Achieving High-Growth Through Strategic Case Selection

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 11: Breaking the Personal Injury Paradigm and the Power of No with Kay Van Wey

Last week we met with Moshe and discussed the usefulness of fractional CFOs

Kay Van Wey: [00:00:00] But you could also say, I took the staff that would be working on that case and helping bring in a 10, 000 fee, for example, and put them to work on a case that could generate a 100, 000 fee for the same investment. of time.

Narrator: Welcome to the law firm growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms.

Narrator: Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the case fuel podcast. I'm your host, Jan Roos, and we are here today with Kay VanWay of VanWay Law. So this is continuing our series on the fastest growing law firms in the country. Kay VanWay was Accepted on the 2017 honorees for the law firm 500 posting a really incredible growth number of over 540 percent growth in the last year alone.

Jan Roos: So we're really excited to have her on and see how she ended up [00:01:00] doing it. And some of the challenges she's seen around the way. So thanks for making it to the show.

Kay Van Wey: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Jan Roos: We've kind of gotten a broad overview of your practice, but do you mind telling us a little bit more about how you got to where you are today?

Kay Van Wey: Well, I was in practice in a law firm for 15 years, had a managing partner. So I had the luxury of only having to practice law and bring money into the law firm. And I didn't realize at the time what a luxury it was, but now, having my own law firm and having to wear so many hats, I really do recognize how nice that was.

Kay Van Wey: But, at age 50, when that law firm dissolved, I decided that I would open my very own law firm and, of course, had no idea. How to do anything. So I literally feel like in a sense at age 50, which was 10 years ago, by the way, that I just completely started [00:02:00] over, not in the law, but in terms of trying to have a clue about how to run a law firm.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's really interesting. And, and, you know, given that this happened at age 50, what was sort of the, well, I mean, we obviously had that external event of. The firm that you were working for no longer existing. What led you to go the path of starting your own firm versus getting another job at another firm?

Kay Van Wey: Oh, I'd probably make a terrible employee so that, you know, at my ripe old age, that hadn't really occurred to me because I had been essentially in private practice. It was me and one other law partner, and we had that law firm for 15 years. And in a plaintiff's practice, in particular, it's well suited to having your own law firm.

Kay Van Wey: And I. Always generated all of my own cases and all of my own revenues anyway, so going to work for somebody else just wasn't an option for me.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I gotcha. And I find a lot of the best entrepreneurs are the people who really don't have a choice. It's sort of a burning the ships moment. If if it's tough to deal, I [00:03:00] mean, personally running my own business as well, it's the same thing.

Jan Roos: I don't think I could work for anyone else. So definitely empathize with what they're coming from there. Okay. Now I want to get back to some of the challenges that you faced, but you mentioned running a plaintiff's practice. Now you know, personal injury is definitely one of the most heavily marketed two segments in the realm of civil law.

Jan Roos: One of the things we like to talk about is sort of how people can kind of differentiate in selecting a niche. So, do you mind telling us about what you guys specialize on and then how that kind of evolved?

Kay Van Wey: Well, as you might imagine, within the field of personal injury. There are a lot of subspecialties, and so, for example, a somebody who handles primarily pre litigation soft tissue car wreck cases, they would not necessarily and probably wouldn't be qualified to handle a complex medical malpractice case.

Kay Van Wey: Conversely, A, an experienced med mal litigator could probably figure out how to handle a pre lit car wreck case. And the typical model over the [00:04:00] years for litigation firms, such as what our firm is, is to use the bread and butter cases to fund the litigation cases that you can have your little small jackrabbits and then your big.

Kay Van Wey: Elephants. And so that's the way I started, was I'm a jack of all trades, money is money, I will take any case, it doesn't matter how big or how small. And my marketing is going to reflect that. That I'm the lawyer for everyone and everything personal injury. And I, over time, realized that that was not the best way to market or to run my business.

Kay Van Wey: And it's risky because it's natural to think, Oh, gosh, well, you know, if I don't put car wreck cases on my website, then I might miss that great car wreck case that comes along. [00:05:00] Or if I don't take that particular case, I'm going to be, you know, fear of missing out, as they say. But over the years, I have refined, refined, refined, refined the types of cases that we're really looking to do.

