← Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
438. 98% Intake. How?: Rethinking Law Firm Growth w/ Carol-Lynn Roman, Roman Austin
00:29:53
A 98% intake conversion rate sounds impossible. Carol-Lynn Roman reveals how putting attorneys on the front lines drove her firm straight to the Inc. 5000.
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- [00:01]
A
What if I told you there was a firm out there converting 98% of their wanted cases into signed contracts? You heard me right, 98%. You'd probably tell me I was lying. But today's guest has the data to back it up and she's going to talk about the transformation her business has made over the last six years to get that incredible 98%. 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 on the show we have Carolyn Roman, chief operating officer of Roman Austin Personal Injury Lawyers of Florida. She has been in the personal injury business for over 30 years and her firm recently hit the Inc. 5000 list. And they did it by completely rethinking the traditional law firm model. They've got a massive commitment to boots on the ground community building and a unique phase based workflow that has supercharged their average case value. You are definitely going to want to take notes on this. So let's get into it. I like to kick things off with a win. What's something you're excited about, something going on with the firm that you're implementing or you'd like to share?
- [01:06]
B
Sure. So we're real excited that we made the Inc. 5000 list last year, which is really great. We've had exponential growth. We attribute that to a lot of different things, both in development, marketing and in operations. But we're just excited about the continued growth in revenue, but also in just supporting our community. That's really a touchstone for us and we continue to grow that part of our practice as well.
- [01:30]
A
That's incredible. And the Inc. 5000, it's weighted on three years. So it's three years of nice growth.
- [01:35]
B
That's exactly right. Yep. And our growth really kind of started in 2022 when we made a conscious decision. We had kind of a rebranding. We had a partner lead the firm and we had a couple of defense lawyers join the firm, which made a big difference. We made some reorganizational issues or structure, completely reorganized our team. What I mean by that is that we used to have a traditional structure of case managers and instead now we work off of what phase the case is in. So we have a lot more teammates working on one case at one time and they're specialists at certain phase of the case. And we found that the client just got a lot more attention and so that really raised the value of our cases incredibly.
- [02:19]
A
I'm going to save that one because I'm going to dig into that one. That's really interesting. I'm going to come back to that one. You know, a lot of the audience listening, they wanna hear how you're getting the opportunities. Right. How you think about marketing in general. How has your approach to marketing changed? Like how do you think about attracting the right cases to the firm?
- [02:38]
B
Well, we're pretty old school. You know, we go all the way back to the yellow page days and we obviously that's, you know, dinosaur years. But when, when that changed, then we dove into SEO and I guess about 2010, but we didn't do it. I mean it was, it was just different then. Right. It wasn't as vast and we didn't invest as much in it, so we didn't get as much back from it. And we just eventually decided in 2020 that we needed to capture our reputation when someone's actually looking for someone like our firm. And we knew that the digital presence was the only way to do that. And so we went all in heavily with SEO. I mean we times fived our budget and went in with a really big agency and they, you know, they brought us to the next level. We just really believe in it. We're not a billboard firm. You won't see us on billboards. You'll see us in the community helping others and we just find that super valuable and that's just part of our brand. Billboards are not our vibe. TV's not our vibe, Radio's not our vibe. We just think that when someone's looking, when they've been seriously injured, they're going to do their research. They're either going to go to a professional, an estate planning lawyer or maybe their divorce lawyer or their pastor or their neighbor or a doctor or someone that they trust. And if they don't have that resource, then they're going to go online. And that's when you have to capture basically who you are online. And you have to find a partner who can do that really well. The bottom line is, is I think that trust is built offline, but it's captured online. And so we recognize that and we went all in with it and you know, reviews, reputation, all of it. So.
- [04:17]
A
Yeah. And your reputation's stellar.
- [04:19]
B
Thank you.
- [04:20]
A
Across the board, five star reviews and we're talking like a thousand plus. I didn't total them up, but I mean we're ton of reviews so that speaks to that.
- [04:27]
B
Yeah, it's in excess of a th000 reviews and we are really proud of all. Six locations have a 5.0.
