← Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
437. Inside Morgan & Morgan’s "Grow or Die" Mindset w/ Dan Morgan
00:25:17
Dan Morgan breaks down the marketing strategies, referral networks, and expansion tactics driving the largest personal injury firm in America.
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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
When you think of massive scale in personal injury law, one name instantly comes to mind. Morgan and Morgan. They operate in all 50 states, employ over 6000 people, and have a roster of over 1100 attorneys. Today, I'm sitting down with Dan Morgan, the managing partner of Morgan and Morgan. We're diving into how they run their empire from navigating the current fragmented marketing landscape to building a referral engine that's on track to hit nine figures next year. Dan also gives us the inside scoop on their upcoming one time only event in Vegas this year, June, called Grow or Die. It's not a motivational seminar. It's a conference about the business of law. If you ever wondered how the biggest players think about scaling, you won't want to miss this. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Schreier, founder and CEO of Rankings IO, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. Before we jump in, I'm excited to share the Grow or Die event is coming up in Vegas on June 9th and 10th. Den and his team are giving 20% off the listeners of this show to get our discount. Click on the link in the episode description and use the promo code PIM20. That's PIM20. And get your 20% off. All right, let's get into it. Hey, guys. I got the man, the myth, Dan Morgan on the show again.
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C
Hey. Hey, how's it going?
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B
And I'm. I'm so excited to talk to you. You guys are always growing, always expanding, thinking big. You know, I know you have an event coming up. You've got the Grow or Die the conference first, like open it up. What's this about? Why are you opening the playbook to so many PI attorneys? Tell me about it.
- [02:38]
C
So, yeah, we just got done actually with the Art of Outsmarting, which we've done. This was actually our sixth annual, one of those incredible turnout. We had I think 405 attorneys from 40 different states, two day event. And you know, those are kind of the seminars that are Keith by Keith Minnick and it's trial focused. It's, you know, jam sessions on Boy Dyer. It's other trial lawyers like Grant Gillenwater in our firm that did 80 cases, like 80 trials last two years, that comes in, kind of dumps all that knowledge. And it's been great. That's been great for our networking, for both receiving cases and finding lawyers to send cases to. But there's never really been a conference that's been about business, kind of the business side of things. Obviously there's the masterminds and the one offs. But this one's more focused on the finances, about how to think about. And it's by my dad, by the way. It's not by me. He's the one that put it on. He's the one that kind of has seen other seminars that have been going on and really be like, I think the people, what they want to hear more about, especially with the way that private equity is flooded into the space, the way that AI is flooded into the space, the way that MSOs and all these third party vendors are now thinking about law. Kind of, let's get all these lawyers that we know are super successful that come to these, the key events and comes to our RevCon events that are out there doing, you know, just as well as we're doing in all their states and cities and regions, get them all under one one roof. Put this program together and really talk about where the law is going, how the finance and law are thinking about it. You know, we're bringing in Truist bank that does partnership loan financing. So when you're thinking about, hey, do I go to private equity? Maybe first I look at my own lawyers that are in the firm, sell them a piece of the firm, establish the valuation of the firm and build it that way. So it's really just a way to bring everyone together under one roof and talk about the topic of everyone's thinking about.
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B
And then. So that's the Wynn, I believe in Vegas.
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C
Yep, that's June 9th and 10th, there's a welcome party on that Monday before out win Vegas. We're hosting it at the Encore theater. The names that you're seeing on, you know, in all these conversations are already signed up. Brian Panish is speaking at it. You know, the way he's thought about what he's done with his firm is incredible. Like I said, we have Truist and we have also great keynotes bringing in Dan Martell and Morgan Housel because those are kind of the guys that my dad's looked at with their principles and the way that they think and the way that they scale to bring those guys into, to share their thoughts as well.
