👋 Good morning. Chris Dreyer here. PIMCON 2026 is a wrap, and let me tell you: Year three felt like a reunion. Where else do you get goat yoga and Ray Lewis on the same agenda?
Anyway, thanks again if you made the trip. Consider this issue your recap edition, the best of what I heard in Scottsdale.
Let's start with Morris Bart. He's been on TV since 1980, and he had a lot to share about what it takes to become a household name today. And somehow, it involves hot sauce. 🌶️
You'll also hear how Morgan & Morgan's intake team once lost cases to one bad habit, and how Angie Flury found it and fixed it.
Plus, how Digger Earles turned a $75,000 deal with Alvin Kamara into a decade of Saints partnerships. 👇
Let's get into it.
📅 Lock In PIMCON 2027 at Early-Bird Pricing
I'd love to see you in the room next year. PIMCON 2027 is Oct. 3-5, back at The Phoenician in Scottsdale, Arizona, and early-bird tickets are on sale now.
As a newsletter reader, you get an extra $150 off with code PIMNEWS. Early-bird pricing will be the lowest price to attend, so lock in your seat now.
💡 ONE BIG IDEA
How Morris Bart Became a Household Name
In 1980, Morris Bart ran one of the first personal injury TV ads in the country. One night, a man called, and after hearing his story, Morris signed the case.
He's been on TV ever since. Today Morris Bart LLC spends $25 million a year on advertising and has 85 attorneys and 250 employees in 17 offices across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
I've had Morris on the podcast twice, and I still came away with a ton of value from his PIMCON keynote.
He talked about what it takes to become a household name, and his whole approach comes down to a line from his father:
"Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise."
I dig it…
Most of us ask whether a marketing channel works. Morris told the room that's the wrong question:
"All marketing works, all of it does," he said. "That's not the question. The real question is what is most effective."
So take this advice from the guy spending $25 million a year on ads. It could help you land on what's most effective for your firm:
Pick the creative that fits you, then trust your gut. Nobody has a lock on creative, Morris said, and money is finite. Humor wasn't his style, so he went with money: ads built around how much clients could recover. It worked. Those ads made the phone ring, and they're an industry standard now.
Make the next step easy. Meaning, what do you want people to do once they've seen your ad? For most firms, it's a phone call. Well, back in the day, a Grapefruit 45 diet infomercial convinced Morris that people want one easy step. That's where "One Call, That's All" came from. Decades later, the firm pairs it with "One click, that's it."
Put your face on it. PI is a personal service business, Morris said, and viewers judge you in seconds, not entirely different from how a good lawyer would size up jurors with one glance. So make the ad creative personal. Jim Adler, John Morgan, and Morris each have a different style. And yet, each one produces personal ads that both ooze authenticity and deliver results.
I hear you asking, "But Chris, that was eons ago when TV ruled. What's the play for now?"
Here's Morris Bart with the answer:
"You are the media now."
Get out there and make content people want to watch. Morris's secret is the real work he does in the community that he then shares on social media.
But he cautioned attendees that he doesn't mean the kind of old-school sponsorship that ends with "this segment brought to you by…"
That won't work today. Law firms must engage in meaningful community work. Case in point…
Fifty of Morris's employees once packed 800 boxes of food for the Second Harvest food bank, and the firm shared the videos on social media.
Then there's the Morris Bart hot sauce. (Because of course there is.)
Marketing gimmick?
Not quite. Rouses sells it exclusively in all 72 of the grocery chain's stores, where Morris said it's the second-best seller after Tabasco. It's served in 38 New Orleans restaurants, and it's coming to Amazon.
All of the profits go to Second Harvest, and the sauce gives the firm a tremendous brand and reputation lift.
Morris gave the room two questions to answer that I think are foundational to any PI marketing strategy.
What image do you want your firm to project? And what can you do in your community that's meaningful that could provide content collateral that resonates with regular people?
