Skip to main content
The Managing Partners Podcast

Chris Earley

Episode # 335
Interview on 10.24.2024
Hosted By: Kevin Daisey
Home > Podcast > Episode 335: The Managing Partners Podcast with Kevin Daisey & Chris Earley

Watch the episode

About Chris Earley

In this episode of the Managing Partners Podcast, hosts Kevin Daisey and Chris Earley discuss strategies for smaller law firms to compete with large firms in highly competitive markets, particularly in the personal injury space.

They focus on the concept of “outmaneuvering the 800-pound gorilla,” meaning how smaller firms can be more agile and strategic despite the overwhelming presence of larger competitors.

Chris shares his experience from his Boston-based personal injury firm, emphasizing the importance of hiring the right people and fostering a strong company culture.

He believes smaller firms can succeed by focusing on core values, providing excellent client service, and ensuring a solid onboarding process for employees and clients.

Kevin adds insights about the significance of creating a culture that attracts top talent and delivers a unique client experience, noting that this can differentiate smaller firms from large firms that might not provide the same personal touch.

They also touch on the power of referrals, client retention, and the value of reviews, which don’t require big marketing budgets but are crucial for long-term success.

The conversation ends with tips on improving internal processes, especially client intake and leveraging a strong culture to drive success without needing the vast resources of large firms.

Both hosts stress the importance of intentional hiring, focusing on service, and being proactive in client and employee engagement.

Episode Transcript:

Kevin Daisey (00:00)
What’s up everyone? This is Kevin with another episode of the managing partners podcast. And I’m back with a good friend of mine and we like to riff. We like to go where we’re going to go, but we do have a topic for you today, which is really cool. And I got Chris early here on the show. Thanks for joining me again. What’s up?

Chris Earley (00:19)
Kevin, thank you so much. It’s good to see you. How are you doing today?

Kevin Daisey (00:22)
Yeah, it’s a good fall day in Virginia here. Hopefully no more hurricanes are coming up the coast. We’ll see what happens. But, yeah, we, at a rate of, so we have probably five plus employees down in Florida. So all is good. Checked in with all of them. nothing crazy. So that’s good. So hopefully all will be well with other people down there, but today,

Chris Earley (00:29)
Yeah, yeah crazy and Florida right now crazy stuff insane

Okay, I got two. Same. Thank God.

Yeah, man.

Kevin Daisey (00:51)
Me and Chris are talking about some topics and I was like, I mean, Chris, can probably record with him once a week, but trying to think of some topics and he has some cool topics that he sent me. And one just stood out. was out maneuvering the 800 pound gorilla in your market. And so if you’re listening, especially for PI, those exist, right? And in most markets, these big guys are coming in, spending big dollars, taking a radio TV and all of the above. from a

SEO kind of strategy or paid ads online. I think it’s really challenging and difficult to go against them. So I just want to see what Chris has to share. I’ll add to him my own experience and commentary as well. But Chris, interested to see what you got to share with us on that.

Chris Earley (01:38)
No, I appreciate it. you know, it’s no secret, you law is extremely competitive, personal injury, especially so competitive. We do have these massive firms and I’m sure everyone on the call can relate, right? There’s just such keen competition. What I have discovered is that I’m not going to, you know, I’m not going to take down John Morgan, so I’m not going to try to. So I use my strengths and try to minimize my weaknesses. And so I think, I think

Solo and small firm attorneys can be nimble and adapt and be versatile where a big ginormous firm isn’t so adept at doing that. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities and I can sketch out a few things that we’ve done at my firm in Boston, we’re a personal injury firm, and I can share some things that help us grow even though we’re surrounded by these massive firms, PI firms coming to Boston. I do think there’s plenty of work for everyone.

You just have to be a little creative, right? Think outside the box to get the cases.

Kevin Daisey (02:38)
No, absolutely. And, you know, you being in Boston, you know, a large market. I love Boston by the way. I get to go once a year for my wife’s company Christmas party in Boston. So I’ll be there December 18, 19th. So I’ll look you up.

Chris Earley (02:53)
Great..

Kevin Daisey (02:55)
Yeah, we got to do it. So, but yeah, you’re in this big market. So you’re not on the show here coming from some small town in the middle of So, yeah. Love to hear, you know, what you’re doing. So others can hopefully learn from that and see how they can replicate it.