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B
Yeah, Dan, let's buy back your time. Morgan Housel the psychology of Money. Psychology of money, yeah. So great. Guess there's a huge unlock and that
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C
book was a huge unlock, not only for my dad, but for me, myself. You know, my whole team is. It's impossible to do it all by yourself. You know, it's really about building the right network of people that you can delegate to that you can assign a task, not have to worry about it. You know, that it's getting done just as well as if you're doing it yourself because there's so many people out there that are just hands on, you know, debt paralysis almost. You got your inbox is so full, it's like, don't sign any case up unless I give you the thumbs up on it. Well, you got to get to it now. You got to run it now. You have to have someone trust him to say, you know, good to go, turn down, settle all those types of things with these, these lawyers that want to do it all. And they have some, some have great success. I mean, there's some solo practitioners out there that Iceland cases to all the time. So I know they're a dog with a bone and they're going to be on top of it and they're working it, you know, day and night. You're gonna get incredible result as well. But there's also the big operators that are doing it too. So it's really going to be a good conversation.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. That pain line and so great talent. I'm excited to hear about it. And I always get a kick out of your dad. I mean, I listened to you guys on Patrick Bet David. I listened to that one. I listened to the, my first million one, which I personally liked because he, you know, touched on the, the different attraction businesses, different entrepreneurial things. So you guys investing a ton of money. I think I read a stat you don't have to confirm that I, you know, 350 million-plus in advertising last year, you know, just an absolute marketing machine. So a couple questions, I just kind of piqued my interest. You know I picked up this book, I was at a flea market I think and on page 84 here. No, I'm just joking. For the guys that can't see the video I picked up, you can't teach Hungry by John Morgan. I just want to highlight this. It says if you were to ask me today where I should advertise, my answer would certainly be television. First, second, third. So I'm going to fast forward. I know this is one that you go round and round with John about today. What do you think? What do you think? You think TV broadcast still number one stunner? Do you think streaming starting to or YouTube TV, what do you think?
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C
If it was me and I was starting mine and it's 2026, I would be, you know, most likely hitting the social media world. You know, hitting that world, those eyeballs, the iPhone, screens, TV I think is king, is still king and is going to be king for a while. Especially where you look at the competitor landscape which we keep a close pulsan in every city you can see who's spending the most on TV and who's spending that's most likely who the best competitors are. Your biggest competitors are as well and that's where they're going to be and that's where you get the eyeballs in the reach and you're going to be able again like I said this the CPM model to get scientific with it. I definitely think that right now is still king. But if I was, it's expensive, you know what I mean? So it's expensive to play in that space and, and if you're new and you're starting, you got to feel pain for a little while. The social media world can be a little cheaper. You can do some more guerrilla marketing, you can get creative. So that's probably where I would start. But yeah, if you're a marketing law firm and you don't have TV in the mix, I think you're definitely fighting with a hand tied behind your back.
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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. Dan makes a great point about marketing. TV can be incredibly expensive but there's lots of opportunities to think hyperlocal on both social media and in your community. However, there's another massive growth Lever that doesn't require a $350 million ad budget. Embracing referrals. When Dan took over the Morgan Connection referral operations in 2020, they were generating about $15 million in referral revenue. Today, they engineered that operation into a $63 million revenue engine. Let's dive back in to hear exactly how they're making sure they monetize every single lead and get the right cases to the right attorneys. I want to dive into the Morgan Connection in a bit. Cause I'm really. That's something that you've really led the charge on before. I do, I kind of wanted to take it to a different level. Like that first question's like people that have the capital deploy, right? It's like takes a ton of capital deploy and broadcast television, these other channels. Let's just say you had maybe a smaller marketing budget. And even when I say small, right? It's even the PI space small, it's not small to other niches. But you know, 50 to 100 thousand dollar marketing budget, you know, you're in a local, you're one city firm, you know, how are you? Obviously every market's a little different, but like, what do you think about with a leaner budget, how would you approach it?
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C
Leaner budgets. And you know, I think getting in an out of home presence is pretty important. At least wherever your main area is, if that's office space, if that's good signage, you know, just so people know who you are and where you are, just to get that. And you can get that sometimes pretty lean. You can get scrappy with it too. You can go to high schools and banners and things like that. It's super good, super hyper, hyper local, which we're even still, you know, that's a big part of my playbook still. You. I got this jersey behind me right here for a youth football team I sponsored. I got the jersey pageant on it, you know, so it's about, it's all about, you know, being hyper local. I think like this whole thing for the. All the uniform sponsorships for the year is like 5200 bucks. But now I got a whole team, a whole, you know, I got 42 kids and their families that are all about Morgan and Morgan now. So one case, you can make that all back, you know, so it's just kind of thinking like that and not being afraid to make that investment into something that you're questioning. But then radio, obviously you get great return on radio investments and you're able to hit the consumer over the head and if they're listening to the radio, they're in a car. And if you're a car accident lawyer, you're kind of narrow that funnel down to right where you need to be that, you know, to a prospective customer. And then, yeah, I mean, tv, you can get creative with some remnant buys or some cable networks or some different areas, you know, you might not be on them. You know, sports, which Morgan and Morgan, you know, we're not even on sports that much because the CPMs are so high. And, you know, again, like I said, we kind of have that model where if it's kind of in banana land, we stay away from it and let the draft kings and the alcohol companies and the pizza companies just gobble it up. And if we can get smart and get, you know, a field logo with a college or some bumper signage on that, you know, now we're getting a CPM for $5 in the same space that DraftKings is paying $58 for. So just try to get, you know, just. Just thinking like that, and you'll see on, like, some different baseball games sometimes. We got on the Yankees, we got the bullpen. So every time there's a home run or a good catch or they're going to the bullpen for the. The closers that are warming up. Now we're getting that signage, that TV time, and it boils that CPM down lower and lower.