🏈 FROM THE STAGE
How Digger Earles Signed Alvin Kamara for $75,000
"People don't remember credentials," Digger Earles told us. "They remember characters."
Reebok had Shaq. Papa John's had Peyton Manning. State Farm went with Patrick Mahomes.
But law held out on athlete endorsements, Digger said, because lawyers worried about looking unprofessional.
Digger didn't wait. He priced out New Orleans Saints players for his firm's ads. Drew Brees would have cost about $500,000, he said, and Cam Jordan about $300,000.
So he signed a rookie, Alvin Kamara, for $75,000. Kamara went on to win Offensive Rookie of the Year.
That one deal led to a decade of Saints partnerships for Laborde Earles Injury Lawyers, including Taysom Hill, Jamaal Williams, Bobby Hebert, and now quarterback Tyler Shough.
Today, 70% of the firm's business comes from its brand. "That's the moat," Digger said.
I talked about brand vs. performance in the newsletter back in January…
Why does brand matter? Because case results alone don't set a firm apart, Digger said. He spent years and millions of dollars on ads promoting verdicts and testimonials.
And after all that investment, a lead-gen company could set up in his market overnight and start pulling cases.
Here's his playbook for signing an athlete:
Go NFL over college. Brand association takes about three years to build, Digger said. College players can be gone in one to three years, while NFL players sign long-term contracts.
Vet character first. The athlete needs a squeaky clean character, he said, and the contract needs a morals clause to back that up. Buy star power, and skip bench players unless they're pillars of the community.
Lock down the contract. He insists on category exclusivity, so the athlete can't appear for other lawyers, and at least a three-year term with a three-year renewal option. The athlete also posts on their own accounts, gives you a dedicated filming day, and signs merchandise for giveaways.
Pay through the foundation. Digger pays the athlete by donating to their foundation. That puts the firm alongside the athlete at camps and back-to-school events, the kind of community moments Morris Bart turns into content.
To start, Digger said, pick the athlete, Google their agent, and make the call. Before you sign anyone, check your state bar's rules on paid endorsers in lawyer ads.
📸 SCENES FROM SCOTTSDALE
We kicked things off Sunday night on the lawn at The Phoenician, with Camelback Mountain behind us and a disco-ball arch over the bar. It's year three, so a lot of the night felt like catching up with old friends.
Rankings Alley came with a racing simulator, which is a risky thing to put in front of a room full of hyper-competitive PI attorneys. Judging by that grin, this lap went well.
Iliza Shlesinger took Monday night's comedy show right into the crowd, and they loved every second of it.
The PIMCON merch bar went through 430 pieces of swag, from hoodies to hats. If you missed out, there's always 2027.
♟️ STEAL THIS PLAYBOOK
How Morgan & Morgan Signs Nearly 96% of Qualified Callers
When Angie Flury first met John Morgan, he told her to imagine she ran Morgan & Morgan Plumbing. When your toilet overflows, he asked, what do you want the plumber to do?
Answer the phone.
Angie had spent 20 years running call centers in financial services, and Morgan hired her because he believes business people should run his business. Today she's Chief Call Center Officer at Morgan & Morgan, where her 1,500 agents handle about 11,000 calls a day.
I opened PIMCON by telling the room that marketing is just leveraged sales. Every marketing dollar you spend works toward one moment: when the client signs the retainer. Angie's keynote was about that moment.
At Morgan's scale, she said, one point of conversion is worth millions. So when conversion sat in the 80% range and her boss wanted 95%, she had an AI vendor listen to 100% of the calls.
It took a week of pushing, but the AI found that agents assumed callers already wanted Morgan & Morgan, so they never asked for the business.
Angie put it bluntly: "You're arrogant on the phone."
Ouch.
If agents at the biggest name in PI can slip into that habit, so can the people answering your phones.
At Morgan & Morgan, they got to work right away on improved intake scripts.