Kay Van Wey: Where we feel we can do our best work, where we can help people the most, and where we can be most profitable. And even within our areas of specialty, take medical malpractice for example, we try to get very, very granular about exactly the types of medical malpractice cases we're looking for. So, you know, as the old Stephen Covey.

Kay Van Wey: Expression says, you know, the 7 habits of highly effective people. It's begin with the end in mind. A lot of our marketing begins with the end in mind, which is, let's talk about what an ideal client or an ideal case would be for us.

Jan Roos: Yeah. So a lot of interesting points there, Kay. One of the things we like to say often is, you know, if you [00:06:00] serve everyone, you serve no one.

Jan Roos: If you can kind of think. Putting yourself in the place of somebody who might have a big medical malpractice case. If you guys are positioning yourselves as this is what we specialize in, they're more likely to hire you over somebody who's just, Hey, look you know, we'll take any personal injury case you have.

Jan Roos: So I think it's, it's definitely important to do that. But I also wanted to comment that, you know, we worked with a number of personal injury firms in the past and, you know, that whole jackrabbit and elephant model that you just described is one that we run into quite often. And I can definitely appreciate how it's scary.

Jan Roos: I mean, not only in, in potentially getting the volume of cases, but a lot of the times the smaller cases end up being the ones that ended up settling faster. You know, we've definitely seen people who you swing for the faces, you get that big seven, eight figure case that could take years to settle, but you know, how are you going to pay rent in the meantime?

Jan Roos: So at what point, and that's actually really fascinating. And you know, at what point did you guys reach the decision that you weren't going to take these smaller cases anymore? And what like kind of gave you the confidence to move forward in that direction?

Kay Van Wey: It was really one of capacity at the time, and the firm [00:07:00] grew so quickly, and to be perfectly frank with you, attracting the talent to match the growth was really, really challenging.

Kay Van Wey: And so, we went through a period of time where we had huge growth and really not an A team, and a lot of staff turnover, and we just got further behind. And so, we really needed to have a correction of course, so to speak, so we referred out, we went through and we classified all cases. And we referred out.

Kay Van Wey: Cases that did not meet our new criteria. And so that we could focus on the best cases. You could look at it a couple of different ways. You could say on the one hand, you know, if I referred out, you know, a car wreck case and received one third of the fees instead of 100 percent of the fees, you [00:08:00] could say that was stupid because I just gave up two thirds of the fee on that case.

Kay Van Wey: But you could also say I took the staff that would be working on that case and helping bring in a 10, 000 fee, for example, and put them to work on a case that could generate 100, 000 fee for the same investment of time. So one of the things that we did is we sat down and, and when I say we sat down and did these things, I'm not talking about, well, we just had a meeting over lunch or we rounded up for a couple of hours.

Kay Van Wey: I mean, we literally rolled up our sleeves and spent, you know, an entire Saturday going over some of these matters. All And really defining what it is we wanted to work on, and what are the criteria of the cases that we want to work on. You know, as all these scientific studies will tell you, you know, decision making can be variable.

Kay Van Wey: You know, if somebody, you know, If our intake specialist catches me in the hallway and says, Hey, let me run a [00:09:00] set of facts past you. It depends on the day. If I'm busy, if we're low on cash flow, I might be more inclined to sign up a questionable case. And so we try to take the variability out of it. In place of being disciplined and say, let's just define up front, what is the minimum criteria for a med mal case, for example, what is our minimum criteria for a car wreck case?

Kay Van Wey: And when we went through and raised our criteria, so we still do general negligence cases, and we do. You know, all kinds of on the job injuries or car wreck cases. But for us, we decided that there are a whole, whole, whole lot of lawyers out there who can handle a soft tissue case and who are spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars chasing after those clients.

Kay Van Wey: And A, we're not going to compete for those clients to begin with. And B, you know, we can't really do anything better than anybody else can do on those cases. But where we can [00:10:00] really add value. Primarily because of our deep Med Mal litigation experience is on serious injury cases because we can really develop the damages on those cases.

Kay Van Wey: So let's work on those cases. Let's be intentional. Let's let people know that we excel in this area. So for us, the pivot was, are we just going to keep compiling? Cases and staff, that's one way to grow, is just more cases, more staff, or are we going to grow revenue wise by raising the bar on the types of cases we work on?

Kay Van Wey: And then the next growth opportunity that comes along, are we going to decide at that point that we're going to again raise the bar and work on the same number of cases, but the value of those cases is going to be higher? Or are we going to expand our staff?

