natural integration?
C
Integration's tough. I'm not going to lie. We use, for instance, Solidify Network. I am not the most tech savvy person in the world. I had to learn how that worked. We use iPad. It's to store stuff. I had to learn how that worked. But we do when we bring These lawyers in, you know, we have trainers on staff to train them in all the different software and things like that. You know, I don't think you can ever have like a routine. This is how you're going to try a case. This is how you're going to prep a case. I think that's a lawyer in their job. But, you know, we welcome people with open arms. And an important part is just integrating and getting everybody to get along and get in the same system so that everybody can help on anything.
B
And I. And I guess I have to ask this, you know, the AI question gets brought up. Is there any. Is it more like, hey, we're analog, I've got the experience and the extreme preparation, or is there any software tools that are AI giving you some additional. Are you running like, hey, here's my tactic? What do you think, Gemini?
C
Yeah, as, again, as I said, I am not the most tech savvy, so I am still pretty old school. I'm probably one of the few people in the office who has paper on their desk anymore. I am very old school like that. Ironically, Jim Ronka, who has much more gray hair than I do, I'll just be polite. He. He took a deep dive into AI over the last year and tried a bunch of different programs, a bunch of different software. He had a bunch of the associates form a team and analyze different things. And we do use it to a certain extent. I think AI is great to summarize depositions, for example. You know, we have a company that uses AI to summarize medical records and put them in a chronology for us to help you flip through things easily as far as writing and opening or things like that. I wouldn't use AI for something like that. I just don't think it's there yet. We obviously don't use it for brief writing. I just don't think it's there yet. I think you have to go old school. Jim wants to try. After we do our openings in preparation for this upcoming trial, he wants to run it through an AI program to see what their comments are versus what our paralegals and the folks hear say, just to see how the program works and how. How good it is. So we're integrating it because, you know, if you're not, you're falling behind. If you're not growing and keeping up with the times, you're falling behind. But we are integrating it with extreme caution.
B
Yeah, if he's listening, I would say if he could get some transcripts of a bunch of trials and even the wins from the defense side and you upload that to Notebook LLM and then you have your own database and you can put that up against it with a little bit more control. But super interesting.
C
Yeah, it's a fascinating world and I am, you know, learning as much as I can as quickly as I can, but it's ever changing.
B
Yeah. Kyla, this has been amazing, you know, for our audience that has questions about, you know, cases. You've been on questions about the POD or they want to refer a case to you guys. What's the best way to get in touch?
C
Sure. My number is 215-790-4581. Email is K Baldwin, B A L D W I n at annapoleweiss a n a p o l w e I-S-S.com obviously, you can find us on the web at annapolweiss.com you know, happy to take referrals, talk people through cases, anything they may need.
B
Amazing. Kyla, thanks for coming on the show.
C
Oh, Chris, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.
B
Kyla Baldwin is proving that the biggest verdicts don't happen by accident. Her success comes down to extreme preparation, a willingness to dig into complex cases other lawyers reject and a trial preparation that quite literally stops the defense in their tracks. If your firm is putting in the same level of hard work, you need a marketing strategy that reflects it. At Rankings, we help elite personal injury firms dominate search results so you can focus on what you do best, winning for your clients. Reach out to our team at Rankings today to see how we can help you scale. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer and we'll see you next time.
Date: May 28, 2026
Host: Chris Dreyer (Rankings.io)
Guest: Kila Baldwin, Partner at Anapol Weiss
This episode spotlights Kila Baldwin, a trial attorney at Anapol Weiss renowned for transforming rejected and challenging cases into enormous verdicts—up to $80 million. Chris Dreyer dives deep into how Baldwin cultivates a courtroom reputation that precedes her, specializes in catastrophic injury claims others avoid, and leads strategic firm growth. The conversation unpacks trial strategies, intake system design, winning mass torts early, and how elite preparation shapes a top-tier PI firm.
Baldwin's Recent Win:
$20 million verdict against Honda in a crashworthiness case (02:44).
Plaintiff was driving his motorbike illegally and caused his own accident, but the vehicle’s design flaw—specifically a defective gas cap—turned what seemed like an impossible case into a huge win.