- [04:33]
A
Yeah. That's incredible. It's super rare. That's very uncommon. Let's talk about the kind of get that top of funnel, like being a part of the community. You know, I did some research. I saw, you know, the free hats at this Safety harbor craft beer event. I see other boots on the ground initiatives like, you know, how do you select which events to participate in? Talk to me about the grassroots and like, your strategy there.
- [04:57]
B
Well, youth sports, we love schools. We're doing a lot for teachers. We bring lunches to teachers a lot. We just want to essentially brand the idea. And we're not asking for business here. We're just like, how can we help the community? You know, we're at youth sports leagues, like I said, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools. We have a large initiative in the cycling community called Not Just a Cyclist, where we spread awareness about the joint responsibility of cyclists and motorists and sharing the road. And we do events for that, and those are free. We do community rides. Everybody shows up. Hundreds of people come for these rides around our offices. We show up at like, Third Friday type events and those sorts of things just so that people can meet us. And if they have legal questions, we can answer them. And. But really it's just about being available, but also giving back, because we really feel a responsibility to do that. And it's not just about branding. We really do feel a community responsibility.
- [05:55]
A
I think that's noble. That's awesome. That's amazing. And being a part of your community, you know, on the employee side, does it. Does it kind of carry over? Do you feel like they just love these events? It gives them kind of some purpose outside of just the work. Have you seen that impact on the employees?
- [06:10]
B
100%. I know I have a marketing team that comes and, you know, puts up the tents and does all of that. And it used to be where we just had our paralegals going with us. And when I made the change and said, oh, you know, I don't want you guys to feel the burden of that after hours and all of that, and they're like, well, no, we still want to go, you know, and so that says a lot, right? The paralegals are no longer required to go, but they still want to go. And I think that that's because we've built in our culture the idea that giving back to the community is a corporate responsibility.
- [06:38]
A
That's amazing that, you know, the values. Everybody wants to do it, they're not thinking about on the clock. So that's awesome to go. The extra Mile. 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. Let's pause right here. Carolyn has shown that genuine community involvement does more than just build your brand. It helps build an incredible culture inside your business. That kind of alignment is a huge competitive advantage. But you can have the best team and the strongest community presence in your market. And it won't matter if your intake process is broken. This is where Carolyn really lights up. With that 98% conversion rate, you're definitely going to want to listen closely as she shares the exact metrics in a tech stack they use to close the deal. Let's kind of move on to intake sales. You know, what tech stack are you using?
- [07:42]
B
Intake, my favorite thing to talk about. So let's dig in.
- [07:46]
A
Let's go, let's go. Let's get some metrics. Do you mind sharing some metrics? Like what metrics do you look at intake and what are some targets you're heading for?
- [07:53]
B
We look at all of it. We look at average fee per case, we look at cost per lead, cost per acquisition, we look at all of it. And I'm really proud of all of those numbers. And we look at wanted percentages, you know, conversion rates, all of that. And now I should tell you that we have a partner in that. It really has brought us up to speed. And that's legal Intake pros, I'm sure you know, you, Smith.
- [08:14]
A
Yeah.
- [08:15]
B
We use filevine and lead docket and we kind of stumbled with lead docket for. I mean, we bought it and then we like tried to do it ourselves and we just weren't doing a good job with it. And I heard Yani on a podcast and I was like, oh man, I gotta talk to her. So eventually I talked to her one time. I was just gonna have her set it up because I was like, well, I don't wanna spend, you know that every month. That's like an employee. Right. But then I. What I realized is, is that's the best spend of my. I'm never letting that team go. They are going to be my partner in like perpetually. Because they have such high value. Yes. They set the entire thing up. And what I mean by that is web hooks and all that. So we know exactly where our marketing sources are coming from or contact sources. All of it is just. It's precise. And then of course, they train the intake team entirely. But having them on board, they listen to all the calls. I don't have to do that anymore. I mean I used to listen to all the calls literally like because we get, we have call rail. And I would say, oh, you know, we need to get together because you did this one wrong. And let me explain why this is a better sell and that sort of thing. I don't do any of that anymore. They're the experts at it. So that's been such a great partnership for sure is having them. And that will continue. And they, and they do monthly reviews with you? And they, they, oh my gosh, it's just. And, and they meet with my teammates every week. They do training every week with every single team member. And what makes us unique about our intake, I will say is that we are 24 7. A team member from here answers the phone 24 7. So my intake team is six strong. So once every six weeks someone's on call for those after hours and weekend calls and they take the laptop home and they answer all the calls. And the attorneys, there's a Slack thread if there's a good lead and the attorney jumps on the phone. That's another thing that makes us unique is attorneys talk to every single potential new client in our office.
