Joseph Gates:

There has to be some compelling reason to motivate strangers to want to give money to my clients.

Chris Dreyer:

Build a strong infrastructure. When the clients begin to roll in, you will have more time for quality casework.

Joseph Gates:

Our brains are hardwired to accept that through storytelling.

Chris Dreyer:

Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the legal marketing agency that works harder than the competition. Each week you get insights and wisdom from some of the best in industry. Hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. All right, let’s dive in.

To build a successful firm from the ground up, you need a solid foundation. Just three years ago, Joseph Gates struck out on his own in Little Rock, Arkansas to open Gates Law Firm. He built his firm on stable personal finances, bolstered by a community of peers, and powered by a relentless drive to improve his craft.

On today’s episode, Joseph shares the best way to prepare for opening a firm and how bar associations help fuel his growth, both as an attorney and a business owner. Joseph is continually improving his skills as a trial lawyer. He shares the simple, yet incredibly effective question that helped level up his depositions, and he makes an impassioned case for limiting confidentiality for personal injury law. Here’s Joseph Gates, owner of Gates Law Firm.

Joseph Gates:

I went to school at Louisiana Tech for college and I got a psychology degree. What do you get with a psychology degree? You buy more school is what you get because there’s nothing you can do with a bachelor’s. So sometime around junior year I decided, “Hey, I’ll just take the LSAT and let’s see what happens.” Did not do well my first time, but tried again and did pretty well and got accepted at the University of Arkansas. Growing up in South Arkansas, I just had to get a degree with a Razorback on it.

Chris Dreyer:

Gosh, the Razorbacks, I watched a little Razorback basketball. But anyways-

Joseph Gates:

Oh, yeah. If it was the nineties, Corliss Williamson was a big deal.

Chris Dreyer:

That’s who it was. Yeah, Razorback basketball was incredible back then.

So Gates Law Firm, it’s fairly new practice. You opened in 2020 and you worked for, I believe, a couple firms and you decided to open your own firm. What was that moment that you made the decision like, “Hey, I’m ready. I’m going to open my own firm?”

Joseph Gates:

I started my career at an advertising firm. Did there for three years, got my teeth kicked in at some jury trials, and I was like, “I need more mentorship.” So I joined a very seasoned attorney, Paul Byrd, and practiced with him for about seven years. Throughout that time, we were a very small shop, so I also did some admin stuff. And I built confidence that I could handle some of the admin stuff because, as an owner, I wear my lawyer hat maybe a third of the time. Going through that experience, I got confidence on the legal side with my skill sets on that, and then had some more confidence that I could handle the admin side. It was something I probably always wanted to do is to own my own business, be my own boss, and finally made the plunge during the middle of Covid, because why not?

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah. Amazing. Perfect timing. You got to work on the business a little bit more since you couldn’t take as many cases to trial, honestly.

Joseph Gates:

To that point, it helped me. I officially opened in October of 2020 and the rest of the year I was just building out my processes and then really started litigating cases January of 2021. But I spent that three months really working on the infrastructure and I think that paid dividends that I still have today.

Chris Dreyer:

There are many attorneys listening, they’re probably considering opening their own practice. Maybe they’re an excellent trial attorney at a firm that’s been around or they’re considering it. What were some of your biggest hurdles and how did you overcome them and also what good habits did you put into place?

Joseph Gates:

The biggest hurdle is how can I afford to litigate the cases? My personal finances were in a good place. I mean, at this point the only debt we have is our house. So strongly recommend anyone that’s thinking about owning a business is really get your personal finances in order first. Because it’s going to be lean, everyone that does personal injury understands the feast and famine of it. It can take years to really see a return on a case. It helped me having the other stuff put together. One, because then I could go to a bank and get a line of credit, which is what I did. I know there’s other vendors that cater to personal injury attorneys and that could be a good way. And so if you got your personal stuff, because ultimately you’re going to be the one signing the guarantee, if they look at that and it all looks okay, you’ll likely get a loan.

Chris Dreyer:

Being a trial attorney more, is it for the cost involved for like the expert witnesses, the tech and things like that, a combination of that and the cashflow?

Joseph Gates:

Sure, sure. And unlike Perry Mason, we don’t have one case at a time. We’ve got multiple cases. And so it’s juggling, “When do I take the deposition because I got to pay the fees on flying the expert in,” and there may be multiple cases with experts. So yeah, I mean it’s primarily just juggling all of that as you’re moving along.

Chris Dreyer:

Being a new firm, how are you positioning yourself to get cases? How are you getting traction early on?

Joseph Gates:

Before I opened my firm, I was extremely involved in the trial lawyer organizations. I’m in Arkansas, we have a small community and I’m very involved in Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association, currently serving on the EC and the board. But I’m also very involved in AAJ, the American Association for Justice. Those organizations have been foundational and fundamental, I can’t imagine practice without them. Not only is it just finding the contacts, but it’s also the resources and really the mission.