Chris Earley (03:12)
Sure, I’m big believer in hiring really good people, right? If we’re intentional about who we’re trying to attract, we’re gonna get what we attract. If we’re kind of arbitrary and willy-nilly with who we hire, we’re gonna get bad team members potentially. Maybe we get lucky, maybe not, but I try to be really focused on that. So I believe in the power of a solid team, right?

I get really strong people together rowing the same direction. You can go to pretty good clip and be a, be a very strong team. So we have scales quickly. You know, I’ve taken my lumps. I’ve had some misses with hiring. we’ve also had some, some hits, you know, we’ve connected on, on a few, you know, Really solid positions, good hires. So we start with job ads, right? We’re very specific. We’re trying to attract or not trying to attract.

interviewing, we’re really focused on sniffing out, does this person have our core values or not? Because I can’t run without a great team around me. I can only do so much, right? A lot of lawyers, know, Kevin, you talk to so many lawyers every day. Everyone’s trying to do things a lot of times by themselves. You need great people around you. So I think that’s how you can compete. We haven’t even spent any money yet. We’re just, you know, for short money, putting job ads out.

Kevin Daisey (04:16)
yeah.

Chris Earley (04:33)
And we’re trying to attract those A players. And I think if you do some real intentional hiring, some personality testing so you can kind of see what you’re getting, hire on your core values, you get those people on the bus. I think that’s a massive advantage that you can play to and leverage as you grow your firm.

Kevin Daisey (04:52)
100 % we hire and fire by core values. We use our core values on a daily basis, which I’m happy to share kind of how we do that, which is in a kind of unique way every single day, every single day. But yeah, hiring and firing by those and being like, is a hell yes or a hell no. And you know, there’s some gut feeling that gives into that too. You gotta meet the requirements and the core values, but.

Chris Earley (05:11)
Yes.

Kevin Daisey (05:18)
Yeah. You have that kind of gut feeling like, this doesn’t feel right. You should be like, Nope. Sometimes. So, you know, I’ve had that in the past where I had a gut feeling, my partner like was in love with them and I’m just like, didn’t say anything. And, we don’t do that anymore, but, and then you get some bad hires and you’re like, well, I didn’t feel right about them for some reason, you know? And so I think you need to really be strict about what you have with that and what you’re saying.

Chris Earley (05:44)
It’s hard, it’s hard business because you’re trying to project, is this person gonna fit? How do you know? You’re going with your gut, you’re going on some data that you may have, maybe some team members, right? I think it’s good to get some buy-in if you can, perhaps a stamp of approval from your team, whether you have one person or 30 people, yeah, we like this person or maybe let’s give this person a more skeptical look, right? Maybe not the best fit.

I’m a big believer in getting approval because I don’t want to be this one says, okay, Kevin, here’s our new attorney. want to make sure, am I missing something? Is Kevin the right attorney for what we’re trying to build here? Whoever, case manager, whatever position you’re going to be on the team, right? And then, okay, so we hired the right person.

Kevin Daisey (06:14)
Ha

Mm-hmm.

Chris Earley (06:31)
But that’s the first part. think once they come on the bus, you got to really, you know, onboard them the right way and make them quickly see that they’ve made the right decision, right? I believe it’s really important to demonstrate you made the right decision. Because people generally only work at so many places throughout their careers. For the most part, professionals have only so many spots that they land.

during their working year. So we want to demonstrate you made the right decision, but we got to train them up, develop them in our culture, hug, embrace them to show them that, you made the right decision. We’re doing big things. You just made a superb decision by joining our team, right? A lot of big firms are just, big grill firms are so massive and they can’t sometimes always pay, yeah, yeah, frankly. that may not.

Kevin Daisey (07:13)
You’re a number.

Chris Earley (07:19)
So well, that may not feel so great for that new hire just came on. So again, I’m sure there’s a lot of big mess firms that have this dialed in, but this is a soft spot. I feel like you can really take advantage of and maximize it your own firm. And again, you haven’t spent any money yet. You’re just showing them how to do what you guys do in line with your core values. So you hire you on board. I think you’re in a good spot.

Kevin Daisey (07:38)
yeah.