Jan Roos: So this is actually really interesting. And we actually just got off [00:11:00] of our, our last podcast was with a firm, you know, similar to law firm 500 that progressed in a very different way.

Jan Roos: And, you know, there's a lot of different ways to get to the top of the mountain. With Alaska Cyrus Alano she ended up. Running into the same problem that you did in terms of finding good people to, to field these cases that they were had coming in and their approach was actually to keep on with the volume play and be able to really kind of solve that HR problem.

Jan Roos: But you know, you guys are able to achieve similar growth using a completely different set of criteria, which is fascinating. And that's the thing too, is for you guys, it might've been better to maximize that value per case. And I'm sure that you guys saw an inflection point. And what was happening to the firm's revenue when you decided to really take that and put it into numbers and make it quantitative, because like you said, and this is, you know, one of the commonalities we see, regardless of the path that people take to growing their business, you know, when we're looking at the firms that are growing, the fastest process seems to be a very, very often recurring theme.

Jan Roos: And you know, once you guys ended up doing that, what points in the, your guys's history, did you really start focusing on that? And then what ended up happening to the firm's revenue [00:12:00] after you made that decision?

Kay Van Wey: The one thing that I've learned out of, well I can't say the one thing I've learned because in the past decade, I've learned so much and I still have so much to learn about trying to run a law firm effectively, but everything takes 10 times as long or a hundred times as long as you think it's going to.

Kay Van Wey: So, one of the things that was critical. That we do was also getting systematized because before we began this meteoric growth, I did have some good long term paralegals and staff and they knew what to do. I didn't really know how to do their job, they didn't know how to do my job, but I trusted them because I'd worked with them for a long time and I knew they knew what to do.

Kay Van Wey: And let me tell you, nobody ever expects it, but those people can and do give you two weeks notice and then you're stuck. And I learned a very valuable lesson because what I tried to do then is [00:13:00] go out and hire someone with similar credentials and say, Here you go, you know what to do. You know your job.

Kay Van Wey: You've been doing this for years and years and years. Go do it. And R. John Robbins is the one that told me this, is you can, it's like renting a house or owning a house, you want to own that position so that people can come or go, but your processes are there. So we're still working on it. That aspect of it.

Kay Van Wey: And literally, I mean sitting down and going through step by step by step how things are done so that if our entire staff walked out the door tomorrow, we could bring people in and say, okay, open this checklist and go down. And do this, and here's the form that's connected with that, and then do this, calendar this, and this is just bat breaking labor.

Kay Van Wey: And I can see why a lot of lawyers wouldn't want to do it, [00:14:00] especially a small law firm and they've got their trusted individual that's going to be with them forever. But, our profits have lagged behind what they could be, because We haven't had the systems to make sure that the cases are moving along like they should be.

Kay Van Wey: And because we had really difficulty finding good employees, we had a lot of catching up to do, errors to catch and correct. You know, we've audited and re audited and audited and re audited the entire docket to make sure that we discovered any mistakes that were there and corrected them. So, we had a lot to do.

Kay Van Wey: And this is one of the dangers of growth that sometimes people don't realize is growth is great and all, but not if you're not prepared for it. And I thought as a business owner, I used to think as a business owner, that my job was to be the leader and to be the face of the firm and [00:15:00] to do good work and get recognition for it and drum up a lot of business.

Kay Van Wey: And that's the glamorous part of it. And as a result of a lot of my efforts, the firm did grow very quickly, but I did not adequately prepare us for it.

Jan Roos: And that's a really interesting point too, because you know, growth can be good things. You know, you have a, you know, growth spurt that the kid's going through, that's healthy.

Jan Roos: You know, cancer is also growth though. So getting the right kind of growth is, you know, absolutely the right thing. And to your point, Kay, having the systems in place to really be able to capitalize that is a challenge that, you know, we haven't run into it from this interview series so far where everyone said, Hey, yeah, no, we 10 X the business.

Jan Roos: And it's, it's exactly the same as it was when we, when we got started. So, you know, it's, it's definitely a challenge. You know, you'd mentioned the seven habits of highly effective people. So, you know, I'm guessing that you're a reader. What kind of resources have you been using to kind of guide you in this whole process of getting the, the system, I'm sorry, the business systematized?

