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The Inaugural PIMCon did not disappoint. The atmosphere was upbeat while providing impactful information. All the presenters were armed with valuable insights without any fluff watering down the takeaways. Better yet, there was no sales pitch (a rare occurrence as most attorneys know all too well). Each speaker brought actionable items with real-life examples to validate and inspire attendees to put their information to work for their firm.
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John Berry | Amanda Demanda | James Helm | Michael Morse | Chad Celi | Matthew Dolman | Dan Morgan | John Nachazel | Jen Gore & Alexis Levantis | Chris Dreyer | Edward Herman & Jeremy Corray | Bob Simon | Dave Thomas | Alex Shunnarah & Mitri Shatara | Michael Phelps
Our own, Jason Craver, joined some local Arizona attorneys to attend the conference. Jason assembled a list of the major takeaways from the event for those attorneys who were unable to attend.
Day 1
The first presenter, John Berry of Berry Law, delved into branding – something in which he and his law firm have become experts. As a former commander in Iraq, Berry and his firm offer veterans disability services. Who better to provide services to veterans than a veteran himself? He walked attendees through his firm branding journey – showing the different versions of the website they designed until they came to the current version featuring him in his military uniform throughout the website. With each reiteration, they thought they had it dialed until they realized that John is the brand and that he needed to be the focus of the whole website.
He was the perfect representation of his presentation title – he became the brand before the brand.
Our favorite quote from his presentation was: “When building a brand, I don’t care about stepping on toes, we step on throats.”
Next up was Amanda Demanda, founder of Amanda Demanda Injury Lawyers. She stepped up on stage with her spark and spunk and crushed her presentation. Demanda focused on how to find your niche within your niche and align with a target audience.
With her Cuban background, Demanda positioned herself in the Miami area as the go-to lawyer for the Hispanic community. Her branding strategies – including going so far as changing her name to Amanda Demanda – are truly worth a close study.
She reiterated that not every injured client will become your client, and cautioned against falling into the trap of casting too wide of a net. With too broad of a reach, you’ll run out of money before you can really make an impact. Instead, she advised taking the opposite approach. Hone in on one group that you can appeal to. Consider what community you can speak to the most, who aligns with you and your values and perspective. This will be the best client who is least resistant to your message.
Since launching her firm in 2019, she has expanded significantly and become the go-to attorney in the Miami Hispanic community.
Top Dog Law founder James Helm shared how he built a huge marketing funnel and the impact it can have on a firm. Upon the launch of his firm, he had originally dumped all his money into the one marketing strategy he knew – Google Advertising. As you may guess, this was a failure. Google advertising just doesn’t perform for the legal industry like it does for others.
This led him to a turning point. He went all in on Instagram – specifically organic Instagram. According to Helm, the best part about building an organic following is the ability to retarget your entire audience with ads after the fact.
The key to growing organically on Instagram is staying on top of trends. Additionally, you need to find your personality and brand and stick with it.
You can grow your law firm with a big marketing funnel by building your own funnel or by partnering with someone who already has a big funnel. If you like to litigate and are very good at it, stick with that and partner up with someone who already has the marketing funnel built out.
Michael Morse, the founder of Mike Morse Law Firm, dove into how to connect with your community through community initiatives and marketing. His eye-opening presentation showed the impact one law firm can have on a community and how that can circle back to the firm. “If you are not part of the community, you are apart from the community,” he said.
Morse started Project Backpack to help kids get the proper school supplies to succeed in school. Today, he supplies backpacks to students and teacher totes for the entire state of Michigan. Someone asked if he brands the backpacks with a logo or how he uses this event to be able to make ROI from it. His answer was honoring as he said he does not want to brand the backpacks as he didn’t want anything to stand out to make other kids know some kids had backpack they didn’t pay for. They have different forms of measurement within their intake funnel that tracks this and they definitely receive ROI back from the brand impact this has on the community. Other law firms wanting to make the same impact have brought the event to other states as well.
