Harlan Schillinger

I believe if you are looking to monetize your practice, and make as much money as you absolutely can do, you absolutely do a great job for them.

Chris Dreyer:

To make it rain. Follow the golden rule, treat others how you want to be treated and practice great law.

Harlan Schillinger

Invest in the case, work the case up, really go the extra mile. You’ll not only make more money, but you’ll make more friends, and you’ll make more money, and make bigger business.

Chris Dreyer:

Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Ranking.io, the preeminent personal injury marketing agency. Before we get started, if you like what you hear, head on over to Apple or Spotify and pound that five star review button, and if you don’t like what you hear, tell me about it in a one-star review. I got a big hug for all my haters too. Each week we talk to the best in the legal industry. Ready to dominate your market? Let’s go.
It’s my pleasure to introduce today’s guest for a second time on PIM, his ideas remain as innovative today as when he broke the marketing mould in 1978. The first to produce and market television advertising to the legal community, his tireless work backed by old school ethics as earned him the title of the grandfather of legal advertising.
Harlan Schillinger has worked with over 140 firms, understands the intricacies of legal advertising, and is obsessed with intake. He co-developed Lead Docket, and is now a private consultant who takes on a very limited number of firms that share his vision. But today, you get direct access to the wisdom he’s created over the years. He explains why crafting and winning message begins with understanding who you are. We explore new ways to make the most successful advertising channels work for your firm. This episode is jam-packed.
But before we dive into Harlan’s amazing insights, I wanted to get his take on something he and I have been talking a lot about lately. We’ve been discussing the duty of a lawyer both in practice and in business, and I wanted to start today’s interview with the attorney’s oath for Minnesota, which goes like this. You do swear that you will support the constitution of United States and that of the state of Minnesota, and will conduct yourself as an attorney and counsellor of law in an upright and courteous manner to the best of your learning and ability with all good fidelity as well to the court as to the client, that you will use no falsehood or deceive, nor delay any person’s cause for lucre or malice, so help you God.
This is what it means to Harlan Schillinger.

Harlan Schillinger

Well, the first thing that it means to me is, boy, some of the advertising that goes on is certainly not congruent with what you just read, they exaggerate. Chris, going back to our original conversation, we talked about, where is legal advertising? Where’s the practice of law? And I’ve always felt that you have a fiduciary duty, of course, to your client. I mean, there’s no question about it. So then why is 90% or so, and that’s my estimation, minimum of 90%, the lawyers out there, why do they, I guess I use the word suck. Why do they do what they do? Which means why don’t they do what they should do with the client? I think that we’re in a real big money grab. I think that there’s so many people jumping into legal advertising desperately trying to get that case. Everybody wants that case.
You’re monetized, you’re only a number, and you’re treated it as a number in people’s law firm. I go back to the oath of office because it is the very first contract that you sign when you become a lawyer in whatever state that you’re in. They’re all pretty similar. You’re going to act in your best ability, you’re going to represent your clients, you’re going to be vigorous, all of that. But I fall back to, what’s really going on? How are people really being treated? And in turn, how do you treat people differently, give them what they deserve, and make that part of your culture, and part of what your unique selling strategy is?

Chris Dreyer:

A doctor and attorney, they’re supposed to help the individual, but on one end, at least from my perception, I could be wrong, it’s this perception of a doctor being friendly, and kind, and really being there to help you. And then there’s this negative connotation, this negative perception for the attorney that’s just looking for the money. Do you think that it just started piling in after that 1977 decision to allow advertising and it’s the simple message on a billboard? Where do you think that that pivot started to occur?

Harlan Schillinger

Well, first of all, in 1977 when the Supreme Court passed the decision, the Bates decision, it was about giving access to the courtroom, letting people understand that they have options and allowing people easier access to knowing who they’re dealing with or finding a lawyer. That, I paraphrased it of course, is the essence of the decision. And so what happened in 1977, ’78, ’79, people started to go on television. As you know, I was the first person to produce television commercials for the industry, and we fanned out, my partners and I, and we signed up 58 clients in 1979, 1980. And it was turning the key and the floodgates opened. You couldn’t get away from bombardment of telephone calls. With that, most lawyers shunned the advertisers because it was not professional, it was this.
But as years came around. It came out to be a very jealous statement, “Well, I don’t want them to do it.”
“Well, why don’t you want them to do it?”
“Well, it’s unprofessional. Well, I’m not going to do it, so why should they do it?”
We can go down that rabbit hole if we want, but let’s choose the other hole. It’s become such a business, unfortunately, there’s so much opportunity. I don’t know of another industry that you have no ceiling on how much you can actually earn. And quite frankly, you don’t really have to be a good lawyer to earn a lot of money. That’s the sad part. The reality is that it is a business, and it has to be treated like a business, but that doesn’t mean that you treat your clients as a number, as a commodity, as another tool, or a widget, or however you want to phrase it. And so that whole dichotomy of balance, and how do you balance that professionalism with your business?
Now, I remember when we started National Trial Lawyers, guess it’s about 14 years ago, Howard Nations, John Romano, myself, and Keith Givens were at Keith Givens’ house, and we said, “There’s nobody really addressing the business of law.” And so we decided at that point to start a group called National Trial Lawyers, which focuses on the business of law. So it is a balance, but I firmly believe, and the court system firmly believes that you have to have compassion and you have to have professionalism. And quite frankly, I’ll go back to the oath that you just read, what does that say? It says a lot of things. It says you are going to work your tail off, I’m paraphrasing, you’re going to represent your client, you’re not going to sell them short, you’re not going to not return their phone calls, you’re not going to not treat them like human beings. It’s not a commodity. That’s what that paragraph says.
I have never met a lawyer in my life that has read that oath of office, or applied it to their practice, or acknowledged it after they took it. Keep that in mind. Now, that’s happened also the Hippocratic oath for doctors and what have you. If you just did what that paragraph says, that contract that you signed, that you’re under contract to do, you’ll do just fine. So why can’t you incorporate all of those things into the culture of your firm?