Yeah, so I’ll speak to this a little bit. They’re, yeah, so if they’re coming from a different firm or maybe they’ve worked at a few firms, they’re going to be judging your experience onboarding through what they’ve had before. And you want to make sure that they’re like, wow, this is clearly different. And that’s probably the best thing that I like. We spend a lot of time on our onboarding. We have a whole team just for onboarding people and clients, separate teams. And so.

Chris Earley (08:07)
Great.

Kevin Daisey (08:10)
It’s great to talk to an employee because sometimes I won’t meet some of my team members for like a month in some cases. So my team is the one that’s hiring everyone versus me going, I want to hire this person. And so it kind of, it’s not that way anymore. used to be. So I’ll do like a call like once a month with all the new folks. We had like 55 people. But man, I don’t know all these people yet. That’s crazy. And they go.

Chris Earley (08:36)
You

Kevin Daisey (08:37)
And they go, wow, I’m meeting you, the owner of the leadership. watched your podcast, and onboarding and this place is truly different than any place I’ve been and hearing that from them. We’re also trying to, we’re trying to say, Hey, where, where can we be done better? You know? and there’s always going to be some kind of thing we could do better. but no, I a hundred percent agree with you. And I think that’s the most important, piece because

Chris Earley (08:47)
That’s so cool. I love that.

Right.

Kevin Daisey (09:03)
I do marketing, your whole team, every single person on their team is your marketing. It is your brand. They’re talking to your clients. know, everything is really, wow, something’s different about early law. it’s all the people, like I want to refer them business. I want to tell everyone about them. That’s what you want to come out of it.

Chris Earley (09:09)
100%.

See, I hope people just wrote that down. So I agree, marketing starts at intake, right? That’s when the marketing, yeah, to that brand new client begins, because you want referrals, you want that new client to be a raving fan. And I think that’s really important. But just to back up for a second, we’re onboarding this person at a high level, we’re doing the best we can, like you said, we innovate, we tweak the process, it’ll kaizen, right? Just tweaking and improving continuously. But the people…

I personally look for, I don’t have all the answers. It’s just how I’ve approached it, approached this is I like humble people who truly want to help and serve people. Cause again, it’s a personal injury law firm. I can’t hire arrogant, callous, unapathetic people. It’s just not going to, it’s not going to work well for us. We’re the clients. So I like people who actually like derive pleasure and fulfillment and like serving and helping people. Cause that’s what we are as attorneys. We’re serving the public. We’re, we’re problem solvers.

Kevin Daisey (10:08)
Yeah.

Chris Earley (10:19)
So you give me someone who’s humble. I think of Patrick Lanzione, right? The ideal team player, hungry. I encourage everyone to buy that book. If you haven’t read it already, anything about Patrick Lanzione is worthwhile, but the ideal team player talks about, right? I know you’re an avid reader, humble, hungry, and smart. Those are the people you want, right? Onboard them the right way. I think that’s how you can control what you can control. Again, I encourage lawyers, don’t try to compete. That’s the whole point of this talk that we’re talking about today, Kevin.

Kevin Daisey (10:31)
Good to.

Chris Earley (10:50)
I’m not trying to compete with anyone, but I’m trying to do my thing at the highest level and I’ll see where the chips fall. But I like my chances of we’re very focused and intentional about doing this at a high level. We can be nimble and adapt. We’re a bigger firm. It takes a long time to move that boat a little bit in each direction. The smaller firm can move a little quicker if they can adapt.

Kevin Daisey (11:11)
Yeah. You you can spend a lot of time looking at your competition and trying to compete, especially when you know you can’t in that situation, right? With like a Morgan and Morgan. so it’s good to keep an eye on your competition, but how are you, how are you coming up with your own unique ideas and innovating yourself and focus on that? the things you can control and just do the best you can with everything you can. yeah, I think it gets overwhelming. Sometimes I think about all the things you should be working on and

Chris Earley (11:17)
Right.

Kevin Daisey (11:40)
All the things you should do. super important. mean, if you hire super fast and you don’t have all these things in place, you know, you’re just, you know, bringing people in and you’re constantly having turnover and you’re constantly having problems. And, and then I know some people get, you know, lawyers, especially we need somebody, you know, so you might jump the line a little bit. You might skip some steps and say, well, we just have to hire them because we don’t have the help. you know,

Chris Earley (11:54)
Right.