The first words a caller hears now are "I'm so glad you called," and agents reassure callers throughout every call, with a big payoff. Conversion has since climbed to about 95.6%, and Angie only counts a qualified caller as converted when the signed retainer comes back.
(Angie promised her leadership team would get tattoos if the team hit 95% for the year. It did, and 42 people got inked on the call center floor. Hers says "Grow or Die." Now, I'm not telling you to promise your team tattoos. I'm also not telling you not to.)
The simple truth is this…
On a 1,000-case Monday, Angie said, going from 88% to 96% conversion means 80 more cases in a single day.
Here's how a Morgan & Morgan call works now:
Ask six disqualifying questions first. When did it happen? Where? Are you hurt? Were you at fault? Do you already have an attorney? Have you accepted a settlement? Auto calls used to average 30 minutes, even when the answer was no. Now a call that ends in a turndown takes about seven minutes.
Set expectations up front. Agents tell callers how the call will go and get their agreement. They also send cases the firm can't take to vetted partner firms or to helpful resources.
Ask for the business on every call. Agents say, "We'd be honored if you'd let us handle your case." Then they walk the caller through what happens next, including the client portal and an attorney reaching out within 24 to 48 hours. Intake is "hook and book," Angie said, so treatment details, insurance numbers, and police reports wait for the case staff.
Three habits keep the floor converting:
Give every agent one job. Inbound agents specialize by case type, and an outbound team dials leads the moment they arrive. When a death or another ultra-catastrophic case comes in, a team Angie calls her "bulldogs" takes over the call live and converts 99% of the cases it touches. For a small firm, she said, specializing can mean one person, or a few scheduled hours a day, focused only on outbound calls.
Hire for nice, and train before the floor. Angie hires bartenders, Chick-fil-A staff, and people from service-focused grocers like Publix and Wegmans. The six-week Morgan Academy starts with a full day on culture alone. Her team's attrition runs about 25%, she said. At a typical call center, it's 40% to 45%.
Keep AI behind the scenes. Angie tested bots for answering and routing calls, and she said it was a disaster. Now every injured caller talks to a person. AI writes a uniform incident summary into Litify, which cut five minutes off every call, and it reviews 100% of calls for quality.
Angie lives by a short list of numbers. Abandoned calls stay under 2%, speed to lead stays under two minutes, and customer satisfaction can't fall below 4.5 out of 5. Right now, it's at about 4.7.
What's your number? Pick yours and live by it.
How Two Firms Built Referral Departments That Pay
Two incredible PIMCON sessions covered the cases your firm can't take, like a case in the wrong state or practice area, and how to earn referral fees on them.
"I no longer send referrals," said Shawn Lehocky, CEO of Pond Lehocky Giordano in Philadelphia. "I run a referral department that's very lucrative."
The numbers back him up…
Referred-out cases now exceed the value of the firm's 30,000-plus in-house cases, Shawn and managing partner Sam Pond said.
The firm hand-rated the outcomes of more than 580,000 referrals sent since 2016 on a scale of 1 to 5, then trained an AI model on that data. Now AI transcribes and rates each intake call live, and routing rules recommend the right partner firm.
Signups on Tier 5 cases, the top of that scale, went from 30 to 40 a year to about 50 a month, they said. Those cases average $500,000 in fees, compared with $28,000 for the average PI referral.
"The worst thing you can do is send a $20 million case to a firm that turns it into a $1 million case," Shawn said.
The second firm, Your Insurance Attorney, built its network from scratch. Founder Anthony Lopez thought a referral network was a waste of time until he hired Ilana Reeser, now the firm's Chief Growth Officer. Three years later, referrals are a multimillion-dollar revenue stream.
"We don't need to be able to handle every single case," Ilana said, "but we need to know who can."
Between them, the two firms shared three practices:
Build the map. Ilana started with her phone contacts, tagged by state. She then built a spreadsheet listing the first, second, and third choice for every state and case type. For mass torts, she tracks which firm leads the litigation.