Chris Dreyer:

I think many of the attorneys that I work with want to do a good job. They want to provide a good client experience, at least most of them outwardly, to me. I think also it’s they need reviews. It helps them for their Google Maps, their local service ads, their conversions, because consumer behaviour has shifted. Do you think that maybe that’s had an impact for maybe focusing and shifting from the customer point of view, the widget, more to the client? Do you think that’s had an impact?

Harlan Schillinger

Yeah. I think it all has an impact, but my perception of your business, if you handpick your clients, what you want to deal with is the cream of the crop. Your clientele are the extreme that want to go about everything in a compulsive way, which means they want to service their clients. They understand intake, and although they come up short, they come up a lot less short than most. So in general terms, unfortunately money has creeped into everything. It’s a money grab. You have lawyers that get a taste of advertising, and they have a taste of the money, and it could be overwhelming. And they just come up shy on the compassion side, and the work ethic side.

Chris Dreyer:

Where do you see from the client perspective where attorneys could take this and maybe do some introspection, say, “You know what? Harlan’s right, I need to take a deep look at this.” Where does it start? Where do you start that?

Harlan Schillinger

Well, let’s take a look at the business side of it. Let’s talk about the business side of it. Let’s talk about making money in the practice of law, because that’s what you and I do for our clients. We show them how to make money. What we started this conversation off with is talking about different ways to make money. To back up, I don’t believe that I’ve come across a practice, especially an advertising practice, that has grown exponentially. Now, you grow to a certain point, hypothetically, if lawyer X in Miami is signing up 200 cases a month, he’s not necessarily signing up 201 cases, although they’re throwing more money at it. So growth isn’t necessarily moving from Miami until into Tampa, your turnaround on dollars, establishing yourself, getting paid, seeing your investment is five to seven years. So that’s a long-term investment, and that’s growth, I guess.
But if you wanted to grow your practice, you got to sit back and you say, “Okay, how am I going to grow my practice? Am I going to say something that the other guy doesn’t say, or am I going to throw more money at it? What’s the logical way to make money at this business?” Well, number one, I feel very strongly about getting better cases. If you just simply say, “Well, I only do serious injury,” that’s not going to get you cases. What’s going to get you more cases, excuse me, higher value cases, is credibility. Credibility comes in many, many ways. Credibility comes in doing what you’re saying you’re going to do, being an expert in what you’re doing, being really specialised in, hypothetically, truck cases. Every lawyer in the country wants a trucking case, but there really are what, 50 or 60 certified truck lawyers, and most of those cases go to them. And if a lawyer that’s working on soft tissue, and auto, and has a churn and burn practice, takes a trucking case, then I don’t have the expertise to build that case to a multimillion dollar case where it should be. The second thing is you have the value of the case

Chris Dreyer:

There’s the quote unquote “pre-lit” versus the litigating firm. And immediately when you say trucking, I think of an individual like David Craig, amazing truck accident attorney. You and I both know David, and he goes about advertising differently. Let’s talk about this because I think he’s the perfect example in, A, getting better cases, and then, B, maximizing the value.

Harlan Schillinger

David is an interesting cat. He is a friend and a client. When I met David, David was just coming off of television. He was changing his practice to exclusively going after trucking cases. Well, by going after trucking cases, he does get 20 or 30 other cases a month that his partners handle. But the way David went about this was in a very, very credible way. He didn’t just stand on top of a truck and said, “I want your truck case.” My analogy is to talk to the public the way you would a jury. And so when David advertises, and he markets, and it’s primarily through social, he’s presenting his case to the public and showing them what you really have to understand. He’s really opening the kimono and talking about what most lawyers don’t talk about. He’s really telling everybody what to do. Fortunately, other lawyers don’t listen because that leaves much more for the people that are going after the business in a different way.
Bottom line is that educating the public, being an expert, and delivering that message, and making it client-centric is an excellent way to attract business, targeted business and quality business.

Chris Dreyer:

A lot of times, at least outwardly, when I see the biggest firms, I typically see these big advertising firms that are going after tonnes of practice areas, outwardly, they don’t appear to have the deep expertise in any one topic, but it seems like they’re getting the volume of cases. Are they getting the high quality cases, those cases with a lot of value, those top five percenters?