Kevin Daisey (12:09)
If you’re positioned right though, and your marketing is good, onboarding process and your team shines, right? They have that culture right there. like, you’re going to attract the people, not because of the pay. Like it’s going to be a no brainer for them. And so hiring is a lot easier if you have a great culture.

Chris Earley (12:24)
100%, 100%.

Right. You know, I’ve got team members that recruit other, you know, new team members. And when I, and I love that, I really, you know, encourage the audience to experiment with that. If you haven’t already, can find, you already have great people. if you don’t, need to find great people, assuming you’ve got some good people. They know good people. So let’s make it, we don’t need to go fishing outside, right? We can just fish in inside these walls to recruit talent, but let’s, but let’s, you know, let’s be honest and say, okay, sometimes we make hiring mistakes.

Kevin Daisey (12:50)
Who do you know?

Chris Earley (12:57)
Right? So again, the bigger firm, they’re just growing so rapidly. They just, like you said, they may just have to like take on, you know, people just to fulfill the operations. But the smaller firm can identify, okay, if we made a mistake, like we can, we should cut bait with the.

Because it’s not fair to keep this person on the bus So I encourage you if you’ve made a hiring decision that you think you know Someone very very bright share with me recently the first time you think did I make a mistake on that hire is Probably the an indication you did right such if you’re thinking that even on a basic level you may have but the test I like to ask myself is if I can go back in time when I read the way I enthusiastically rehired this person it tends to give you at least gives me an answer

but I think more times than not, if we’re super focused, right, you know, you’re, very focused and you’re hiring, you’re going to connect more often than you, than you strike out. And that’s a great way to compete. feel like with the bigger firms.

Kevin Daisey (13:58)
Yeah, absolutely. And again, you pay a lot of money, especially in PI, possibly pay a lot of money for a lead, whether or not they came through billboard and they finally found you or they, you know, Google ads or search or whatever. To not have them turn into a referral is a massive loss of opportunity, right? I’ve had…

Chris Earley (14:16)
Right. Yes.

Kevin Daisey (14:20)
I had, a guest on not too long ago. We’re talking about intake and they had a whole department just for client intake. And, there’s three partners in the firm. One partner, if it was the marketing, the partner first on like operations and the other partner is client experience. I think that’s what it was called. And so just constantly improving because they’re like, we get all these leads clients. How do we make sure that they’re going to be referrals, in the future? Otherwise you’re just.

You’re cycling through new leads, constantly new leads, new leads, new leads. And so your culture, your people, everything influences whether or not they’re going to become a referral in the future for you, whether it’s friends or family or, know, God forbid they have another situation, but they’re wasting a lot of money. You’re spending a lot of money you don’t know about if you’re not working on their referral piece of things and the customer or client experience, if you will.

Chris Earley (14:53)
Right.

100%.

no question. And again, for the solar or small firm lawyer, this is all free stuff, right? Let’s talk about culture for a second. You know, it doesn’t cost you money to create good culture, right? Show your team love, care and concern. Again, I said, put your arms around them, And just, you know, they know they’re in the right spot.

you know, we have great retention and that’s very, that’s not an accident, right? I had, there was a time where when I was trying to figure this stuff out or initially starting in the beginning stages, trying to get this stuff dialed in, I had some departures that was, that was very painful. But over time you sort of lick your wounds, you get back up and in your culture, I feel like congeals and tightens, but it takes a lot of time. But I feel like if you show your team that love, care and concern, that’s how they’re going to treat your clients. That’s how you get.

I’m a culture lunatic because I feel like it’s the stir that, you know, the straw that stirs the drink. mean, it’s tough.

Kevin Daisey (16:12)
You know, obviously there’s a lot out there about culture. Culture’s out there a lot. But I think it’s, it could also be like, eh, you know, this is like this touchy-feely thing that I don’t, whatever. I don’t need to do core values. I don’t need to do this. Mission statement’s stupid. You know, I used to think that. I literally used to think this is like, you know, really do we need that? And, you know, when we had like eight people, we were like, okay, let’s, let’s do this. You know, we’re an entrepreneurs organization, which is a business.