Morses’ Meet Your Best Friend event focuses on the adoption of shelter animals at Michigan Humane. Morse has grown this event to levels comparable to his backpack event in the state of Michigan, where the event impacts thousands of people in the community and most importantly hundreds of dogs a year get adopted at his events. They have helped find forever homes for more than 1,000 pets. Morse plans to continue to grow this event to expand its impact.
His main message was to find what you love and care about and figure out how to make an impact on the community to benefit what you love.
Beyond the community events, Morse highlighted other ways to connect with your community through marketing. They have recently done local sponsorships with Collegiate athletes that has brought a lot of attention to his firm. He also has won many awards for his local commercials. One in particular which is priceless is shown below. This commercial in particular has lead to hundred of clients to his firm and many people approaching him when he is out to have a laugh about it. Mike went for a comedic approach that also highlights Mike Morse’s kind hearted personality perfectly.
Next, Chad Celi AKA ChadGPT brought the energy (and a red sparkly jacket) to the stage. He provided insights into how to optimize your intake process. Attorneys often believe marketing is their issue, more often the issue lies in the intake department.
The first impression of your potential client is the most important. To start, replace “intake” with “case evaluator.” Which sounds more powerful to you?
His next tip was to increase the rate of messaging within the first four hours of a client’s initial reach out. If you aren’t following up with a potential client within the first four hours, you’re undercutting the conversion potential of that client.
But all is not lost. Most law firms he works with have a follow-up procedure that lasts around two weeks. After two weeks, if they haven’t heard back from the client, they stop. There are many reasons a user could be distracted from pursuing a claim, so he recommends extending the follow-up period to 90 days!
The first interview session between Matthew Dolman and Chris Dreyer about content marketing and AI was full of useful tips. Dolman’s firm Dolman Law is a prime example of leveraging content marketing and SEO. Currently, they’re pushing more than 200,000 words a month to his main website (without even accounting for his other websites).
He provided helpful insights into what to do and not do with AI. His main suggestion is to use AI to build the outlines and gather some details before having a human write the bulk of the content. The biggest don’t was having AI generate a whole article from scratch.
Dolman also provided useful SEO tips.
With the recent changes in the search engines, ranking 1 or 2 for vanity terms (i.e., car accident attorney) is not going to pay off like it used to. Instead, your firm should be focusing on longtail keywords and phrases – answering all your potential client’s questions. He also recommended ramping up your content over time as pushing too much content at once could be a red flag for Google.
Once you have the content, refreshing it is a key factor to achieving top rankings and maintaining them. Dolman suggested refreshing the majority of your converting content every quarter. If your practice is something like Mass Torts (which has more frequent updates), he recommended updating the content every week, bi-weekly or whenever an update/change is released.
Beyond creating content (and updating it), Dolman also delved into the concept of content pruning. Not all content should stay on your website forever. If the content is evergreen (meaning it’s beneficial no matter when the reader comes across the information), it can stay. All other content will need to be re-assessed regularly to ensure it’s still providing valuable information. If the content is no longer needed, you can delete it or 301 redirect it. You would provide a redirect (to new content) if the content was popular at one time and has backlinks. By redirecting, you’ll retain the backlinks to your domain and preserve your link equity. If the content had low traffic and low or no links, you can delete the content entirely.
A few more tips from Dolman and Dreyer include:
The day one keynote speaker, Dan Morgan of Morgan and Morgan, brought a lot of insights to the stage.
He delved into some of the unique advertising strategies Morgan and Morgan has developed including a sponsorship with Barstool Sports and partnerships with sports teams. He also shared his “hook ‘em and book ‘em” client intake process. He argued that if you wait to return a client call, it is detrimental to your close rate. “If they’re not signed up in 20 minutes, they are gone forever,” he said.
Additionally, he expounded on the firm’s outbound referral strategy for leads they get in other states or in practices they don’t take on. They’ve developed a structure with established relationships with three firms in each location (a first look, second look and third look) so the client has the best chance of getting representation.