Track referred cases as closely as your own. Pond Lehocky runs the same reports on cases it refers out that it runs in-house: conversion, time on desk, win rates, and average fees.
Test the handoff. Before you send a case, ask a partner for its live-transfer numbers in English and Spanish, and what happens after 5 p.m. or on a Saturday. Your Insurance Attorney once sent a North Carolina partner eight cases in a week, including a trucking case. No one answered the live transfers, and the partner never contacted the clients. Clients blame the firm that sent them. The firm now has its own North Carolina office.
Before you build a department around referral fees, check your state's fee-sharing rules.
Ilana gave the room homework, and it's a good place to start. Pull your last 20 turned-away calls and note the case type, state, and reason. Then estimate what each one could have been worth and add up the total.
That total, she said, is your case for building a referral engine. I'd pull those 20 calls before Friday.
🔢 NUMBER TO NOTE
41% of PI firms never called a potential client back within three days.
Gary Falkowitz's company, CaptureNow, secret-shopped 412 PI firms and timed every callback.
The rest of the results weren't much better:
Fast was rare. Just 2.9% called back within two minutes, 8.5% within five minutes, and 27.9% within an hour.
Most firms quit early. Of the firms that called, only 40% made three or more calls in three days.
A third of leads arrive after hours. Gary said 32% come in on nights and weekends, so he tells firms to staff them.
His standard is a callback on web leads in less than a minute. Five minutes isn't fast enough, he said, and his live AI demo called back in three seconds.
Gary talked about how firms lose cases they already paid to bring in through marketing. His first fix is speed. Claimants shop at least three firms, he said, and your first impression may be your last.
💼 FIRM SPOTLIGHT
How Angel Reyes & Associates Got on Track for $145M
Jim Carlson joined Angel Reyes & Associates as Chief Operating Officer five years ago, when the firm brought in $10.5 million in revenue. This year, Jim said in his session, it will crest about $145 million.
New cases grew from 150 a month to more than 2,000.
Jim's explanation was simple. "The firms that are going to really succeed… in the next decade are not going to be the better lawyers," he said. "They're going to be the better operators."
At Angel Reyes, that means four things:
Lawyers do lawyer work. The firm has 700 team members, 550 of them offshore, and 38 practicing attorneys. That works out to about one attorney for every 600 files. Most firms run one for every 85 to 150, he said. At Angel Reyes, attorneys don't touch demands, except on the roughly 10% of high-value cases.
Every stage has a deadline. On day 60, the firm makes a hard call to settle, file, refer, or drop the case. A case still undecided on day 63 is an exception Jim asks about personally.
Watch the leading indicators. The firm sends 1,200 demands a month. If those demands don't go out, Jim said, revenue dips four to six months later.
Ask clients how it's going. A client satisfaction team calls at each case stage and asks for a score from 1 to 5. The firm averages 4.4 to 4.5, and the team fixes anything lower before it turns into a one-star review.
The firm also cut its average case time from about 734 days to about 400.
Jim's last lesson came from former Alabama football coach Nick Saban. Saban's teams didn't know anything other coaches didn't, Jim said. They were just more disciplined about doing it. Roll Tide or not, that's hard to argue with.
Jim's advice was to pick a couple of changes and start.
🚀 QUICK HITS FROM PIMCON
Ken Nugent Law Firm Added About 100 Cases a Month: Will Hammill of Ken Nugent said the Georgia firm had 45 years on TV and about 42% unaided recall, yet its cost per case climbed from about $1,200 to between $3,000 and $4,000. The firm moved to whole-funnel marketing, with 30- to 90-day retargeting as the biggest change. The firm added about 100 cases a month, and referrals now bring in 35% to 40% of its cases.
Amanda Demanda Tests Creatives Market by Market: The founding attorney of Amanda Demanda Injury Lawyers said a candid video beat a static ad in Miami, and its comment volume drove her cost per click and cost per lead down. The same static ad then worked in Houston. What wins in Miami won't automatically carry to Orlando, Houston, or Louisville, she said.