- [10:01]
A
Really? Every single one?
- [10:03]
B
Every single one.
- [10:04]
A
Wow. So you probably heard me on the POD say, hey, you don't need a bunch of attorneys on the intake. And you're like, no, no, no, that works for me.
- [10:11]
B
Well, we do. It's just our vibe. It's what works for us. You know, attorneys are giving our clients cell numbers and we're still okay with that. And we've scaled a lot. We've. It hasn't gotten out of control. Now maybe we talk a couple years from now and I say, yeah, well, maybe we're not doing that as much anymore. Or maybe we have an associate who's just doing it and the partners aren't doing it anymore. But right now it works. You know, whoever's available. We don't have like an attorney on call. Whoever's available jumps in to the intake thread if there's a good lead and says, I'm available and, or I can be available in 2 hours, please set up the call. Or you know, that sort of thing.
- [10:43]
A
If you have an attorney jump on the call, then that they take over that case. Or I guess where I'm asking is, you know, if they're incentivized to take the calls because, hey, they're getting a bigger book of business. That's one thing. Or is it just the values and they understand the importance of it.
- [10:59]
B
Both.
- [11:00]
A
Both.
- [11:01]
B
It's both, Yeah. I mean, you know, if obviously, if it goes into their cache of cases, then they're going to be incentivized to. That's just the way our structure works, for sure. I mean, it's not just, you know, that's the way our partnership works, that they get a piece of the action, you know, when the, when the case. So. But I will also say there's no bickering about it. Like, there's no, you know, it just works well. Nobody's like, fighting for the commercial case call that comes in. It's not like that. That's not our values. We all row the boat together and, and celebrate wins that each of the partners have. And so it has not been competitive at all, which is great.
- [11:38]
A
That's fantastic. You know, I, on the other side with many of our clients, say that the attorneys don't want to be involved in intake at all. Right. So they really, a lot of the clients are very resistant to that. And I think there is a lot of value because a lot of times the consumer wants to talk to the attorney, although, you know, it is more costly. You know, you got those hourly rates for the attorneys are certainly higher, but it's definitely working for you.
- [12:03]
B
Well, what we have found is that when our clients have a personal relationship with their attorney, from the beginning, that average fee, our average fee per case goes up, period. Because they're talking to the lawyer, the lawyer's guiding them. We have case managers that manage treatment, but it's not the same. I mean, they, they, if they are hearing from their attorney about treatment management, it just has a whole nother layer of power and education. And I mean, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, I don't think we'll ever change that about our firm. I think because it's so integral to who we are that our the clients, potential new clients, talk to a lawyer and honestly, our conversion rate is 98, 98%. Want to agree.
- [12:49]
A
Wow, that's unicorn land. That's the highest I've heard. That's fantastic. And the average fees, and that's because
- [12:55]
B
they're talking to lawyers and they are getting the attention. And now after the call is done with the attorney, then, you know, they punt it back to intake to send their EP agreements or schedule a hospital appointment or in office. I mean, it just depends. You have to determine what's the most important thing to that client to seal the deal. That's the most important question during an intake call. What's most important to them Is it that they meet their lawyer? Is it that we help them with their medical treatment? Is it that. Oh, my gosh, they're not. They don't have their minivan to make sure their kids get to school next week. So we're going to help them get a rental right away. You always have to capture what the most, very most important thing is on the intake call. If you want to have a 98% conversion rate and you address that immediately.
- [13:39]
A
There is a ton of wisdom there. Thank you for sharing that. I guess it is ultimately about them. And then, you know, that builds the trust.