Harlan Schillinger

No with a yes at the end. Because if you advertise enough, you’re going to get something. It’s that fishing net, you’re going to pull in a couple of big fish, there’s no question about it. But in advertising, Chris, you get what you ask for, and if you’re out there and if you’re advertising, “In a wreck, get a check,” which for certain markets, I think, depending on what you want, is a great slogan, but if you’re in a wrongful death case, and you’re in a trucking case, or you have a complex litigation, you’re not looking for a check, you’re looking for a lot more than that. You’re looking for a lawyer that’s going to really bring you back to the quality of life, or save your family from the quality of life, and the money will come. And I just fall back to you really get what you ask for, and you have to be very, very careful.
So getting back to David Craig, if you go to his social media and you go to his web and everything that he does, he is so ultra focused on what it takes to build a complex case, and the way he lays it out to people in such a simple way, again, talking to the public the way you would a jury, he attracts that kind of business.

Chris Dreyer:

There are two ways to go about messaging. One is to have broad generic statements that often use humor and appear to more people. This strategy casts a wide net and you’re more likely to see a bigger following, but probably catch smaller fish. The other way, become an expert in one category. The pool of potential cases may get smaller, but by dropping the line of targeted messaging, you’re more likely to snag a whopper of a fish that can sustain your firm and your goals for a long period of time. One strategy is not necessarily better than the other. Harlan explains how to decide which is right for your firm.

Harlan Schillinger

Well, first of all, I believe you have to know who you are. I have to know exactly who my client is. I have to know what their practices is about, what their level of expertise is. I got to know everything about that practice because that’s who you’re selling. So at that point, you have two choices. You can sell the fantasy of this so-called lawyer going to court, working up every case for trial and what have you, or you can find that lawyer and travel through that scenario from a lawyer that absolutely understands how to prepare a case. But you got to sell what you have, and the most important thing is to be truthful about what you’re selling. But it all starts with knowing exactly who you are, and what you want, and how do you want to be perceived.
How you want to be perceived is easy. This whole social media thing, this whole advertising thing, you could be anything anytime. I identify as a phenomenal trial lawyer. That doesn’t mean I’m in a phenomenal trial lawyer. The point I’m making is that you got to be who you are. And then you have to know how to ask for that. And those are the two elements that I think you really absolutely need to focus on. But if you are looking for better cases, and every lawyer wants a better case, they want the wrongful death case, they want the big case, there’s two options. You can either live it and breathe it. That’s how you practice your law and you deserve that case. Or you can tout that you would do those things and you would be that kind of lawyer, but you’re really not. 90% of the lawyers that are out there, particularly 90% of the lawyers that are marketing in a big, big way, there are exceptions, and I have dear friends that have high volume practices that practice great law, really don’t practice great law. You become a commodity, you become a number that you move through their system. And what that means is, are they really spending the money to invest in the case? The lawyer’s money, not the client’s money because it’s contingency. Are they doing every single thing possible to have the outcome that the client deserves?
And that’s a huge investment, money wise and time-wise. That’s the game-changer right there, you can move these cases along and get paid, or you can do one hell of a job for every one of your clients, and I guarantee you, you’ll make more money, and the client will be far more satisfied.

Chris Dreyer:

Where does that play into quantities become qualities, and experience, and having to get the reps in? Do you take that authentic approach and say, “Look, I’m a young attorney and I haven’t tried very many cases, but guess what, I’m going to give you 110%, my complete focus”? Is that the authentic message that you start with? Because everyone has to start somewhere. That brain surgeon has his first brain surgery.

Harlan Schillinger

Well, he better not screw up his first brain surgery, and put every bit of effort into that first brain surgery. And the effort is not only in the surgery, but it’s in dealing with the patient because the patient is going to make a determination on how they experienced the relationship. And so I would advise young lawyers to absolutely pick and choose how they want to be perceived. What’s your legacy? How do you want to practice law? I would say that almost everybody thinks this, but they don’t say it, “Well, I want to make money at it. I’m in this for the money, I’m in this for business.” Well, I can accept that, but you did take an oath that you would do certain things to earn that respect and that reputation. And I believe you can absolutely do both. And in fact, Chris, I think it’s your best play right now.
How people feel about you, and how people feel about what they experience with you is everything. Most lawyers say, “Well, they’ll remember I got them a settlement.” Well, guess what, they don’t, because the feeling on how you were treated will far outlast the money.

Chris Dreyer:

That resonates for me. I made an idiot mistake when I was in college, I did a prank and got in trouble for pulling a fire alarm. And you know what? I don’t remember the outcome really, I remember my experience with the attorney. I didn’t have a good experience. I was kept in the dark. I didn’t know what was going on, and that’s what I think. But the end result was there, I got that expunged, and that idiot mistake is over. But I remember the experience I had working with the attorney, and I thought, “You know what? I would never work with that attorney again.”