Something that not everyone appreciates in our preamble to our ethical canon is, we have a duty to our client, but we also have a duty to the public for public safety. And I think being involved in tribal organizations have helped raise awareness for me about the legislative aspect because they’re super involved at the capital, either state capital or DC, lobbying and make sure we can have access to the courthouse. I could be the best lawyer I want to, but if I don’t have a way to show my skillset in the courtroom setting, then it doesn’t matter.

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah, absolutely. So you’re on the faculty at AAJ, you have an amazing trial experience, you’re an amazing trial attorney, you really enjoy those depos. How can an attorney become better? How do you prepare for a deposition to identify and close any potential loopholes or inconsistencies in the testimony?

Joseph Gates:

To prepare for a deposition, really try to think the end in mind. I mean, everyone that does personal injury can appreciate this. Most cases resolve, most cases don’t go to trial. But what we try to do here is think of the end and work backwards. So think of, “All right, what proof am I trying to prove?” So look at the jury instructions. It’s not always clean, but it’s designed for a judge to read to the jury what the complex law is. So start there and figure out, “Okay, what are the elements to prove?”

That’s for the judge, so I can prove the legal stuff to get past the judge. But what’s also the compelling side for the jury because at the end of the day, we’re asking people for money and especially in the south, that’s taboo and very uncomfortable. So there has to be some compelling reason to motivate strangers to want to give money to my clients. And so as I think through that, I’m trying to craft not only the legal side, but also the story side and weave that into the depositions.

Chris Dreyer:

I saw that you’re fond of using NLP, the neurolinguistic programming techniques. Does that come into place in terms of the story or is that the cross-examination? Where does that come in?

Joseph Gates:

It is storytelling at the end of the day. I mean, foundational to us being humans and us being able to survive was able to communicate information in an effective way and our brains are hardwired to accept that through storytelling. I, just yesterday, bought a screenwriting book on storytelling. I’m not going to write a screenplay or anything, but I’m going to try to take principles out of that and apply that in the real world.

Chris Dreyer:

Is that the classic hero’s journey, where you’ve got these setbacks and you’re painting this picture of the adversity to try to latch onto things?

Joseph Gates:

Yes, that too. And then it will depend on the case and not every case is going to fit in a cookie cutter way. There are themes that you can see throughout in a particular case. It could be a trucking company prioritizing their profits over safety. Greed is a very foundational sin. And so that is a good way to bring that out through depositions of corporate executives of like, “Okay, so why did you make this decision to put this driver there when you knew he had to speed to get to where he’s going?” “Well, the reason why is because we got to move freight. If we’re not moving freight, we’re not making money.” But there’s a safe way to do that too and they chose not to do the safe way.

Chris Dreyer:

If you want to be better, ask better questions. Joseph is an expert in taking depositions and one of his favorite questions draws the power from simplicity.

Joseph Gates:

What else? What else is a great question to ask when you’re trying to… Here’s an example. I will say a general rule, “A driver should watch where they’re going,” duh. Yeah, sure. Is that an important rule? Yes. Why? Because blah, blah, blah, blah. What else? What else is implying that there is more out there? You’re forcing me to try to explain something to you, what else implies that there’s something else. And so as we teach at the college, I’ll say, “What else,” three or four times and keep eliciting more information. It implies that there’s more to be gained, that there’s more out there.

Chris Dreyer:

How do you source expert witnesses? Because I imagine they’re incremental in some cases to the verdict you’re going to receive. Where do you go about getting these expert witnesses? Do they have expert witness websites. And I’m an SEO guy.

Joseph Gates:

That’s a foundational question. Where can I get testimony? Now to analyze that, I’ve got to ask myself, “Is this something a lay person cannot testify to?” And so if there’s a technical, scientific or medical component to the testimony that I’m trying to get, the odds are I need an expert. There are great resources out there.

One beneficial way is to figure out if it’s a products’ liability case or something, and there’s an industry standard, there’s a ASTM standard. Try to figure out who’s on that committee and see if someone on the committee would be willing to testify. But the best resources are joining the listservs and joining the community and asking someone else, like someone that has had a similar case and like, “Hey, who did you use as your expert?” The sharing aspect is critical because these cases usually don’t happen in a vacuum.

If the bad event, like if a product failed, odds are that not just it happened this one time. And if it’s like a trucking case or something, the behavior behind that will probably carry across more than just one event. So trying to figure out who could be qualified to testify to that. If there’s any standards, check to see if anyone on the committee would be willing to testify, ask other lawyers. There are services that are available. And if it’s a medical thing, try to see if a treating physician would be willing to testify and sometimes that can be hard. But there are services out there that you can communicate with who also do the sourcing for us as well and I use those as well.

Chris Dreyer:

Limiting confidentiality, especially in personal injury cases is a passion for Joseph. He explains why it’s important for clients and for the public.