- [13:47]
B
That's exactly right. And then, you know, they can look online at reviews, and we have a lot of video testimonials. We send a lot of assets to them through lead docket, which is great. We send videos, we send photos, links about who we are. So, yeah. But again, legal intake pros has been great. We had great intake before. It's funny, my marketing agency last year told me, she said, I don't think anybody does intake like you guys. And she. I mean, she was. Because, you know, she would talk. Well, intake is. Is bad or, you know, people aren't securing leads. And. And she's like, but. But not you. I've heard your calls. We really go the extra mile to make sure that clients feel heard and that whatever is most important to them is immediately addressed.
- [14:32]
A
Do you do any, like, field dispatch, like, somebody's having trouble signing up? Do you get the team member in the car and go with the iPad, sign them up? Do you.
- [14:41]
B
We do not send investigators to sign up clients. We. Not our vibe. The lawyer goes.
- [14:48]
A
Lawyer. Yes. Wow, that's great. That's a unique selling proposition that's a lot different than most of the. Most of your competitors. That's awesome.
- [14:56]
B
Absolutely.
- [14:57]
A
So you mentioned it earlier. We were talking about ops here. Your fees have increased. We talked about how, hey, it's start. You. You meet the attorney early, they can get them the treatment that has a. An impact. What were some of the other things that you've done that you've seen? Like, hey, we did this. And then it had an impact. It was. It was like, what are some of the things you've done to increase fees?
- [15:18]
B
I think that to increase fee, just generally case value is. It's just staying in touch with the clients. Every 30 days, they have to speak to their case manager. And of course, there's lots of text messages in between that, but they have their, again, the attorney's cell phone number. We're very intimately involved with all of the doctors and making sure they get the care they need. We're sending to the best doctors. We're not sending to doctors that maybe other larger volume firms are sending to. Insurance carriers know that we are a trial firm and that we will litigate the case and get a big verdict. Mark's a board certified civil trial lawyer. That really matters. He has been one, I think for 18 years. John needs one more trial and then he sits for the test. So we're super excited about him becoming board certified this year. And then Miles is right behind. I think he needs like maybe two or three more trials. So that matters because insurance companies recognize that, they recognize board certification and that affects the value of the case. They know we'll try the case. Even if the case is worth 100 or 200, we'll try the case. We will not take less than the full value of the case. And I think that that's why our average fee per case is what it is. And by the way, I will say also, I always throw out the outlier. I always throw out the largest verdict because I think it's unfair each year.
- [16:38]
A
Yeah, it's interesting we do that when we're looking at our data for our agency. We'll exclude the top three and the bottom three. And we try to. I think it's the mean and the median. I'm trying to think of how the cfo, CFO talks got to me. And talk to me earlier. You mentioned and I said, hey, we'd circle back to it. You said, hey, you have the different phases. So does that mean like, hey, you have someone that leads up the pre lit.
- [17:03]
B
Yeah, I can tell you, I can go through it with you. So when it calls in, they're talking to an intake manager. Then once they're signed up and that intake manager does a lot of the questionnaire, gets a lot of the data, even claim numbers and all that stuff pushes that to our file opener. Who does a complete insurance and liability investigation. And that person only does that and that person's working alongside because you got to see how big the swimming pool is. Right? That's, that's the bottom line. How much coverage is there? Because in the state of Florida, I don't know if you know this, but somebody could be really injured and we might not be able to recover for them because there might not be any insurance. Bodily injury liability coverage is not required in the state of Florida. So that first phase, that insurance investigator, liability investigator is identifying how much coverage there is for the, for the case. And then it moves on to. At the same time, the case manager's talking to the client and helping them with what's most important to them, which could be property damage, but it's also, of course, their injuries and making sure that they get the care that they need and helping them schedule doctor's appointments and all of that and talking to them. And that's all the case manager does. The case manager doesn't. Their whole job is to make sure that whatever the client needs, the client gets. And then it moves on to a demand preparation assistant. We go to a demand writer, and then it goes to a negotiation team, which is headed up by the attorney who leads that team. And then it goes to a settlement coordinator. And then of course, if it goes into litigation, if it is not negotiated, then we have an entire lit team and that team has paralegals, legal assistance and support as well, to make sure that. Bottom line is, what we have found is more hands, the better. At first we were resistant to that. We're like, oh, overhead. We're nervous adding people. But we just decided, you know, what if there's a need and this isn't getting done and this is a pain point in our office, that means it's somebody's job. That pain point is someone's job. So that's how we decided to split it all up.