Harlan Schillinger

Well, you can multiply that by a million times, and that’s the majority of people. But we’re an interesting part of society right now. Everybody is acknowledging, I believe everybody is saying, “Well, customer service is not what it was.” And so it’s all about how you feel. When you feel bad, you express it. When you feel good, you really express it. So pick and choose how you want to be perceived. But if you want to understand the marketing aspect, believe me, Ritz-Carlton has a programme in place, and Ritz-Carlton has a feeling, and it’s about marketing. And when you go into a Ritz-Carlton, you know you’re in a Ritz-Carlton. When you go into a Michael DeMayo’s practice, you know you’re in a Ritz-Carlton type of a practice just because of the way you’re being treated, the way you feel.
My dad always said, and I say this almost in every speech I make, “Nobody cares how much money you’ve made in life. When you die, you’re going to be judged by how you treated people.” That’s a really powerful opportunity. I believe if you are looking to monetize your practice and make as much money as you absolutely can do, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you are treating your clients, you absolutely do a great job for them. Doing a great job for them is treating people the way you want to be treated, number one, and practising great law. Invest in the case, work the case up, and really go the extra mile. You’ll not only make more money, but you’ll make more friends, and you’ll make more money, and make bigger business. And I believe in this day and age, today, that’s a solid approach. And then you can spend more money on advertising.

Chris Dreyer:

And when that head hits the pillow, you can sleep like a baby too, knowing that you gave it your all. And it’s interesting, I just read Anne Kennedy’s book on profit maximisation, and number one was what you talked about, getting better cases, better leads through marketing, and the second was client service, client experience and how that can impact your business.
I want to switch back to just messaging and being authentic just for a moment. One that we’ve recently looked at, and I don’t know these attorneys, I’ve seen them on TikTok, The Husband & Wife Law Team, Mark and Alexis Breyer, they’re messaging, geez, want to talk about authenticity, it just comes across so natural, it makes them memorable, it makes them stand out, makes them likeable.

Harlan Schillinger

I absolutely love what they’re doing. I see them all the time here on television, on social here in Arizona. I know Mark Breyer for many, many years, and actually, I was the first person to put Mark Breyer on with my old agency many, many years ago. And all of a sudden I caught him on television, and he’s walking through the hall of his office, and he’s mumbling some things. And I was listening to what he was saying. He was saying exactly what I was thinking. So I investigated it, I got a hold of Mark, I spoke to his agency, I tried to figure out how this all came about. And the truth of it is it came about by accident.
The production crew, and this is what they told me, they were holding a cell phone when he walked out of an office practicing his lines, but he was making up his own lines and it said, “You get a summons, you’re called for court, you sit in the jury box and you see the two lawyers, which one is prepared? Which one would you want to represent you?” He gets into all of these particulars, all of these scenarios about what the victim is really going through in the most honest way, and he just lays it out as they’re walking from the courthouse, or they’re walking from their office. The reason it’s so natural is because it’s completely unscripted and it’s exactly what we should be hearing. It’s exactly what a lawyer should be saying to you. He talks about lawyers selling their client short, and it struck me so hard that this young man is just saying it exactly the way he needs to say it in a positive way actually. He’s not putting other people down, his commercials are that good, but he’s just saying it the way it is. And nothing he says is about him, everything he says is about the client. So he’s very client-centric.

Chris Dreyer:

People will have a natural rapport component. They’ll feel comfortable with them, and want to use them, and I think that’s so powerful with the messaging, is being your authentic self. I think you are more credible when you’re not faking it. People can see through individuals that are being fake, not always, but you can tell if someone’s being fake. People say that all the time.

Harlan Schillinger

Look, Chris, it would be impossible for you to move me away from talking to the public the way I would a jury, the way you would a jury. You could not move me from that. Because when you sit in the witness box, and when you’re a lawyer talking to the jury, you’re leaning over that railing and you’re looking at him square in the face, you can’t lie to the jury. The jury’s going to see right through you. The jury is the public, and if you understand that mentality, and you understand that authenticity, you’ll come across in that manner. But lawyers don’t do that. What most lawyers do, almost all lawyers do, first of all, they copy what the other guy does. “He can do it, I can do it. I’m going to mimic him.” And it’s all about them and not so much the client. The second thing is a lot of lawyers don’t go to court, and so how can they carry that bravado to a camera if they’ve never really said it to a jury?

Chris Dreyer:

Say our audience has looked internally, they have a message that they’ve thought about, they know how to be credible, and they’ve dialled into their message. It can adjust, you can modify it in the future. The next step is, where’s the client? In the past, TV was a behemoth, it is still very powerful. What are some of the channels that you see PI attorneys being most successful utilising?

Harlan Schillinger

Well, obviously it’s absolutely imperative to be buttoned up digitally. The basis of buttoning up digitally is having a solid website that was built with best practices, that was built with Mr. Google certainly in mind, and feeding that website original, pertinent content. The reason I say that so strongly is that if you look at the last major algorithm that Google had, and this is your business, you know it more than I do, you’ve taught me more than I can ever teach you, we want pertinent content. But what does that mean? That means you’re getting away from generic content, you’re getting to content that means something to you, Chris. And you want to humanize yourself. And so ground zero is your website. There’s no question about it.
And from there, you’ve got to have a good SEO strategy. Doing SEO work, and just saying, “I do SEO work” is one thing, having a specific strategy in going after your digital base is important, and what does that mean? And I’ve learned a lot of this from you, it means being very relevant, and targeted, and niched in your content. It’s making sure that you have all of your Google My Business pages, your LSAs, everything is absolutely best practices with Google. And most importantly, you have to work it. You have to work it constantly, which means you have to be involved with your agency, knowing what they’re doing, and giving them the tools, and pushing them to be that targeted on SEO. People, I mean I certainly value SEO over PPC, because PPC is a tactic, but SEO is a solid approach.
I know very few agencies that really understand SEO. Let me rephrase that, they understand SEO, but they’re trying to rank for everything. They come to the table and say, “Look, I got you from page 11 to page seven, on 400 different words.” Well, the truth of it is you think you’re going to get business from 400 different words, or you’re going to get business from six, or 12? And so having a strategy that focuses on what is going to give you business and what people are resonating with is paramount. And having the guts to come to a client saying, “Listen, we’re not going to maximize 400 words and make me look good. If I maximize three words, six words, 12 words, this is what’s turning the numbers, this is what people are dialing into, this is what people are searching,” and putting my effort into quality, not quantity, I think that’s the solid strategy. Now, I’m brushing over a lot of this, but that is a very important strategy.