"We sued Honda, alleging that there was a defective design of the gas cap. ... Because of the defective design of the gas cap, we were able to get this great verdict against Honda, which was really awesome."
— Kila Baldwin (02:58)
Baldwin’s Unique Value:
Specializes in cases passed over by others.
Exercises willingness to take a "second or third look," leveraging deep legal expertise to uncover hidden liability theories.
"I get a lot of cases that other lawyers ... can't handle. They don't understand what to go or where to go. And we give it a second or third look."
— Kila Baldwin (03:52)
Trial Reputation as a Magnet:
Trying cases, not mere referrals, is the best marketing. Public wins attract referrals and direct clients.
"The most important thing ... is actually try cases to attract cases."
— Kila Baldwin (05:16)
Role of PR and Digital Media:
Prioritizes being among the first on emerging mass torts (Depo Provera example, 07:40).
Early advertising and outreach position the firm as a destination for both client and firm referrals.
"First entry is often important to getting the cases."
— Kila Baldwin (08:15)
Intake handled by staff with litigation-specific training: sexual assault, birth injury, product liability, etc.
Attorneys make the final call on complex cases.
"We have intake people who are trained ... It really helps the process flow better so that the attorneys don't get bogged down."
— Kila Baldwin (08:50)
"People, when they call a law firm, they need to talk to an attorney. ... Sometimes the attorneys just know what questions to ask."
— Kila Baldwin (10:24)
From Solo to 35-Lawyer Firm:
Community-Centric Culture:
Advocates for in-person collaboration for optimal legal work and learning (14:01).
"I think in the practice of law, I think it's so important to have an office where you can just walk around and knock on somebody's door and say, hey, let me run this by you."
— Kila Baldwin (14:01)
Prepares for trial months ahead (mock openings, office feedback loops).
Prefers informal focus groups, testing openings internally.
"Preparation is key and putting in the hard work early. ... Getting ready early I think is so important."
— Kila Baldwin (15:02)
"I've always thought of a trial as more like a tennis match. ... You have to spend a lot of time anticipating what the defenses are."
— Kila Baldwin (16:02)
Avoids lower-value cases (soft tissue, small auto), referring them out.
Teams of attorneys and paralegals assigned per litigation area.
"You have to be experienced in knowing what you're good at and where to stay away from so you don't waste your time and effort."
— Kila Baldwin (17:11)
Famous incident where defendant doctor suffered a heart attack at the sight of Baldwin prepping for trial—case settled post-incident.
"We're about to start the trial, and the defendant doctor was literally, you know, looking over at me, and I'm warming up my microphone to start. He had a heart attack in front of the jury. Trial stopped, trial rescheduled. Needless to say, the case settled."
— Kila Baldwin (19:34)
The story became local legend, feeding Baldwin's reputation.
"Some woman comes up to me, and she's like, you're that lawyer from the courthouse who gave that man a heart attack. ... That was awesome."
— Kila Baldwin (20:14)
Adoption of Digital Tools:
AI Approach:
Employs AI for medical record summaries and deposition synopses.
Remains "extremely cautious" about relying on AI for legal writing or trial prep—sees potential, but not ready to cede core skills.
"I think AI is great to summarize depositions ... as far as writing an opening or things like that. I wouldn't use AI for something like that. I just don't think it's there yet."
— Kila Baldwin (23:25)
On Transforming "Bad Facts" into Big Wins:
"I mean, that's one of the things that we specialize in ... we give it a second or third look."
— Kila Baldwin (03:52)
On the Firm’s Reputation:
"One of the best ways to get cases is to actually try cases so people know who you are and what you’re capable of."
— Kila Baldwin (05:16)
On Intake:
“People, when they call a law firm, they need to talk to an attorney. … Sometimes the attorneys just know what questions to ask.”
— Kila Baldwin (10:24)
On Preparation:
“Preparation is key and putting in the hard work early...I am an early riser. Anyone who knows me knows I get up between 4 and 5 almost every day of the week. And I put probably an hour or two in just reading and doing the quiet hard work before I get distracted by emails and questions.”
— Kila Baldwin (15:02)
Legendary Trial:
“We're about to start the trial... he had a heart attack in front of the jury. Trial stopped, trial rescheduled. Needless to say, the case settled."
— Kila Baldwin (19:34)