- [19:04]
A
You know, a lot of businesses, they talk about the pods and the cross functional. It's kind of the unit. It has the benefit of the communication because there's less silos. But, you know, the downside is there's less expertise.
- [19:14]
B
That's right. These are specialists in just one phase of the case.
- [19:18]
A
That's the thing that I constantly say. Everybody's like, oh, Chris, we gotta do pods. I'm like, well, you know, you lose expertise in the immersion and all that. So I'm with you. I think that's great. And then it's. It does. You know, as long as you have the case management and all the inputs and the slack, then you can maintain and the collaboration.
- [19:36]
B
That's right. Filevine is really great for this type of atmosphere. And it's by phase, by the way. It's kind of by design. So all the. We built it out, our file line out to transition by phase. So once it hits a new phase, the new team member is added and gets the messages and. And that sort of thing. And interesting. What we also. I'm super excited about is that we are adding something called the client portal to our file line. So every time the phase of the case changes, they'll get a video and Mark is doing all these great videos about. This is, you know, this is the phase of the case and this is what you can expect. There's FAQs that they get sent, so that cuts down on comms some because they are able to go to this portal and get the information they need very quickly. They also can upload documentation to that. So it's really nice. The client portal is something that we've been, it's been kind of a baby that we've been nurturing for the last year and I can't wait to launch it. It's just about ready. I'm reviewing the last videos tomorrow with our marketing team, which we, by the way, we have a whole marketing team too. So we have a social media person, a videographer, marketing director, all that. So.
- [20:42]
A
Incredible. Incredible. The client portal, is that, is that native to filevine?
- [20:46]
B
It is, yes.
- [20:48]
A
Cool.
- [20:48]
B
Yeah.
- [20:48]
A
I'd never heard of that.
- [20:49]
B
Yeah. I think that they got wind of HONA and they basically built HONA within filevine. That's what. And we were, we were signed on with Hona and then all of a sudden we heard about Portal and I'm like, oh, it's integrated. This is better.
- [21:03]
A
Mm.
- [21:04]
B
It just made more sense. So we switched back over.
- [21:07]
A
Makes a ton of sense. Let's take a second to highlight what Carolyn just described because it tackles a massive debate in the legal industry. Pod versus teams. A lot of firms push for pods to avoid silos, but they end up sacrificing deep expertise. Carolyn proves that if you have the right tech stack keeping communication seamless, you can build a phase based assembly line of hyper specialists. This means every case gets worked by an absolute expert at the exact stage of the process. In order for all this to work, you have to have top talent up and down your business. So let's hear how Carolyn recruits and retains elite attorneys and staff needed to run this machine. I really want to talk about the team.
- [21:44]
B
Sure.
- [21:45]
A
Right. You know, how do you find. Retain top talent. Like talk to me about like finding these. Excellent. You said you hired some former prosecutors.
- [21:55]
B
Yes. Former defense lawyers. Yep. Within for insurance carriers. So at from the top, that's what we did. That was a great decision. You know, they, they know the playbook. So. And I was a little nervous at first about that because you know, you have to have a plaintiff sentimentality to order in order to represent plaintiffs really well. A lot of empathy and compassion and so I was a little nervous about going that in that direction. But man, we nailed it. We got the best of both worlds with these guys. They're empathetic, compassionate, but they know the other side. And they push cases. They use the accelerator. They just push, push, push the cases through, get trial dates, get depositions, get the media. I mean, they're just constantly pushing. They're amazing. And they're both became partners within a year each. That's how great they did.
- [22:38]
A
Wow.