Chris Dreyer:

It is a quality game. In the past, you could write a 500-word article because Google didn’t have that article or that topic covered in their inventory. That’s not the case today. Most topics have been covered, so now they’re going to look at the quality and making sure you answer consumer intent. The other thing that I just want to highlight, and I am a bit biased because I do have an SEO agency, and I’m cognizant of that, but I’m also cognizant of what works and what I see helps my clients, we talk a lot about social media and there is a place for social media, but Google and YouTube have more website traffic than the next 48 websites combined. Google gets 85 billion monthly users, YouTube’s 33 billion, Facebook, which is the next highest is 17 billion, and then it significantly drops off. So when you want to talk about channels, you need to advertise where your consumer congregates, they congregate on Google, it’s in the data. So I know things have changed and new shiny objects come around, and there’s definitely a place for everything, it all works together, but I just want to relay that data. That’s a ton of users, it’s a ton of opportunity.

Harlan Schillinger

Well, something about advertising, and my original mentor, a gentleman named Bill [inaudible 00:30:19] taught me a lot, and one of three things that he taught me is, figure out how people are absorbing and give them more of it. And so if I want to find somebody, I got to go with where they are. Some people say it’s TikTok, some people say it’s Google. There’s no question it’s Google and YouTube because they’re the two big a search engines, and I think that social media is where people are as well, but I wouldn’t put all my eggs in one basket. But again, you use the word “quality”. You’ve got to use where people are. You got to find out where the fish is, and you got to go put on the waders, and you got to get in. But finding where they’re biting is super-duper important, and that takes research. It takes looking at the numbers. I have found that so many people, everybody has an opinion on, in your field… I mean, what do you need to get into your business? A laptop, seriously.

Chris Dreyer:

That’s it. Mobile device. Maybe just a phone.

Harlan Schillinger

That’s right. And everybody has their opinion as to what works and what doesn’t work. Me, I don’t make any decision without the numbers because the numbers will tell everything. Just as you rattled off the numbers from Google, just as you rattled off the numbers from Facebook.

Chris Dreyer:

I looked at this, Google has 40 times the amount of monthly visitors to their website compared to TikTok. I know TikTok’s new, it’s emerging, and it’s good. Wherever consumers congregate is an opportunity to advertise. Look, if the metaverse comes around, and everyone starts to go into the metaverse, then we’re going to advertise there. There’s an opportunity to advertise. Where does TV fit in? Let’s talk a little bit about OTT too. If you could, what’s the 80/20 masterclass, just briefly, on doing TV right?

Harlan Schillinger

More people are watching the tube than ever before in the history of television. There is absolutely no question there’s more content, there’s more opportunities. So if we’re looking at the tube, let’s start with that. Then it comes down to what are we watching on the tube? Are we watching daytime? Are we watching network? Are we watching OTT? Are we watching YouTube? And then it comes down to, where is my audience? There’s a lot of conversation about… First of all, there’s no question, television is still king. If you want to get your message out, you want to brand yourself, you want to be that brand, and you want that message to get across, there’s no question, you’re not going to do it in any other medium as well as you are with television. Maybe a little radio, but it’s you can’t leave it.
And so then the question is, where do I spend my money? How much of it goes on network? How much of it goes on OTT, over the top television? That’s Hulu and your streaming devices and such. And you’ve got to break it down based on where you think your audience is. I love it. I pushed away from OTT for a long time because I didn’t feel that I was dealing with people that really understood it, and understood how to buy it, and understood how to get us in front of the people that we really wanted to be in front of. And maybe that’s wrong, but I waited for the industry to catch up and mature a bit. We’ve come to the point where there isn’t a market in the country, I’m sure somebody will say I’m wrong, but that a third of the market isn’t watching streaming, that isn’t watching alternate television. And so if you are in Muncie, Indiana right now, or in the bigger market, let’s say Indianapolis, if a third of everybody out there in Indianapolis are watching alternate television, or streaming, or Hulu, or what have you, how could you say, “I can’t reach them,” or, “We shouldn’t play in that pond”?

Chris Dreyer:

I’m your tail end of the millennial who doesn’t have cable. Most of us don’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t watch TV. I watch content across multiple platforms like Hulu, YouTube, Amazon, Disney+. This new consumption pattern means that we have to shift how we think about saturation for video marketing. And you could saturate a market with a handful of channels and a few choice hours. With streaming, it’s not economically viable to purchase big blocks of time across multiple streaming platforms. Luckily, this modern problem comes with a modern solution. To master OTT, all you need to do is follow the data.