Kay Van Wey: I joined how to manage a small law firm, [00:16:00] which is a coaching group founded by our John Robbins. And I really threw myself into that curriculum. And those awesome people that are affiliated with that organization, and literally started it at square one. And then, after a while, I found myself, like, speaking this foreign language.

Kay Van Wey: Like, well, hey, we need to update the pipeline report, you know, or whatever. And I was like, wow, look at me. I'm talking about, like, pipeline reports. And, you know, I, like, actually know how to read a P& L or a balance sheet. So I just went. And got all of the help that I could get. And I cannot say enough about that organization, by the way.

Kay Van Wey: This is not a paid advertisement, but they really helped me in so many ways. And one of the things that I did with them were a couple of workshops [00:17:00] on policies and procedures. Because I wouldn't have had any idea where to start. So they really spoon fed me. Like, start here. Start with these 10. And then we'll build upon those and build upon those and build upon those, but systematizing a law firm is among the hardest things I've ever done in my entire career.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I can only imagine. It's actually, you're not the first person to mention that organization in the series that we've been doing in the law firm. From top 500, but you know, this is the thing, you know, this isn't a course that most people take in the process of getting their JD. So I think it's really important.

Jan Roos: And, and, you know, you have that, that approach and that humility to say, Hey, look, I'm not a superhero entrepreneur here. There are people that know about this stuff and taking that first step to reaching out and connecting with people who have expertise, it's a massive shortcut that, you know, we definitely see some commonality in with the people that are growing really fast.

Jan Roos: And we definitely see very few people doing in the firms are staying solo and doing the same business that they were running 3 years ago, and we'll be [00:18:00] running the same business 3 years from now. So, you know, taking the effort and doing that, that back breaking labor is you know, ultimately, it's, it's kind of the investment into the firm that ends up getting you to set up to a place that's going to be different, you know, 3, 5, 10 years from now.

Kay Van Wey: I don't know if you ever get to that set it and forget it stage. I do think it is. There will be a different set of things that I need to learn a year from now, and there will be a different set of things that I need to be managing five years from now, right? New sets of challenges, new sets of problems.

Jan Roos: Always a taller mountain. Yeah. And that's absolutely, you know, the thing is that the, the fact that you have that mentality is. Yeah, what's probably going to lead you to keep growing? Because I think a lot of the times when people reach it, they think that they've reached the final level. That's that's when things start to plateau.

Jan Roos: And, you know, 1 of the things they say in MBA programs is if you're not growing, you're dying. And, you know, being the kind of persons in a position of running your own firm, A lot of that ends up being, you know, the personal stuff that you're going through, the new skill sets that you have to develop, the [00:19:00] new things that you see as opportunities.

Jan Roos: And, you know, it's always about kind of finding the next thing to work on. I want to switch gears a little bit away from the operational stuff. So you guys have, you know, obviously gotten to the point where you're finding these cases and settling them for quite a bit of money in your fees. So what's working in the the world of your guys is this marketing right now, because you know, it's, it's kind of transparent to see how a lot of these, these companies are getting general personal injury cases, AdWords, SEO, that kind of stuff.

Jan Roos: But I'm able to get the kind of cases that you guys want. What's working about bringing that into the business right now?

Kay Van Wey: I'll tell you, a fool and her money can go separate ways when it comes to marketing and this fool and her money have gone separate ways to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Kay Van Wey: And, you know, marketing can be like a drug and, you know, you can go to marketing seminars or talk to marketing people and, you know, especially for personal injury lawyers, you know, you can think, Oh my gosh, you know, I [00:20:00] mean, I can just do all these things and get all these cases. And, you know, if I just put an ad word out there that says, you know, brain injury, you know, eight figure brain injury case, it's going to come to me.

Kay Van Wey: And, you know, I have never, in the past decade, I have never gotten a substantial amount of business from marketing, traditional marketing, website, pay per click, print advertising, anything like that. What I have been successful with is, if you want to call it marketing, which I suppose it is, I prefer to call it relationship building with other lawyers who don't do what I do and having mutual referral relationships there, staying in contact with, well first of all, making happy clients, Making sure we have happy clients and staying in touch with happy [00:21:00] clients.

Kay Van Wey: We get a lot of referrals from former clients. And I will say, you know, fortunately, kind of consistently being there, I don't want to say a fixture, but getting awards and sort of being known as A MedMal lawyer, you know, I want people to think of in Dallas when they think of MedMal, they think of me among other fine lawyers as well, but just continuing to do good work.