- [22:39]
B
Yeah. So that was great hires, and that was in 22. And then how we basically organize our. The rest of our team is what I decided was, is that if you want to keep people, right, you have to figure out what's most important to them. And that is different for everybody. But you also have to pay them more than anyone else will.
- [23:00]
A
True.
- [23:00]
B
I don't care what anybody says. Like, I know fireproof's like 80%. You only have to pay. You know, they have a completely different structure, but we just pay really well. And we have a quarterly bonus system based on KPIs. So they're in charge of their own destiny. And the KPIs are specific to their phase, their case phase. And, you know, they each have like 12 or 14 KPIs they have to meet. And it's a point system. So our bonus system is based on firm KPIs. That's 50% of it in terms of revenue, right? Should be. And then 50% is based on their individual KPIs, based on their goals. And also we do the rocks thing too, that Fireproof recommends, which is we give people certain jobs, and if they don't, you know, do those jobs in that quarter, then. Then that's going to be points deducted and that sort of thing. But everybody carries their rock because they want those points. And, you know, I think that it's really great because even if they've missed like three points, they're like, gosh, I can't believe I missed three points. You know, and. And they really care about it. So that took some time and that was hard. And by the way, at the end of each quarter, it takes me a long time to. To do those evaluations, but they are so worth it. And I have finally figured out that I can delegate to the department heads those now too. So that's getting some things off my plate, which has been great. And then that way too, the teams are. I guess that's a pod. I don't know. But the teams are kind of rowing the boat together. And they know they have to report directly to somebody other than just me because let's face it, as it grows, you can't be all, everything everywhere, all at once. So happy to have the department heads take on that as well. But those scorecards have been instrumental in keeping team members happy, keeping them incentivized, and keeping them paid very, very well. And that's how you keep employees. You pay them well and you. And you figure out what's important to them, like maybe one person. It's important to them that they come in at 7am and leave at 4 because of, I don't know why, they're kids or something. So. And you say, okay, well that's. We're going to make that work. And you make it work.
- [24:59]
A
I think that's fantastic. And you set those expectations and have the KPIs to make those objective decisions as opposed to subjective, which are always the tough ones. The I thinks. So we talked about something you're. You're excited about that you implemented. What about the future vision? Any big plans? Anything you want to share on the horizon?
- [25:18]
B
Sure. Well, my marketing director just popped in here and said we're going to start Intaker. I just had a meeting with Intaker and we're going to. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about finishing the client portal. I'm excited about our continued revenue growth. We're already killing it this first quarter. We're already meeting our goals and so just continued growth, but also continuing to nurture our team and to stay true to our core values, which is really serving the injured in the Tampa Bay area. We've been doing it for 30 years. We don't want to change who we are and we're committed to those core values and not changing, but growing and using demand AI and using all of the things that are happening that are helpful to us to make us better. Um, but not taking away from the true authenticity of what, how this firm was raised is really important to us. So that's what we're excited about. Yep.
- [26:17]
A
Amazing. This has been a masterclass. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for the transparency for our audience. Listening has a question about the pod, wants to get in touch, wants to refer a case to you. What's the best way to get in touch?
- [26:28]
B
Best way to get in touch, you can go to our website, romanaussen.com, you can always fill out a little form, but you can also reach me by email anytime. Chromanomanaustin.com I'm always available. I'm always excited to talk about operations or marketing or even legal things. And if we can help in any way, anybody who needs anything in the Tampa Bay area, we're happy to do it.
- [26:48]
A
Amazing. Thanks, Carolyn. Thanks for coming on the show.
- [26:51]
B
Absolutely. Thank you.
- [26:57]
A
What a masterclass from Carolyn Roman. There's so much to take away from this episode, from ditching traditional pods to structuring your team by case phase, to trying specific KPIs, to a quarterly bonus system so that you can retain top talent. When you combine a 98% wanted conversion rate with an operations machine that runs that smoothly, you're going to see amazing results. If you want to dominate your market with the right leads, then Rankings can help. Head over to Rankings IO to claim your completely free audit. We'll show you exactly where you stand and what it takes to own your market. I'm Chris Schreier. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Master your mind. We'll catch you next time.