They have taken this structure a step further. If none of the three established firms take the case, someone on the Morgan and Morgan team will manually search for a fourth firm to take the case. This additional step has increased the firm’s outbound lead program since its implementation. Morgan is excited to keep growing this part of the business.
One of the biggest takeaways from his presentation was his bullets-before-bombs strategy. He recommended testing any new strategy on a smaller scale before dumping a ton of money and resources into it. Not all strategies will work as well as others. Test-running the success of a strategy before expanding is a great process to follow.
Following the last speaker, the first day ended with networking in the vendor hall before an epic performance by the one and only David Spade. As expected, he didn’t hold anything back and came prepared with some lawyer-themed jokes. VIP ticketholders were invited to a meet and greet and photo opportunity with Spade after the performance.
Day 2
Day two started off with another session of the famous GOAT yoga, a fun start to both days! After eating breakfast, everyone headed back into the main room for another round of educational and eye-opening presentations.
The first speaker of the day was John Nachazel, the CEO of Michael Morse P.C. and he dove into what metrics you should be tracking on your marketing jumbotron, including:
His focus was showing everyone that when tracked right, you can really understand your numbers entirely and grow your marketing in the most effective way.
This firm really has jumbotrons throughout their office that update in real time. This allows everyone in the firm (no matter their position) to understand the goal of the firm and to watch its progress in real time.
The Atlanta Personal Injury Law Group brought two perspectives to the stage in their presentation with Jen Gore, firm owner, and Alexis Levantis, the firm’s marketing director. They dove into the digital and branding strategies that propelled the firm to the next level.
Around four years ago, the firm started their Instagram and TikTok strategy. They walked the attendees through their social journey and how it has developed, highlighting the changes they made.
The main focus of their presentation was on their decision to brand Jen throughout all the channels to put a face on the brand. Not only did they brand Jen throughout the company channels, they also made a personal channel @jenngorelawyer, which skyrocketed with followers.
They encouraged lawyers to not shy away from the camera. Everyone is afraid to step in front of the lens. They promised that it would get easier if you just continue to do it. Our team at Attorney at Law Magazine can attest to that!
They concluded their presentation by filming a live social media piece on stage to demonstrate just how easy it is to create a great piece of content.
Another key takeaway from their presentation was not to be afraid to get in front of the camera, because everyone is afraid … If you just do it and continue to do it they promised it would get easier and from what our team has seen at Attorney at Law Magazine that is completely true.
Their presentation ended with filming a live social media piece on stage showing people just how easy it is to create a piece of content.
Next up the great Harlan Schillinger, “The Grandfather of Legal Advertising” came out to introduce Chris Dreyer for his presentation all about the power of SEO. Dreyer broke his presentation into many different sections all with the goal to give as much value as possible.
He broke down how Google analyzes local results, emphasizing three main factors – relevance, distance and prominence. By focusing on these three areas (with relevance being the most important), you can dominate the search engines.
As an example, Dreyer shared about a firm that properly implemented a DBA into their Google Business Profile listings, allowing them to match the intent of the searches they were targeting. The search term was Michigan Auto Accident Lawyer. At the time, the two firms competing for the top position were Michigan Auto Law Accident Attorneys and J Trucks and Associates. Michigan Auto Law Accident Attorneys had fewer reviews and wasn’t closer to the search location; however, it matched the searcher’s intent more closely.
If you just stuff keywords into your business name that aren’t a part of the legal name, you will be flagged by Google. In order to do this correctly, you need to go through the legal process of filing a “Doing Business As” and have the paperwork to prove it. In theory, you could implement a name change tomorrow and instantly boost your rankings.
When it comes to relevancy, reviews are the number one factor. Matching the intent of the search is key, but if you don’t have the reviews to back it you won’t rank. Dreyer states that a 4.9 rating or higher is critical. If your ranking is below this, he said fixing it should be your first priority before you do anything else or hire an agency.
In fact, Dreyer recommended internally hiring someone who is just focused on the customer experience and on gathering reviews. Another tactic he shared was creating an incentivization plan for your staff to get reviews.