Kay Van Wey: And I know that's not a sexy marketing tip that everybody would like to have, but there is no marketing magic pill. And if there is. I don't know about it. And I do know of firms that just spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing and they have lots and lots and lots of cases and they're probably on television and billboards and all of that stuff.

Kay Van Wey: But that's just not, not my model.

Jan Roos: It's actually really interesting too, because going back into the niche thing. You know, it's really tough [00:22:00] because when somebody types in, you know, injury lawyer, accident lawyer, or something like that, a lot of those cases are going to be those, you know, quick closing, soft tissue, car accidents, that kind of stuff, slip and falls, wrongful death, that kind of thing.

Jan Roos: But, you know, for, for what you're looking for, it doesn't necessarily lend itself to a mass market approach. But you know, another thing, I think it's very interesting about the way you're approaching this. Is that you have such a specific niche. It's, you know, it would be tough to just be, Hey, look, I'm the number one personal injury lawyer in Dallas.

Jan Roos: We do everything the best all the time. But, you know, within the realm of the specific expertise, it becomes easier for those referral relationships with other attorneys. If the area of expertise is so narrow that. It's pretty foolish not to refer it out to somebody who has the kind of expertise that you do.

Jan Roos: So it kind of lends itself to the approach that you're taking, which I find really interesting. Now to dig that into a little bit more, what sort of ways are you going about finding these referral partners, finding referrals to get to them, staying in touch, like how's all this stuff going down

Kay Van Wey: It's funny, because when you said that, I thought of, you know, one [00:23:00] of my corny things that I say all the time, which is that, you know, the low hanging fruit cases are for other lawyers, you know, if it's complex, difficult, expensive, long shot, you know, a case that nobody else wants, that's, that's the case for me, but, you know, I'm kidding about that, really, but, Just, let's just take about, take personal injury for example.

Kay Van Wey: I know lawyers who do pre lit soft tissue CARB ECT cases very well. They have built a model for that and their model enables them to be profitable with a very minor injury case. However, their model is not. at all suited for litigation, particularly something that's long, complex, and expensive. And so that is a real win win right there.

Kay Van Wey: We send them our small soft tissue car wreck cases and they are happy to have them. And they send us their complex [00:24:00] PI litigation cases and we're happy to have those. Now it's not a, you know, you send me one and I'll send you one. We might send them 20 CARBEC cases and they send us one large, you know, litigation case.

Kay Van Wey: So that is a big source of our referral relationships. But being involved in other kinds of groups and there are other kinds of lawyers, for me, probate lawyers, family law lawyers. Sometimes criminal defense lawyers, business, civil litigators, I would say it's getting to know lawyers in your community and letting them know you and who you are.

Kay Van Wey: So, I don't have some grand marketing strategy that I invite somebody to lunch and I've got a specific goal or mission. Although I know that that system is out there, I think, isn't it Bob Berg, the Endless Referrals or something like that? I probably should have a system for that, but at my stage in [00:25:00] the game, what my system is, is letting people know me.

Kay Van Wey: And know my values and know that I am a hard worker and that I'm experienced and that I give a big damn about my clients and being the kind of person that they would say, you know, I have a lot of choices about who I could refer this case to, but I know Kay. I know Kay is honest. I know Kay is hardworking.

Kay Van Wey: I know Kay is experienced. I know Kay gives a damn about her clients. And I think that's what I'm the most proud of.

Jan Roos: Yeah, and that's absolutely a really, really important thing. I mean, it's one thing to select a niche. It's another thing to have a reason why, and, you know, between your attitude and how you treat these cases and, you know, the experience that you guys have built up over the years, it's also sort of a financial no brainer to people who might not have the ability to Pursue one of these cases through litigation, but, you know, you mentioned expanding the value of the settlement or, you know, potentially getting it, you know, something that's going to [00:26:00] be larger coming to trial you know, if this is a case that you guys might be able to settle for 6 figures, and it's something that somebody who doesn't have the expertise would be able to settle it for 5, you know, it's a no brainer to take 1 3rd of that watermelon versus, you know, 100 percent of that grape.