Chris Earley (16:28)
you

Kevin Daisey (16:41)
group, mastermind group. And we did like a whole day workshop and we’re like, okay, whatever. And then we started developing them and work on them and change them and dial them in. And now we live by them completely. So I think as a younger attorney, younger entrepreneur, you’re kind like, eh, whatever. know, that’s not what, it’s not for me. I don’t need that. Or I’m just a solo, don’t need that. And I would argue that you need to pay attention and put those things into action a hundred percent.

Because if you want to grow and scale and you’ll have those things in place you’re just scaling problems, right?

Chris Earley (17:16)
Absolutely. That’s well said, right? Can’t agree more. When I was a younger attorney, I culture schmaltzer. didn’t really even know what it was, but now it’s like, it’s everything. And it seems like you’ve done a nice job of figuring that out in your own company.

Kevin Daisey (17:23)
You

Well, you I got my partner, you know, who’s, he kinda, you know, he likes to take things on and go, okay, we haven’t done this. Let’s figure this out. And so, he’s, give him credit for, you know, taking some of those strides and being like, we gotta figure this out. Everyone keeps telling me this. It must be important. And so we’ve done a good job just to do it. But I’ve said this probably only podcast before, but imagine you do get a bad hire. Chris hires the wrong person. His team.

Chris Earley (17:58)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (17:59)
Something they got by everybody. Right. And there’s some ungenuine people out there. They can, you know, say they do all this and they, sound nice. look nice. And then for some reason, something’s off, but Chris might not notice it. A good culture will get them out of the company for you. Right. They go, Chris, something ain’t right about Sally and.

Chris Earley (18:02)
Yeah, you’re right.

That’s a really good point. Really good point, yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (18:26)
And you’re just in the red flags go off and your team will, cause they don’t want the culture being tainted. They want to be there. It’s their company. they have, I say it was ownership, not real ownership, but it’s, what do you call it? I can’t think. not emotional ownership, they have literally like ownership of your company. This is their company. Right.

Chris Earley (18:37)
Thanks

Yeah. And to me, Kevin, good culture would be, you know, any one of my team, I don’t care about your position, coming to my office and like pounding at my desk. He’s the wrong guy. She’s not the right person. got it. You know, I want that spirited, you know, dialogue. Cause I’m like, man, we got a problem. And, but what I’m happy about is that person came to me because they care. Cause they care about taking care of this culture, precious egg that we’ve worked our butts off to.

Kevin Daisey (19:21)
Yeah.

Chris Earley (19:22)
to give life to and expand and bolster. So that to me is good culture. Okay, we swung and miss on this person, but someone is gonna tell me that, because I may not work with that person a lot. I don’t really maybe know that person very well. That’s a good sign. But I don’t think I wanna mention, right? And again, a big topic here is performing at a high level, not spending a lot of money, because a lot of, again, solo small firm attorneys, they’re…

They’re cash strapped. just don’t have unlimited funds, cash access like a big grill firm does. But the client service, right? I’m culture obsessed and client service obsessed. Those things align. We have a core value is five-star client service.

It doesn’t cost you a lot of money to make people feel amazing. The Ritz-Carlton, they definitely spend money to make you feel amazing. If they screw up, they’re gonna turn you around and make you feel amazing. But you gotta treat the clients like gold. I swear when you do that, you get reviews. What reviews get you is referrals, raving fans. See, those things I think are low hanging fruit. If you’re focused, you’re intentional.

you can nimbly and sort of in versatile way improve, whereas the big firm, takes them time to innovate these things, right? Big fan of client service.

Kevin Daisey (20:44)
Well, when you speak about reviews, think about your employees and when they’re interviewing. Like I have a few people in my team interview a person. So, but that person’s always like, how do you like working there? Right. And their review of working here, right, is securing that person that we want wanting to also work there. And so they have those conversations. And so it’s not just your client reviews, but it’s your employees. Like, what are they saying about you?

Chris Earley (20:57)
Mm.

Right?

Kevin Daisey (21:14)
to the new hires, right? And if you’re trying to attract this best person that you want, that’s going to go a long way. again, it is your marketing, right? It is, it is everything. that first call, how your employee sounds on the phone, how you handle the clients. I mean, all that is your marketing. And so that’s how you can be attractive. Right. And if I’m a client calling the big guy down the street, cause he’s advertising everywhere.