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B
You know, that's one thing I'd say the placement look, my son's for, right? You flip on Monster Jams and you got the backflip thing. And then right above, it's Morgan and Morgan. In fact, I think they call the ramp the backflip for monster. Yeah, the placement. And then like, I flipped on a couple other. The YouTube, you know, the kids show like, not unspeakables, but some of those will. Will have the good placement. So you guys are certainly everywhere. Let's talk about the. The Morgan connection. So the value prop. Hey, just send us the cases you don't want. That's a pretty damn good value prop.
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C
I mean, it works both ways, too. I mean, someone, you know, it's like, however you want to work with us, we want to work with you. If you want to send us cases you're not handling, and we can maybe find, you know, find home in one of our offices. Great. There's cases that we're obviously not handling. We're even. I'm trying to instruct our lawyers more like, hey, we don't just turn down a case. Let's Turn it down and send it out and get some more eyes on it. You know, just because you don't see it doesn't mean other people are seeing. And we've seen a huge uptick in these cases that are getting signed up by other firms that are doing great, great work with them and really turning them into something special and vice versa. You know, there's firms that are like, hey, I work this thing up. I'm about to go to trial. You know, they're not settling. I know this case worth 5 million, they're still offering me 350. It's going to cost me 350 to get this the way it needs to get to in front of a jury. They bring us in, we can take care of the cost, we can work it up. We get creative with the splits. It's not always just, hey, you get a third. Sometimes we're doing 50, 50s from. Sometimes it's going the other way. Sometimes they're getting more, depending on how much has been worked up or where we're at in the trial. You know, if it's two to three weeks before trial and they need a Grant Gillenwater mercenary, we can figure those plans out, too, and then we're getting the best results. You know, one thing that was awesome at the art about smart, smart interviewing. We were just at the Hurt Boss out of Atlanta, Germany, kind of came up to me and told me, you know, I came to this event last year. I talked to Keith. I was really worried about how I was going to ask for a large verdict just because, you know, it's. I was in this rural county in Georgia. I didn't know how to react to it. He gave me advice, and I turned that into a $91 million verdict. And, you know, now he's off to Bad faith and to collect and all that jazz. But it's just that result that Jeremy got, that's not really associated with Morgan. And Morgan, you know, that's all him. We didn't have lawyers in there with him at all. But that now then brings up the level for everybody in the community that the, you know, the insurance companies know this could happen. You could get popped. You know, this could happen to you. And when that keeps happening over and over again and good lawyers are out there establishing true value for cases, instead of saying, hey, it's a 500k policy, they're offering 325. Let's shut this thing down and get to Cabo, you know, to have the mentality of, no, we're going to file an OJ for 500. You still didn't pay. Well, now we got fees and costs or any will get a verdict on it. So letting lawyers know, hey, if you want to use our trial skills, if you don't want, you know, there's some lawyers that are super effective at working up a case to that settlement phase that might not be as great as the litigation and vice versa. Some might be really great at the litigation and not as great as the workup. Let's say if you want to send us your cases and work up, we have agreements with a ton of firms that say if this goes to litigation, they're back involved. Let's vary and things of that nature as well. So we try to get as creative as possible because we just want to good results all across America for all lawyers to establish the true value.
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B
You know, I picked up so Trial Guides has. Dudley just launched a book I'm excited to read. But then Keith has four or five trial books there, so he's got great stuff.