Harlan Schillinger

I hooked up with a firm that I felt really and truly understood what I wanted to do with the advertising for Camp Lejeune cases, and they really understood. The beautiful part about OTT is that you can really niche down, you could really find your audience. You find your audience in a very different way because basically you’re tracking your audience, you’re discovering your audience by the way they spend their money, their patterns, and what have you. With my client, I brought this resource to… We decided we wanted to get into OTT, they were able to find an audience of age, then they were able to find that audience and niche that down to military service. Now they niched it down even further to not only military service, they were in this area at this particular time.
Now let’s take it one step further. They had one of the symptoms of the water contamination in Camp Lejeune. Now, I’m dealing with a fairly qualified prospect there. I got a pretty good shot. I got the age, I got the military service, I got the disease, and I got their IP address. I guess I don’t have to tell you how successful niching down, and that approach is. But I really only found one person that understood what I was really trying to say. The way we are approaching things right now is so much more sophisticated. OTT is a digital buy, it’s a digital retargeting. I can retarget somebody that’s saw my commercial on Yellowstone. It’s a very different buy, which I find very refreshing. Quite frankly, it’s interesting, I remember introducing the internet to my clients in 1996, ’97, and the majority of people in that room, almost all of them said, “Well, we’ll get to it, we’ll see what happens.” And then the following year, “Well, we’ll see a little bit more.” If I was able to buy Google stock in 1996 and I put $1,000 dollars down, I’d be a multimillionaire just from that investment. So where we are with television and OTT is, I believe we’re somewhere around 2001 right now.

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah, I heard Bob Iger was debating what to do, because they own, I think, a majority stake in Hulu. Most people equate Disney to owning just Disney+, but they actually own majority of Hulu. And it’s like, what do we do with this? Is it the right audience? How do we blend it? So I think even these big entities, these big blue chips are still trying to figure that out. They don’t know.

Harlan Schillinger

Well, all of it’s new. It’s, what, 10 years old, seven years old? At what point do you say, “I’m going to be an early adopter and I’m going to find my way”? People that went onto the internet and started really embracing it in the late ’90s, are certainly much further ahead than people that embraced it in 2005 or 2003, because it’s a learning curve, and it’s very hard to convince people sometimes, “Well, let’s jump in, we don’t know what we’re doing, but we got to be there. Now I’m not saying we go about it that way, but it does take a lot of work, and it’s worth it. Because I don’t know anything that I’ve really accomplished that didn’t take a lot of work, but if I was an early adopter… I’m an or early adopter on this whole conversation as far as, where is business? You take a market like Las Vegas, it’s crazy. At the 7:30 AM break on the Today show, there are five or six slots, and every single one of them is another lawyer, and they’re all saying the same thing. “I’ll do… I’m this. I’m that. I’m this. I’m, I’m, I’m, me, me, me.” At what point does it become useless?

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah, where it’s completely saturated, and if you’re the only one advertising somewhere, you’re automatically the best because you’re the only one. So there’s something to be said with that,

Harlan Schillinger

But I found out that there’s nobody buying the news on Sunday night between the weather and the sports, which is the highest rated time, and there’s not a lawyer in that spot, and there’s not a lawyer on air that has a true and honest testimonial.

Chris Dreyer:

If we’re covering traditional marketing, we can’t leave out billboards. Billboards continue to work very well for law firms, they drive home messaging through repetition. Now you may be thinking that to get repetition, you need to buy every billboard on the road, but it turns out a well-placed billboard can have a massive impact. Harlan explains.

Harlan Schillinger

The most important word in billboards location. It’s like real estate because it is real estate. It’s an important word in your business, in SEO, location. What location do I want? Well, I want to be in the map pack because, that’s the best location to be in, hypothetically. Billboards are even more hyper-focused on location. Location matters, and what you say matters. I have a client in Kentucky that has one or two billboards, that one billboard is on one of the busiest highways going into one of the very busiest plants in Kentucky. Is that a good location? You got people coming and going all day long in that blue collar, and all day long driving in and driving out. And so he chose to plant his stake in the ground on that billboard.

Chris Dreyer:

I’d say that’d be pretty effective, because you’d get the repetition of the people going and to work and back.

Harlan Schillinger

It is. And he couldn’t afford really to buy billboards all over the territory. It just wasn’t affordable, and locations were very difficult. But locations are very important. I’ll give you a prime example of a bad choice in billboards. Most people buy billboards because their competitors buy them, so they think they have to be on them. That’s going on with buses, which are really mobile billboards. How many times has a billboard company or an agency said, “Well, I got three billboards in a row,” and you take a good look at it and you drive by because I’m adamant about having to physically drive by the billboard to see exactly what it looks like, and how it’s positioned in the marketplace. Well those three billboards are across the street on the left-hand side. So what you’re asking the driver to do is lift his eyes, turn his head, look at the billboards, takes his eyes off the road, look at those billboards, you’re going against traffic. Now, is that the ideal location for somebody? No, I don’t believe so. I say no. But the biggest faux pas that people do you in making billboards is, number one, the messaging. Crowding so much onto a billboard. That’s the majority of billboards, you can’t read them. And the location.