Distance is the next factor to consider. If your firm is in an area densely populated with other law firms, you will have a lot of catching up to do before you ever rank. The firms with thousands of reviews and a 4.9 rating or higher will show up above you forever.
Dreyer recommended using tools like LocalFalcon to drop a grid over your location to see how well you rank compared to your competition. This can be a key part in determining where to open your first office or any additional locations.
Dreyer then dove into the content side of your website. Content has always been a major stressor; however, unique, personalized content from the expert should now be the priority. To make it simple, go through all your content and implement changes to create a unique outlook that only your firm could provide.
He recommended you have an in-house content writer as part of your internal team (even if you use an agency). This will allow you to create more unique content and put a touch of personalization into every piece of content written.
Dreyer also touched on content pruning in this segment. He recommended taking a look at your content to determine what is evergreen and pruning anything that is no longer relevant. During the process of evaluating, he noted that you should be re-evaluating and updating all the evergreen content so it can remain fresh. Google has a crawl budget. You want to prune items you don’t want Google crawling and refresh the good content with updates and updated outlooks to keep Google crawling the good content.
Dreyer concluded his presentation with some ways lawyers and law firm owners can help their agencies. He mentioned monitoring your brand mentions and asking companies who mention your brand to link back to your firm’s website. Some easy ways to get natural backlinks include appearing on podcasts, sponsoring local high schools, winning awards or pushing out press releases. The key was to keep an eye on some of these opportunities that your marketing agency may not be aware of.
Lastly, he left us with one golden nugget, “It’s not the brand itself that impacts rankings, it’s the click and the click being known by Google. Title tags, page titles, and meta descriptions are absolutely important in enticing these clicks. Additionally, if you rank number one, you capture more clicks, and it is easier to maintain your number one position than if you did not. Make your firm click-worthy!”
Edward Herman, managing shareholder of Brown and Crouppen, alongside Jeremy Corray, executive vice president of Coolfire Studios, sat down for a fireside chat going over unique branding strategies for lawyers.
Herman made his name from the commercials that engage his audience through humor as well as his podcast, “3 Lawyers Eating Sandwiches.” He has continually uncovered unique ways to brand himself in his community which has grown the presence of his law firm immensely.
To take this to the next level, Herman teamed up with Corray to help other attorneys find their passion and build a brand around it to better connect with their community. They presented examples of motorcycle-riding lawyers helping motorcycle victims. Our favorite example was the lawyer who brands himself as the standup comic telling lawyer jokes. The firm’s commercials were very funny and made them stand out in their community.
The takeaway message from their presentation was to find what you like that is unique and find a way to build a brand around that.
Bob Simon, the co-founder of Simon Law Group, AttorneyShare and Justice HQ, came to the table with some of the most valuable information for law firms trying to grow through cost-effective strategies.
He went into the value of referring all the cases that come to you out to your networks and creating partnerships with other attorneys to take cases on a fee split. He calls this Inbox Money.
If you are turning away cases because they aren’t your specialty, he can almost guarantee you’re throwing away thousands and thousands of dollars.
Dan Morgan, in his keynote address on day one, walked the audience through Morgan and Morgan’s outbound referral system which he hopes to continue growing. These two demonstrated how this is a part of the business model lawyers can’t afford to overlook.
Simon introduced his new software, AttorneyShare, which allows lawyers to begin referring cases out tomorrow. It’s a simple process that allows you to set the fee split you are looking to receive and post the case information to a network of attorneys. The attorney who selects the case will be charged a small fee (but the poster won’t be charged anything).
This is a great solution for lawyers who don’t have access to a big marketing funnel like James Helm discussed in his presentation.
