MS: And there are other challenges that they face, right? So there are law firms that can’t afford to prosecute their cases. Now, no one, they wouldn’t want to admit that, right? But if you walk into a law firm, and you need help on a case, it’s very hard to know, “Does this law firm have the financial resources to pursue my case?” And many of them don’t. So there are some conversations that happen around the country at contingent-fee law firms every day. One of them is, “Hey, we just signed up a giant case. It’s going to be very expensive. Let’s try to settle some of these other cases a little earlier so we’ll have the money to prosecute this big case.” Now, that shouldn’t happen. That’s malpractice, right, because the smaller cases deserve full prosecution efforts as well; but that’s a reality. Another reality is, “Hey, payroll is Monday. Let’s settle a few cases because we need to make payroll.” And again, that’s malpractice.
MS: So, you know, the ability to push forward aggressively on their cases that our clients have makes a huge difference. First of all, they’re going to get better results. And they’re going to get better results because they’re going to invest in the best experts and the best trial support. And that has a direct impact on the results they’re going to get for their clients. And they’re also going to shorten their time on-desk. The time it takes from signing a client up to concluding the case tends to shorten, because they don’t have to delay. They don’t have to wait a week or two to hire that expert on this case because they have other cases.
MS: So their ability to push forward aggressively, hiring the very best trial support that they can, shortens the time on-desk. So they can turn many more cases in a year than they used to be. And that has the effect of helping more people, and getting them better results for their cases, and increasing the law firm revenue over time; because if they’re getting better results, they’re getting more fees. And if they’re turning more cases every year, obviously that translates into more fees as well.
BIR: Well, it certainly sounds like a good plan to go with. Is this standard across the industry? Or do you still have to get this word out, and education, to plaintiff lawyers out there?
MS: Yeah, it’s funny. We’re kind of like the, I guess we’re the 19-year, overnight success story. We’ve been doing this since 1999. I’ve been involved since 2000. And yet, there are many, many plaintiff lawyers who don’t realize this service is available to them. And it’s taken us a long time, really, to perfect the ability to gain the right clients. So if you’re a commercial lender or a lender of any kind, people who really are in difficult spots will find you, right? They’re Googling at night to make cash or make payroll. And those folks have always been able to find us. We only fund one out of every four applications we take, because where we are is at the high-quality, low-risk end of the lending spectrum.
MS: So our typical clients have been self-funding. They truly don’t need the money. It’s not that they’re in trouble. And it’s hard to get their attention, right? So they’re not going to be perusing the internet, looking for funding for their cases, because it’s always worked well for them this way. You know, they don’t really realize how much better they could be doing. So what we do is, come alongside them. We attempt to make contact with them, and build a relationship, and build trust over, usually, several years before they become a client. And that’s where we do a lot of other education to help with that.
MS: So in our Nashville studio, we do quite a few different types of videos. One type of video highlights some of the important casework that’s being done by our clients and other lawyers around the country. I wrote a book, as you mentioned in the introduction, called How David Beats Goliath. And the name of that book was suggested to me by my business partner and friend, Dan Taussig, because it really is kind of a David versus Goliath thing. Even if you’re a very successful law firm, you’re going up against State Farm, or you know, Nationwide, and this kind of thing. So it’s a David versus Goliath thing. So in that book, I put it together to help plaintiff lawyers generally, because we think a rising tide lifts all boats. We’re trying to educate future customers to run their law firm financially well enough to become a customer eventually. It’s the only book ever written to help plaintiff lawyers understand finance, and much of the book is actually, a lot of it’s kind of the inverse of what we’ve seen done wrong out there. We try to help folks avoid those pitfalls.
MS: So we do video content based upon the book. I speak around the country based upon the book content to help plaintiff lawyers. We also do webinars to help them in various business topics, like HR issues, or maybe IT, or insurance. So we’re trying to give them all the tools that we can. I think that when a prospective client starts to look at us, I think they see that we’re engaged, we’re involved. We’re really trying to help all plaintiff lawyers, and I think that goes a long way to landing clients for us. But it took a long time to figure out how to do that. How do you sell funding to a law firm that doesn’t need it?