Chris Earley (21:37)
Absolutely.

Kevin Daisey (21:42)
And then I land on your desk at the same time. You know, what’s that experience difference, right? And who am going to go with?

Chris Earley (21:48)
Right. And a hundred percent, I’m with you. let’s keep in mind, not every potential or actual client wants a big firm. They may want some handholding. They may want a little bit more of a smaller firm feel because that’s what they’re looking for. So lean into that hard, right? You’re not the right lawyer for everybody and that’s okay. You don’t want to be, right? But for those people who do want to retain you, got to get them signed up, right? can’t, this starts at intake.

Kevin Daisey (22:03)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Earley (22:16)
I think that’s when the client experience begins, right? We talked about the marketing starts at intake, client experience starts at intake. Let’s just say fast forward for a second, right? The case is over. That’s not the end of the relationship. There’s still a client and there should be a client for life because you’re sending them newsletters. We prolifically communicate with our former clients, Kevin, because we want referrals. We want to stay top of mind, right? So that relationship, once they sign, that client signs today, they should be…

They should never forget about you. let’s, you know, market to them and stay in touch with them. Send them birthday cards. Cause they will forget about you. I can speak from experience if you don’t stay in touch and really be intentional about that. We get a lot of referrals cause we’re focused on staying in touch with you and no one ever, I can tell you maybe one or two people said, Hey, take me off your newsletter list. It’s like, good. You know, you’re off, but I don’t care if they throw my newsletter in the trash. They see my name every month. So.

top of mind, right? That’s, that’s all right with me.

Kevin Daisey (23:17)
Yeah. Well, you know, I used to be, cause I’m in a digital marketing company. So if it isn’t digital, it sucks. You can’t track it. totally not me. Not me anymore because if I, if say, if you were going to be a client, and I called your office to check cause we had a meeting and you didn’t show up or something. And then I call your office and I don’t get anybody for a little while or can’t get to you. And so then I go, man, what if I send this guy leads? Like who’s answering the phone? What’s the experience like,

Chris Earley (23:26)
Hahaha

Kevin Daisey (23:47)
What does he do after that? So if my client can’t have things in place to give a good client experience and have follow-up to build referral sources and keep those alive, then why we just like have a lead machine for them? And that’s not what I want to be. And that’s not a good way to run a business. And so I’ll have a lawyer be like, yeah, I just want, I need 10 more leads a week. Can you guys do that for me? It’s like, okay, well, what does that mean for you? Like, what does that do for your business? Can you handle that? What’s your process like? Do you have intake?

Chris Earley (23:59)
Yes. No.

Kevin Daisey (24:16)
squared away, probably not. how can you improve it? But it’s, yeah, gone are the days. It’s like signing you behind without trying to do a little bit more. And some clients don’t want to hear any of that and they’re not a good fit. Like Kevin, we don’t, we don’t want hear about any of stuff. Like we’re, just need more clients. Okay. Well, you know, are you really going be happy with just more clients? I don’t know. so it’s, it’s going deeper than that and understanding.

Chris Earley (24:34)
Hahaha

Kevin Daisey (24:44)
You know, is the firm that wants to market more really there to do the right things, to do what you’re doing, right? To care about their team, employees, take care of the clients. And then hopefully those leads that they already paid for that they converted, they’re investing back in to keep top of mind with. Right. So.

Chris Earley (25:06)
Yeah, Lourdes can get lazy sometimes. Hey Kevin, I need more leads. That’s my panacea for my problems. No, no, you probably have enough lead vine. You just need to convert, you know, drip campaigns with these leads, because you’re driving leads. It’s not a leads problem, I’m going to bet. It’s a conversion problem, an organizational systemic sales problem. And that if, yeah, a hundred percent. You got to get done.

Kevin Daisey (25:27)
sales problem.

I got an awesome, yeah, I got a great lawyer, a client of ours that is in a rural area. I was going to mention that real quick. I know you got to jump. but a lot of success if you’re, you know, thinking about the 800 pound gorilla in the middle of a city center or metropolitan area. And, you know, I’ve seen so much success with lawyers that are outside of the area or in between, Lord Lloyd Bourgeois comes to mind. he’s in between. Yeah.