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C
And. And if you're a new lawyer, I know they use the phrase like baby lawyer, but if you're three, four years out of law school and you're about to go to trial and you're kind of, you don't know what to do if you read Keith's books, you go in there like, okay, I. I can do this shit. I know. You know, it just gives you that confidence from reading it, even though you, why not? Because he gives you the formulas, he gives you the parables, he gives you the setup. Hey, you got a troubled witness. Try this. You need to strike bad jurors. Here's a way to do it. So it really is just like a cheat sheet, you know, spark notes of, here's a way to do your trial.
- [15:21]
B
I had Sam Pond on from Pond LA Hockey just a few days ago, and he made a comment. He said something like, hey, you know, our. Not our second, but like our third look cases they refer out made him like seven figures.
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C
Oh, for sure the same way.
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B
And I remember I re. Listened to your keynote at Pimcon from a few years ago and you were talking about. I remember you had like a light kind of discussion with your chief intake officer, and you went and were like, hey, let's try it. And then you found a ton of revenue. So I guess for the audience listening, look, I get nothing for saying this. I just, hey, I want to help you guys make more money. And if there are cases that you're turning down, I think it might be worth Sending them to a firm like Morgan Morgan for a second look.
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C
Oh, I mean, absolutely. That's the. Not just Morgan Morgan, but other firms in, in the community as well. That's what a lot of people are like, I'll send my case anywhere. I'm just not sending it to you guys. Which is fine. I understand. It's great. But even if you're not sending us to us, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. And your client is service by not at least getting it to one of your buddies or two of your buddies to say, hey, this might not be for me, a lot of times an inventory issue too. It's like, hey, I got too many good cases going on, you know. Now if it's. You got the surveillance video and your guy was drinking at the bar and then ran a red light and hit the cop and he's saying the cop hit him. Yeah, that's probably a turn down. You don't want to waste anyone else's time with it. But when it's a close he said, she said, or it's just a hey, the damages aren't what my threshold is, you know, like, you know, there's Brian Panish again. He's, you know, the goat hits him and Keith Mitnick, for me, that are neck and neck, as you know, the LeBron and Jordan, who's a true goat. But, you know, he's. His threshold's extremely high. You know, he's not getting out of bed unless the case is there. So he's going to say no to a lot of stuff. That means he sends out a lot of good stuff. Luckily, we're some of that stuff, which is great because our threshold's different. But there's firms out there that just have that threshold. And when they make the decision to say, sorry, this isn't for me, they're doing themselves a huge disservice. Instead, tell the client, hey, let me build you a team. I'm going to stay on top of this. I'm going to go bring in an expert or someone that does this all day, and we're going to tackle this together. And now, you know, you're off to the races.
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B
I couldn't agree more. One of the things I thought would be interesting, just top of the dome, as much as you want to share, you know, generalizations, we hear that the cost to acquire an auto case is increasing. Right. It used to say two. Now in California, it's X price. Like just in general, like some of these benchmark metrics that would Be nice to share. So a cost to acquire an auto case, you know, your wanted conversion rate. Some of these top metrics that you think just general average.
- [17:55]
C
Especially when we go into new markets, like I said, you can feel pain. You can feel, you know, for a while. But yeah, I mean if we're getting cases for under $3,000, we feel like we're in decent shape. We're aiming for probably, you know, half that. It would be the ultimate goal. If you're really converting, well, you're at 1500-1800 a case where then you're cranking. I think especially we don't really deal with the Legion business. I know that's obviously booming for a lot of people. That's the way that a lot of people get their cases. So, you know, then they set those different rates of have catastrophic or this and that. It's really tough to say because you don't know what a case. That's how we always feel. We don't really know what a case is worth until 90 days in. Now obviously if it's a wrongful death involving a big box store, you know, that's you know, a high value case from the very onset. But you know, we just got a case, a verdict about 40 minutes ago in Bartow County, Florida, which is super conservative county, for 6.1 million on a double herniation RFA case. You know, that case to some people is worth 350,000. They're offering us 80,000. They just got to. So we, you know, you don't know what that's worth until the people in Bartos say, hey, you know, now the insurance company's freaking out and you know, saying, you know, mistrial and we need to appeal it, yada yada. So not saying they're going to pay right away, but you don't know what a case is worth until you get to that point. So that if you're paying 20,000 for that case. Yeah, you'd pay that all day. Knowledge, you know, you know, mesothelioma has been a big focus of mine that I've gotten involved in. I know legions and those companies out there, you know, if you're six figures for those cases, 100 to 150,000. If you're getting those for 50 to 60,000, you're cranking. So it's just kind of each, you know, med mao is going to be different. Cost of a birth injury case is going to be super expensive to get because the average fees hopefully, you know, is it all kind of evens out. But yeah, I'd say for auto, if you're, you know, especially for a firm, that getting your average fee makes a huge impact on what the cases are. Because if Your average fees 1500 when you're getting 3000 a case, you're unfortunately probably not going to be around in 2027. So, you know, if you're getting cases for 5,000, but your average fee is 15, you know, your case cost in the workup is 3,4000 bucks and you know, you're in business now, so you really have to have it again. That's really a lot of stuff that we're talking on. That Grow or die conference is like, you need to know your finances, you need to know your burn rate, you need to know your average fees across case types. Again, if you're, you know, don't be a work confirm. If you're not a work comp firm, don't take the cases on. Just set up those referrals early and often. Same with birth injury. You know, we make great money. We're getting more serious down a lot of these areas. But in Philadelphia last year, we got a check for $6 million for a birth injury case that we referred out. They sell it for like, you know, $92 million million dollars got paid and our referral fee was $6 million.