Yani Smith Separates Lost Cases From Rejected Cases: The founder of Legal Intake Pros said a case a firm wanted has only two honest outcomes: signed or lost. "Rejected" is only for cases that failed the firm's criteria. She told firms to add a "never connected" status. A lead only earns it if the team hit its response-time target and ran the full chase. She also wants an auditor relabeling leads honestly, even when the honest label is "we failed to follow up."
Brian LaBovick Asks for Reviews When Clients Show Gratitude: The founder of LaBovick Law Group said his team asks for a review when a client shows gratitude or relief, like "I can't thank you enough." The ask always comes from a person, and the firm never asks for five stars or buys reviews.
Chad Dudley Says Every Firm in Your Market Is for Sale: Uplift Investors launched Orion Legal MSO in January, and seven firms joined in about seven months, starting with Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers, where Chad is a partner. Owners usually take 70% in cash and roll 30% into equity, he said. He laid out three paths: start a platform, join one, or build a great firm and watch. Whichever you pick, move now.
KRLG Became "the T-Shirt Lawyers": Austin Kurtz and Brian Riley of KRLG Injury Lawyers in Phoenix built their brand without taking on loans. They hand out T-shirts to friends, family, and clients. Two charity events, a lawyer cocktail contest, and a putt-putt tournament each raised about $200,000. Austin's advice was to pick one lane before buying anything in the vendor hall. "If you do everything, you're essentially going to be doing nothing," he said.
💬 NOTABLE QUOTABLES
"Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise."
"I can teach you how to screen a case, but I can't teach you how to be nice. Your mama should have taught you that."
"You spend fortunes making the phone ring. Don't spend like you want them, and then answer like you don't."
"If a bar card is not required, you do not have an attorney do it."
🤖 AI SEARCH TIP OF THE WEEK
ChatGPT and Google don't always recommend the same firm.
At PIMCON, Shawn Denney, Chief Strategy Officer at Rankings.io, opened ChatGPT in an incognito window and typed, "A semi truck hit my car on I-25 in Colorado. What do I do?"
It named a specific Denver firm. That firm didn't show up in Google's organic results until most of the way down page five.
Shawn walked through what that firm does well. Its website clearly says it handles truck cases, its Google reviews are recent and specific, and press, directories, and backlinks all confirm the same information. Its most prominent case result is a detailed truck case.
The action this week: Open ChatGPT in an incognito window and ask the question a client in your most valuable case type would ask, with your city in it.
If another firm comes up, compare its practice-area page, reviews, and directory listings with yours. Fix any conflicting details first, like different hours on your website and your Google Business Profile, then repeat the same prompt every month to see whether your firm shows up.
See You at PIMCON 2027
Yes, we did goat yoga on the lawn at The Phoenician. The goats wore little vests, and they took the whole thing more seriously than some of us did.
Our video studio was a hit with attorneys at PIMCON. Video lets people get to know you before they ever call your firm. Shameless plug: We can do this for your firm all year. With Rankings.io Video Marketing, you show up one day a month, and we write, film, edit, and post every video, then run the ads behind it.
By the closing party, nobody was holding back, and one shirt summed up the collective vibe about PI marketing: "Stop being polite." I see you, Lee.
Hey, PIMCON 2026 wasn't exactly a Ravens home game. But Ray Lewis got the entrance a Hall of Famer deserves.
Anyway, that's your recap. Thank you to every speaker, sponsor, and attendee who made year three what it was. 2027 is going to be 🔥.
Disclaimer: Personal Injury Mastermind takes all reasonable steps to ensure accuracy in the materials we share, including articles, newsletters, and reports. These materials are intended for general informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. They may not reflect the most current laws or regulations. Always consult a qualified attorney for advice on a specific legal matter.
Thanks for reading. Quick ask…if you know someone who’d benefit from this content, please forward this to them. I’ll be back next week. - Chris
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