Jan Roos: You know, it's also kind of interesting because, you know, on the reciprocal side of this, and this is kind of, you know, for anyone else that might be considering niching, you would never see this sort of a relationship happening between two general practice attorneys. So, you know, the fact that you've been able to focus so intently on the cases that work for you really kind of opens up the strategy even a bit more because, you know, if you were trying to take everything under the sun, you wouldn't have those referrals to go out.

Jan Roos: And at the end of the day, you know, there's a lot of stuff that people can say about networking, but what it really ends up getting the wheels to turn is, is, you know, what you can give to your referral partners.

Kay Van Wey: Yes. And I will say, I have seen a trend with a lot of lawyers. They don't, big or small, they don't want to get rid of cases.

Kay Van Wey: They just hang on to them even when they shouldn't. And so one of the hardest, there's two things that challenge [00:27:00] lawyers saying no to cases and clients and referring cases out. Right. And it's not just cases that we refer out that are, you know, I've used small soft tissue car wreck cases as an example, but I try to get my ego out of it, and if there's another lawyer who has a super niche And they're deep, deep, deep into something, you know, a medical device or a drug or something like that.

Kay Van Wey: They might very well be a better lawyer for my client than I would be. So we try to make decisions based on what's in the best interest of our client as well. I'm just going to say, the thing about saying no. is, you know, I have about 3, 000 corny expressions that I use all the time with my staff, but you know, a lot of times the staff will come and they'll say, well, you know, I think we ought to take this case and they plead their case to me or whatever and I'm saying, okay, so how are you going to feel two years from now when we've spent [00:28:00] 150, 000 on this case and we're set for trial and, or, you know, Or you're in a two week trial and we lose this case.

Kay Van Wey: Are you going to be hating yourself two years from now? They're like, yeah, we are, you know. So, we say no about, on average, about 60 times a week. And we're getting better and better and better at it.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I mean, the numbers certainly back that up. Yeah.

Kay Van Wey: It's a compassionate. No.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's, it's born of service at the end of the day, which, you know, when you have the ability to walk away from those cases, I think it really does say something, you know, it's, it's not necessarily like potential prospect on the phone is going to be able to know exactly how many times you guys said no.

Jan Roos: But when you do end up saying yes to a case, I'm sure that comes across to the people that are on the other end of that phone. And it's, you know, it's, it's something that's going to probably help your conversion rate in terms of who's actually signing these case files with you guys. It's all super interesting stuff.

Jan Roos: Kay. And you mentioned that you're, you know, you're constantly working on different stuff. So what are [00:29:00] sort of the priorities for the firm right now? What? What kind of stuff are you working on? And what are you looking to work on in the future?

Kay Van Wey: One of the things that we're working on is systematizing our marketing.

Kay Van Wey: And in the course of any business owners day or week, there's so many things coming at you. Somebody says, Hey, do you want to sponsor this fun run? And we'll put your name on the back of a t shirt. Hey, here's a guest blogging opportunity, or do you want to run an ad in the program for the, you know, bars Christmas or holiday party or whatever.

Kay Van Wey: And I'm real keen on decision making these days because I did read somewhere about this whole flaw in decision making processes. And so, you know, throughout the course of a given day, you're just making decisions all day, every day. So what I've decided with respect to the marketing is. We're going to do all of the legwork up front.

Kay Van Wey: We're going to decide, are we ever going to sponsor events like that, like a fun run? And if [00:30:00] so, what would the criteria be? What would we need to do in order to understand what the ROI would be, how we would track the ROI, for example? So, rather than You know, when we get an email from somebody saying, Hey, I'd like to post a guest blog on your website.

Kay Van Wey: You know, the way it has been working is my assistant would capture that email. She would come to me. She would say, Hey, you got this email. What do you want to do with it? We would have a discussion about it. I would tell her what questions to ask. I would talk to those people, blah, blah, blah. And it's just a time suck.

Kay Van Wey: So I'm trying to do all of this on the front end to say. This is what we do and this is what we don't do and having guidance for my assistant as well so that she knows how to handle things like that. So part of this is basically tattooing our written marketing plan on my forehead. And I've told my assistant, anything that's not, anybody that calls us for [00:31:00] anything, you know, that's some form of a marketing vulture, if it's not on our marketing plan, get rid of them.