Chris Dreyer:

Got it. And then you mentioned it, so I’ll lean into it on the buses, it seems like most of the buses probably have a set route, and then I look at a company I think that’s really disrupting, and I get nothing for saying this, but I think Carvertise, it’s smart. They’re using data to analyze where foot traffic is for that respective time. So you send the cars there, versus the bus is going to go wherever the bus goes, their route, where there’s a little bit of flexibility there. The car is going to go drive around the Bucks stadium when there’s a game there. I think there’s some flexibility, and when we talk about targeting, that’s what I see the big advantage of, say, them versus a bus.
And then one last one here on the, where’s client? Grassroots marketing. So the person that I think of, the firm that I think of that really comes clear to me is Gordon McKernan. So Gordon Gives, they do so much with their community, and I’ve had other amazing attorneys on this podcast that do excellent work through grassroots marketing. How does that fit in? We had Jacqueline Bretell, her firm does amazing, Bighorn Law. Where does that fit in in this whole infrastructure of marketing and getting your messaging out?

Harlan Schillinger

Well, it has a lot to do with credibility, and I firmly believe in community involvement, particularly being involved and not just writing a check, but I believe you have to be able to tell your story, and you got to get it out. And you got to get it out in not a braggadocios way, you got to tell the story, and I think that’s where social comes in. But I think that’s where the credibility of your practice comes in. Number one, if you’re going to do community involvement mean it, don’t do it because your competitors are doing it, or you have to do it because you think you’re going to get business from it. Do it because you want to do it.
And then telling the story of the event, give out 10,000 turkeys, hypothetically, there’s a story behind it. Who are we giving them to? Why are we giving it to them? Where can you get this whole story? And I think that people come up real short on all of that. We could all tell better stories about what we did and how we did it. I think for two reasons. Number one, you want to really spread the word, I’m sure, it’s good for business. But also I think there’s an element of getting your other merchants, and getting your other competitors, or getting other people to step up to. And I think that’s an obligation that we have, to get other people to rise up,

Chris Dreyer:

Couldn’t agree more, and then just have a big impact, it’s a force multiplier.

Harlan Schillinger

Chris, you just spurred on a thought. Do you know, in my opinion, of course, everybody has an opinion, in my opinion, the majority of people that do community service, they do it to look good, and they do a half-assed job at it, or they do it because their competitors are doing it. If you’re going to do it, do it in a most meaningful way, do it from the heart.

Chris Dreyer:

Comes back to that authenticity. One thing I wanted to touch on was expansion, and I’ve heard John Morgan use the teacup analogy where you’re putting money in and it starts to overflow and you’re not getting the same amount from it. But then I see individuals like Dan Newlin, he’s in Orlando, he’s got, what, 14,000 Google reviews, and he’s owning Orlando. And then you have the nationwide firms, and then you got the guys that are expanding practice areas, and then dipping into mass torts. I guess there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat, but how do you approach expansion? How does a firm know when it’s time to expand? What’s your thought process when it goes into that? You’ve got the client experience, you’re doing an amazing job for the community, you’re known, your advertising’s working, what goes into that?

Harlan Schillinger

Well, first of all, you have to have the money to expand. And so I think that’s an opportunity to understand, “Well, can I or can I not afford to do what I need to do?” and not take it away from your main practice, your main office. Moving into another market is more and more common because if you tap out that market or you reach your point in that market, it’s logical to go to the next market. Make sure that you’re well funded, make sure that you have a strategic plan, make sure that you understand what opportunities you have on the advertising side of it. I wouldn’t go into it and assume because you did well in one market, you’ll be doing well in another. I think you have to have the right personnel in that marketplace because you have to produce good work, and you want credibility in that marketplace.
So there’s a lot of different ways to go into it. Talk about John Morgan, he would normally go into a market and spend a phenomenal amount of money, and just bleed everybody dry and just really oversaturate the market. That’s one option. But he’s also changed his tune too. What he said to me was, “No, I’m going into Arizona and I’m having a ground game, modest ground game to establish business, establish my reputation, establish that I can try these cases, pick up cases as co-counsel and then two years later unleash the advertising, or unleash it in segments.” If you carpet bomb a market, you got to be able to afford that, and carry it for five, eight, six, seven years.
And so people are changing how they’re going into markets and so on. They’re going into a lot slower because of cashflow because you’re not going to make any money five or seven years in a marketplace, or see it in your pocket. You have to be able to sustain that. And so there’s another way to get into markets. Getting into another market is important. What people are really leaving on the table before you go into another market. I’d sit back and say, “How is my practice running? Is my car tuned?” If I’m going to go into a race, I don’t want to just go around the track. I want to win going around the track of my home market. And I think that people have a model and they bring that same model to the next market, but that model, as we talked about, is changing.
Chris, I really want the audience to understand there is a huge opportunity in getting better cases and practicing better law, putting more effort into settlements. I had a panel at National Trial Lawyers and the panel was with Michael Berg, Jeff Huff, and Brian Garelli, and they started talking about money and financing the practice, and how do you manage your money and so on. And Michael Berg, from Burg Simpson, has been very successful going into other markets and being a leader in our legal world on cases and such. And we started to talk about, “Well, how do you build a case?” The majority of lawyers, almost anyone that I can think of, gets on the phone with the insurance company and they let the insurance company establish what the value of the case is, literally. Now, people that are listening to this podcast are going to deny that, but you can’t tell me that colossal doesn’t ruin the conversation, “Well, this is what we’re willing to pay.” Or why is it that so few lawyers establish what the case value is and then negotiate from their number, as opposed to negotiating from the insurance company’s number?
That is a whole conversation on negotiation. That’s a whole conversation on building the case and that’s a whole other podcast. But when you talk about building a case, why would I want to negotiate against myself, and why would I want to negotiate from the number that the insurance company tells me that they want to pay? Because they want to pay as little as possible.