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B
Unreal. Wow.
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C
So that's just, you know, we sent that case off five years ago. We kind of kept base with it. We didn't know they went. And it's all sudden, boom, you got a check for $6 million and Phillies in the green. So just like, you know, instead of saying, hey, I'm going to, this is a great case. I'm going to work it up and hopefully do my best job and mess around with it. Let's just get it to, yeah, the Dale Earnhardt race car driver that can drive this thing and get the result for not only the client, but, you know, for the referring firm too.
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B
I saw a post recently and I have no idea if this is like a new effort or like you mentioned work comp. Right. I saw a post like, hey, we're hiring work comp lawyers nationwide. You know, the complexity to lean into these other practice areas, especially at your size. It's like going into nursing birth, like, what kind of decisions go into that. How do you think about your expansion into practice areas? And I'll just give you a little bit of, you know, throw up the softball, let you kind of answer that how you want.
- [21:28]
C
Yeah. So, you know, obviously, personal injury and, you know, when My dad started was a general personal injury firm. Florida has really done everything the whole way and our other offices have always leaned in primarily to auto and slip and fall when first started. The way technology is going, these cars, you know, drive the, the driverless cars are coming into effect. The safety in the cars, we really just have try to think big picture, you know, don't have all our eggs in one basket of cars and privilege liability thinking big picture and also the client base as well. You know, if you have a work comp client, hopefully they're going to use you for other services as well. So yeah, this year and last year we really made a big push on a work comp employment law and med mao to get really serious in these states and hire really good attorneys in these states. 1 It also helps we get these referring attorneys that are sending us tons of cases already for PI but you know, when they're not sending us to have employment, they have work comp and we've been telling them, sorry, we don't do it. So there was a lot of that that went into it as well. But it is just the future, you know, with nursing home, you know, it's unfortunate. Cars are going to get safer, there's going to be less accidents. Well, people aren't going to get younger, they're going to get older. The baby boom generation is here. They're moving into nursing homes. And unfortunately we know with the statistics and the rates there's going to be abuse that goes on, neglect that goes on, bed sores that that occur. So if we can build it out now and be ready for it, you know, we can kind of, you call it, you know, skating to the puck. Just get it out ahead of it.
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B
Any final questions for people listening that want to connect with Dan? Interested in learning more about the Morgan connection? Just any questions at all. What's the best way to get in
- [22:58]
C
touch D morganorthepeople.com and then my Instagram, Dan Morgan esq. Both of those are best ways to get a hold of me.
- [23:07]
B
Thanks, Dan. Thanks for coming on the show.
- [23:08]
C
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
- [23:14]
B
A massive thank you to Dan Morgan for joining us today. From treating marketing as a true numbers game to treating your referral network like a multimillion dollar business of its own, there's a lot we can learn from the Morgan to Morgan scale. If you're looking to scale your own firm and want to network with the biggest players in the game, make sure you secure your spot at the Grow or Die conference in Vegas. Use the link in the episode description and enter promo code PIM20. That's P I M2Z0 for 20% off your ticket. And of course, if you're ready to dominate your own market with a marketing partner who believes in proof over promises, head on over to Rankings IO. Let us prove to you that we're the right partner to help you grow. I'm Chris Schreier. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time on Personal Injury Mastermind.