Joseph Gates:

Part of our canon is not only a duty to our client and to the profession, but we have a duty to the public. Litigation is a public forum. It’s embedded in the seventh amendment, right to trial by jury. Jury implies public. When you thrust confidentiality into the public forum, there has to be a very compelling reason. The problem is for lawyers like us where we have a client who desperately wants to be made whole, and then you have the opponent who wants to keep everything quiet, what do you do? You’ve got a client here who needs to be made whole, but you’re getting pressure to just sign it. So I recognize that it’s a tough choice to make and that’s where our judiciary needs to step up and say, “Hey, no, we can’t just have blanket confidentiality,” because the public needs to know what’s going on out there.

Chris Dreyer:

So to the extreme, does that impact things in how you market your firm on the extreme case of something like reviews, like maybe keeping reviews anonymous? Are you talking about the specifics in the case more, because I would imagine some of your clients may inadvertently give up confidentiality and talk about things.

Joseph Gates:

Here’s an example. Common cases where before we can get documents, which we need documents for our depositions and we need to do the depositions or trial because odds are we’re not going to go to trial and that’s the way where we really can make hay. Before we can get the documents to help us in the deposition, the defense hands us a proposed protective order which puts everything under seal. The client is like, “What do I care? I just need to be made whole.” Some will care. No one’s going to tell them not to tell their story, but for the documents that are needed to prove up the case, they’re going to want to have that covered or they want you to destroy the documents after the case is over.

Thankfully, there are ethical opinions out there, which I have all the resources on that, that say you can’t ask us to destroy documents and there’s actually a high hurdle to have confidentiality if it is a trade secret. We have a judge in Arkansas, a federal judge in Arkansas that says, “You know what should be under confidentiality? The secret recipe to Coca-Cola.” Yeah, sure like that, but just common safety stuff like, “What are your safety principles?” No, why should that be under confidentiality? Or if you’ve got a design of a crap product that hurts someone, but who cares, it’s not like anyone’s going to steal that anyway, but they desire the confidentiality to limit exposure and not tell the world what’s really going on.

At the end of the day, the main reason why they want confidentiality is because what’s good evidence? A prior similar incident, because then that’s notice and that’s, “Oh, you knew you had a problem and you chose to do nothing about it, so then someone else got hurt.” So that actually builds in punitive, damages, at the end of the day for a corporation. We can’t throw a corporation in jail. We can only assess money damages and money will motivate behavior. So by putting confidentiality on the facts of the case or the documents that would prevent the subsequent attorney from actually using that information in their case, and that’s what they want. Because like I said, knowing a defendant knew they had a prior event and then did nothing about it, stirs up some righteous anger, which is a storytelling thing that we talked about earlier, because of greed and all of that.

Chris Dreyer:

What’s next for your firm and where can people go to connect with you?

Joseph Gates:

I’m in Little Rock, Arkansas, lived in Arkansas my whole life. Proud Razorback even when they break my heart. But my website’s, gateslawpllc.com, my email gates@gateslawpllc.com. I am a firm believer of sharing information. I’m happy to share whatever I have. If anyone needs any help on how to fight overly broad protective orders, I’ve got those resources because I’ve done the research and I fought those battles, so happy to share that. What’s next is, I just had a good mediation Friday, so I’m trying to figure out what to do with myself this week. So just keep rocking and rolling, man.

Chris Dreyer:

Thanks so much for Joseph for sharing his wisdom today. Let’s hit the takeaways, time for the pinpoints.

Get involved, connect with your peers, join bar associations, conferences, masterminds, and professional networks to level up. Make new connections and offer what you have learned along the way. Everyone has something valuable to share here at PIM, we want this community to thrive.

Joseph Gates:

Those organizations have been foundational and fundamental. I can’t imagine practice without them. Not only is it just the contacts, but it’s also the resources and really the mission.

Chris Dreyer:

Tell a compelling story. Jurors are human. They want to connect and emphasize, not just process facts. Money may be a taboo subject where you are. So take the time to understand social norms for your jurors. What life experiences or beliefs might influence how they view your request, then craft a story that aligns with their values. Show how this money can help make your client whole again. Illustrate how it’ll improve their life. If you convey true empathy to your client’s suffering and clearly explain how damages will right the scales of justice, jurors can get past these initial taboos.

Joseph Gates:

Look at the jury instructions. It’s not always clean, but it’s designed for a judge to read to the jury what the complex law is. So start there and figure out, “Okay, what are the elements to prove?” But also think of it like, “That’s for the judge,” so I can prove the legal stuff to get past the judge. But what’s also the compelling side for the jury?

Chris Dreyer:

Ask better questions. When taking depositions finding the right questions can take trial and error, but Joseph falls back on the simple yet powerful question, “What else,” to get the most information.

Joseph Gates:

What else? What else is implying that there is more out there and it forces, like you’re forcing me to try to explain something to you. What else implies that there’s something else. And so as we teach at the college, I’ll say, “What else,” three or four times and keep eliciting more information because it implies that there’s more out there.

Chris Dreyer:

For more information about Joseph, check out the show notes. While you’re there, please hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode of Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io.

All right everybody, thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I’m out.