Chris Earley (25:57)
He’s a friend of mine. Lloyd’s a great guy.

Kevin Daisey (25:59)
Saw him at GLM and he’s between two big areas, but he’s in the middle. So he plays the local community law firm card and he gets business from both those big areas plus his small towns. you know, I have another lawyer that’s in the middle of Washington state, middle of the mountains. And he calls me up and man, we have a sales problem. You know, we were generating a lot of leads that he never had. And now he has a sales problem.

Chris Earley (26:04)
Yup.

Kevin Daisey (26:26)
So then I connected with my friend Ben Leder, who’s a guest on the show.

Chris Earley (26:30)
Ben’s a friend of mine too. Ben’s a great guy. Ben’s my guy.

Kevin Daisey (26:32)
Ben, well, we know everyone, right? So Ben took his firm from 170 cases a year to 500 with zero extra marketing, no extra advertising. They had a big intake and sales problem.

Chris Earley (26:47)
Yeah, bands got intake dialed in. Yeah. No.

Kevin Daisey (26:47)
500, yeah, they, they five X basically by just focusing on what’s going on in the front office and the front end here. So check out that episode. That’s a good one.

Chris Earley (27:01)
It was a good episode. Those are both two good guys. Lloyd, Bouchoir, Ben Leader, good friends of mine. Reach out to them, the audience. Definitely good people to know.

Kevin Daisey (27:11)
Yeah. Especially when we’re talking about this topic, you know, dealing with big competition, big cities, big areas, to, gentlemen that understand that and have done well with it. Well, Chris, I know you got to go. You have kids, I think, or something to pick up. I probably got something to do at home with kids as well. So, but always a great time, you know, just riffing with you and talking to myself, you know, culture is so important. And I think it’s just something that.

Chris Earley (27:26)
Yeah.

You

Kevin Daisey (27:37)
can be a loose topic sometimes and people hear it and you know, they’re not really serious about it. But take it from me and Chris that it’s probably the most important part of your whole business and it’s going to flow through everything that you do. so clients will notice it. Employees will notice it and you’re to be a, yeah, a hundred percent. All right. Well, that’s, that’s, that’s one way to automate the big guy. So, get serious about this stuff.

Chris Earley (27:39)
Yeah.

Stuff matters. Big time.

Kevin Daisey (28:06)
Reach out to Chris if you want to connect with Chris and you don’t know Chris, let me know. I’ll connect you.

Chris Earley (28:11)
Yeah, I’m all over LinkedIn. I’m easy to find on social media. And if you want, I have an email blast that I send out to hundreds of lawyers throughout the country. It’s completely free. Practicetipoftheweek.com. Practicetipoftheweek.com. You get on my email, newsletter for attorneys. I try to hit you with valuable needle-booming content each and every week. So I got a lot of lawyers on that list. I try to give my best stuff every week. So join that list. Practicetipoftheweek.com. But don’t be a stranger.

I love talking about this stuff, Kevin. That’s why I our conversations. just, geek out. We’re into this, you know, we, we were into it. It’s fun, man.

Kevin Daisey (28:47)
Appreciate it. Yeah and just follow Chris on LinkedIn his post. I think pretty much every day I see a person when I wake up like there’s a new Chris post Yeah, it’s everywhere and I always go hey, like your hat and that shirt wears mine and he never sends me I’m at the show in Boston to get my my stuff We’ll figure it out I’ll see you a lot of girl

Chris Earley (28:53)
Yes. Can’t get rid of this guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We gotta get you some swag. And I want some of your swag too.

We’ll hook you up, man. I’m excited. That’s gonna be a good one. That’s gonna be a fun one. I’m excited.

Kevin Daisey (29:20)
This episode might be out after Law of Grail, so if you’re watching, it was great to see you there. And we had a great time. all right, Chris, well, I appreciate everything. Everyone, thanks for tuning in. We’ll listen to two knuckleheads talk and we’ll see you on the next episode. yep.

Chris Earley (29:26)
Hahaha!

Thanks Kevin.

Listen on your preferred platform

The Managing Partners Newsletter

If you like The Managing Partners Podcast then you’ll love The Managing Partners Newsletter.

Every week we’ll email you the latest podcast episodes, legal and business books we recommend, some news, and something to make you smile.

Subscribe now