Simon then delved into other AI platforms and tools he is implementing in his firm to advance their processes. One interesting concept Simon shared was his use of Personal AI to create an AI bot of himself. It will essentially be able to perform professional and personal tasks for him, such as answering questions from his staff, and referring back to helpful information from prior cases and information he has uploaded.He is uploading essentially every document he’s created, all his social media posts, and his podcast sessions to this platform. From these, the AI bot will be able to speed up the process for future cases and daily tasks Simon once did himself. He has created his bot to be “An AI persona tailored for expert personal injury lawyers that provides internal team expertise and mentorship to incoming lawyers.”
Dave Thomas, the SVP of growth and business development at Law Tigers, brought the most energy to the stage we had seen yet! Dancing his way into his presentation, Thomas showed us how Law Tigers focuses on impacting the specific community they want to help in every way they can. Becoming one with the community will not only help expand your brand, but it will also impact the community and allow you to feel good and create a message that your brand is one with the community.
Make the focus of your marketing to help the people. When they need help, they will likely turn to you because they already have that trusting relationship with you. “Keep people first, and they will keep you first.”
Law Tigers sponsors every type of motorcycle event they can in the communities where they practice. They are a national brand, but we bet if you asked each local community if they were national, they would think they are local. That is the brand they have built, and it is impactful.
Shunnarah Trial Attorneys President Alex Shunnarah and VP of Operations Mitri Shatara came out and showed us the history of their firm’s marketing strategy that brought them to the next level.
They walked us through the evolution from billboard and print advertising to TV commercials to the digital and community impact strategy they focus on today. It was very cool to see the expansion.
Shatara shared his favorite commercials that resonated with him when he was growing up to show how every advertising campaign can be directed toward a specific audience. It is all about testing and continuing to double down on what works best.
The close out the final day, Chris Dreyer stepped out on the stage to interview the GOAT of swimming – Michael Phelps. From Olympic champion to father, husband, coach, and now founder of the Michael Phelps Foundation, I was honored to get to hear his why and how of becoming the GOAT of swimming and winning his 18 gold medals. He shared about his obsession with swimming from a young age from his first swimming goal at age 11 to when his coach told him he could make the Olympics by age 16. He stayed focused and practiced hard. He said it was all about doing more work than any of the competition. He became obsessed with every aspect of swimming and his health. By building better habits, he realized he could keep his body healthy, ensuring he never regressed in his swimming.
At one point, he swam every day for over six years. He realized that people who skipped practice over the weekend weren’t where they were the previous week until a day or two later. If he swam every day, he would be hundreds of days ahead of the competition that took the weekend off. Over a four-year period that would be years ahead of most of his competition.
Not only did he focus on outworking his competition, he had the mindset to race the clock. This allowed him to cut out the distractions. He would be focused on beating the clock while the others were focused on beating the average time of the competition – this put him seconds below everyone else and almost always guaranteed him a win. If you develop a mindset to think like that, you most likely won’t come out disappointed.
Phelps opened up about mental health and his own personal struggles during what many would consider his glory days. Today, he is truly making an impact with his foundation and saving lives. Seeing his passion for swimming transfer over to something that impacts communities all over the world was truly inspiring.
His overall message aligned with many of the other speakers – the one who does the most work and implements the most wins and find a way to bring passion to your work to better your community.
The inaugural PIMCon did not disappoint. Our team at Attorney at Law Magazine loved seeing some of the faces we’ve worked with for years in person. Nothing beats a face-to-face connection in this digital world!
While personal injury lawyers were in their element, all attendees (no matter their practice) took away a massive amount of information to help dominate in their business. If you’re looking to connect with some of the best personal injury lawyers in the U.S., and learn firsthand how they achieved their success, PIMCon is a must-attend event. Be sure to mark your calendars for next year!
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Jason Craver is a co-founder of Telegenic Marketing, a Phoenix SEO Agency, and the Head of Local Legal Authorities, the best exclusive lawyer directory. His expertise is in SEO, video SEO, and attorney marketing. He is on a mission to disrupt the legal marketing industry by introducing an exclusive marketing enterprise that truly cares and performs for its clients! “My goal is to positively impact thousands of attorneys by delivering exclusive leads to their practice!”