Kay Van Wey: Don't even come to me about it because we already sat down and spent, you know, a weekend writing a marketing plan. Why would we be just doing these knee jerk things that aren't on our marketing plan? But another example, when I say systematizing that, is Let's say that I got Texas Super Lawyer.

Kay Van Wey: There's probably six or seven or eight or ten things that need to happen with that each and every time. Does an announcement need to go out on social media? If so, who does that? What images go with that? Does something need to go out to our newsletter list? And the way it has been working is all of these decisions are for me to make and instruct people.

Kay Van Wey: And, you know, as the old saying goes, if you've done something more than like twice, you need to make a system out of it. So I'm systematizing the marketing department.

Jan Roos: Now to dig into that from a [00:32:00] bit of a tactical perspective, Kay, now, how do you guys, you Keep all this stuff in line. Do you guys have internal documents?

Jan Roos: What's the way that you end up making sure that everyone across the firm is aware of these decisions that are being made and what the policies are moving forward.

Kay Van Wey: The marketing, the people that are affiliated with marketing are very few in a firm our size, and we have an external, I call them like an external chief marketing officer, because you know, there's a trillion.

Kay Van Wey: Marketing companies that would be happy to take your hard earned money, but I specifically went looking for someone who could serve as an external CMO to help look at broader strategy and what are all of the components of marketing and where do we need to be spending money. So with that, that has, if it answers your question, I've just told him, I was like, look, I need to put all of this on you all.

Kay Van Wey: And we have a, we call it a prayer meeting every week, where we just at least touch base for 15 minutes and [00:33:00] make sure that everything is falling into place. And then, I'm learning to ask better questions, which is like, is this a low level priority or a high level priority? Is this likely to have a high return on the investment of my time or a low return?

Kay Van Wey: Return on the investment of my time, because unless it's a high return on the investment of my time, that's the one thing that is in the most critical shortage. I don't know if that answers your question.

Jan Roos: No, absolutely. And it's you know, that it's, there's a lot of parallels between the decisions that you're making with your own time from a marketing perspective and the cases that you guys are ended up taking from a firm perspective.

Jan Roos: And ultimately, you know, like one of the commonalities that we're seeing your approach, your K is that, you know, you're valuing your time at a really important level, which is something that all managing partners from the solo level, all the way down to, you know, all the way up to higher level firms is you know, there's ultimately 24 hours a day and, you know, you can only focus on the things that are higher impact and, you know, taking that higher impact stuff off the [00:34:00] plate because you're saying yes to too many lower impact things is ultimately what stops the growth from coming.

Jan Roos: Yeah. There's a big philosophy of no that we're coming up with here. And, you know, ultimately, if you look at the kind of results that Kay's been posting, you know, 500 percent plus per year, that's how you end up getting there. What's the best way to find you guys online? And what kind of people might you be opening to talk to?

Kay Van Wey: We're always happy to talk to other lawyers who think that they have a case that would benefit from affiliating with us and letting us help them or lawyers who are interested in building their business based on having a referral relationship of our cases to them. I'm also mentor a number of younger lawyers and time permitting, I'm always happy to do that.

Kay Van Wey: But the way to learn more about our firm is to go to our website, www.vanweylaw.com, which is w e y law. com. And, of course, time wouldn't permit this on the podcast, but, you know, that's one of a long laundry list of things [00:35:00] that I'm continually working on, is building out the website. So, check back from time to time, because we're having, we're undergoing a concerted effort right now to build really good content on the website.

Kay Van Wey: Not just, hey, if you or a loved one have been injured. Give us a call. Really specific, good reference information. So hopefully it'll be a resource for other lawyers and for potential clients as well at some point.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Fantastic. And thank you for being so generous with your time, both on this podcast and for anyone who might want to reach out.

Jan Roos: So yeah, thanks again, Kay. I really appreciate it.

Kay Van Wey: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Jan Roos: My pleasure. Okay. So guys I hope everyone took some really interesting tips from that. I think the mindset stuff is just so important for people that are looking to grow a firm and yeah, I keep saying this, but if you want to look at the results, a lot of the mindsets that Kay's taken in growing her practice are ones that a lot of people that are starting out can take advantage of.

Jan Roos: So until next time, this is Jan Roos, and thanks for listening to another episode of the Kay Segal podcast. [00:36:00]

Narrator: Thank you for listening to the Law Firm Growth podcast. For show notes, free resources, and more, head on over to Casefuel. com slash podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.