Chris Dreyer:

I just spoke with Michael Alder from AlderLaw, and he was talking about the exact same thing. It’s, when you start to get these different numbers, no, there’s all kinds of red flags, and that’s why he’s filing seven out of 10 that he receives as opposed to the opposite, where you’re not filing. It’s such an interesting dynamic because a lot of times people just lean to, “We need more leads, more leads, more leads,” but what about maximizing the leads you already have? Maybe you don’t need as many if you can get maximum value out of the ones that you have.

Harlan Schillinger

Well that’s a whole other conversation because you just started to open up the door about intake and conversion, and maximising your intake and conversion, and doing a far better job, and stuff that’s falling through the cracks. We’ll probably leave that conversation for another day, and it’s imperative that we have that conversation at some point because it’s the biggest hole in everybody’s bucket. What I do want to bestow upon the audience is an opportunity on how to make more money, practice better law, practice culture in your office, don’t practice, do. People want to do business with people they want to do business with. We’re in a grab society.
I’ll tell you what pushed me over the edge with a lot of things was the Camp Lejeune project. I noticed it’s a money grab. Half of the marketing is crazy money being spent on marketing. I listened to over 100 telephone calls and I did not hear one person say-

Chris Dreyer:

Thank you for your service.

Harlan Schillinger

… “Thank you for your service,” or, “How do you feel?”
And so if you notice a lot of that advertising tapered off because they say the cases dried up. The cases didn’t dry up, the lawyers dried up, they dried up the valley by just treating people disrespectfully, treating people as a money grab, “You’re a number. I don’t care who you are or what you do, just tell me name rank and serial number.” But that falls back into the original conversation about the oath of office. It’s disgusting, it’s absolutely crazy. I went overboard on my feelings about this, being a veteran perhaps, but being a human being, you don’t treat people that way. And what it really made me think about is how much of a money grab are we really in, Chris? What is really going on? How does a consultant that’s been practicing law for five years, that hasn’t really made a lot of money at it, tell everybody how successful they are, and how they can show the promised land, and then 1,000 lawyers, not a 1,000, but let’s say 100 lawyers show up at a marketing seminar put on by somebody like that. Whose fault is that? The lawyers are so desperate to find money and to make money that they’ll listen to almost anyone and do almost anything. And that’s going on right now in our profession. It’s disgusting.

Chris Dreyer:

It’s up to lawyers to make a change, to really put the client first and do the best by them to get maximum value, to help them, to really go that extra mile.

Harlan Schillinger

The crazy thing about that is when you do that, you’re helping yourself.

Chris Dreyer:

Thanks to Harlan for coming on the show again. He has a wealth of information, and loves to share. You can find him harlanschillinger.com. You can find his site as well as a link to his first interview in the show notes. On episode 60, we take a deep dive into doing intake right.
All right, let’s get to the pinpoints PIM points. PIM point number one, be who you are. In all your marketing messaging, know how you want to be perceived, then deliver on that perception. Pour resources into maximising the value of your cases.

Harlan Schillinger

You can move these cases along and get paid, or you can do one hell of a job for every one of your clients, and I guarantee you’ll make more money, and the client will be far more satisfied.

Chris Dreyer:

PIM point number two. Build a solid website using best practices that keeps Google happy. Invest in SEO. Don’t try to rank for hundreds of keywords, try to rank for an entire category.

Harlan Schillinger

If I maximize three words, six words, 12 words, this is what’s turning the numbers. This is what people are dialing into. This is what people are searching. And putting my effort into quality, not quantity, I think that’s a solid strategy. And most importantly, you have to work it. You have to work it constantly, which means you have to be involved with your agency, knowing what they’re doing, and giving them the tools, and pushing them to be that targeted on SEO. People, I mean I certainly value SEO over PPC, because PPC is a tactic, but SEO is a solid approach.

Chris Dreyer:

And PIM point number three, shift the way you spend. Users can get similar content on both cable and streaming, but how that content gets consumed is completely different. So you can’t use the same advertising strategy on cable that you would on OTT.

Harlan Schillinger

The beautiful part about OTT is that you can really niche down, you can really find your audience.

Chris Dreyer:

I’m Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. If you’ve made it this far, it’s time to pay the tax. No, I’m not talking about taking your cash like Big G, I’m asking you for a five star review on Apple or Spotify. Leave me a review and I’ll forever be grateful. If this is your first episode, welcome and thanks for hanging out. So come back for fresh interviews where you can hear from those making it rain. Catch you next time. I’m out.