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72 – Delisi Friday – The Evolution of Our Marketing: What Worked, What Didn’t, & Where We Are Now

By Michael Cowen — 2 years ago

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In this episode of the Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael sits down with his Director of Marketing and Business Development Delisi Friday to discuss their firm’s marketing strategies. They start at the very beginning of Michael’s career for a full-circle look at why they chose to market B2B (business to business) instead of B2C (business to consumer), what to look for in a marketing professional and a marketing agency, how to market without spending money, the pros and cons of working with a marketing agency, and why they decided to move their marketing in-house.

They begin the episode by explaining why they only market to other law firms (B2B) instead of marketing directly to consumers (B2C). Michael shares that he’s had people tell him he’s insane for only marketing to other law firms for referrals because he only gets part of the attorney fees, but he insists it works better for his firm’s needs. He explains how he used to do B2C marketing, but after putting pen to paper and analyzing the profitability of his cases, he found that even after paying out the referral fee, he made about 3x as much money per hour on the cases that came from referrals. He also doesn’t have to spend astronomical amounts of money to advertise on TV in an extremely competitive market.

Delisi and Michael then briefly touch on their experiences and struggles with the burgeoning area of digital marketing, before Delisi asks Michael about the evolution of his marketing prior to bringing a marketing professional into the firm. Michael starts at the beginning, dating back 20 years ago when he had practically no marketing budget. He tried numerous methods, from taking out an ad in the yellow pages, to writing a free book for consumers and buying a corresponding TV ad which was not very successful (he only gave away 10 copies to consumers. The rest were to other lawyers and judges).

Michael then reflects on his past in-house marketers and why they didn’t work out. He begins simply by stating, “There’s a lot of flaky people in marketing.” He goes on to explain how he is an “idea person,” so he needed someone with tenacity to balance him out and ensure his ideas were followed through on and not forgotten 3 months down the line. Delisi echoes this sentiment and adds that with marketing, sometimes you have to give initiatives time to see if they will work- something she calls both the “fun and scary” part of marketing.

Delisi then asks the question sure to be on every listener’s mind- what should you look for when hiring an in-house marketing professional? Michael first reiterates that he needed someone with tenacity to follow through on initiatives and adds that it’s important to find someone with the poise and class necessary to communicate with lawyers professionally. Many firm owners are tempted to hire someone based on their looks because “they can get in the door,” but he firmly believes finding someone who can fit in and have a conversation with referring lawyers is much more important for him. Delisi agrees and adds her personal experience with hiring assistants and interns – they can be inexperienced in legal but need to be able to communicate with lawyers and have strong writing skills to succeed long-term.

They then move on to discuss Delisi’s advice for lawyers who are just getting started with marketing and have a very small budget. She highly recommends sitting down and looking at where every single case you got this year came from. While the task is tedious, she insists it’s necessary in order to fully understand what works, what doesn’t, and what you need to do more of going forward. Michael agrees and urges listeners to focus on their relationships to gain referrals. Some lawyers are close with their pastors and have found success within their congregation. Others like Michael who focus on attorney referrals should put time and effort into growing their relationships with those attorneys. They both agree that client reviews and testimonials, as well as providing excellent customer service, are crucial to your credibility and long-term success.

Once you have a more established firm and a marketing budget to match, there are multiple routes you can take to expand your marketing initiatives. Michael notes that at some point, you’ll be tempted to hire an outside marketing agency for help and asks Delisi what she thinks the pro’s and cons of that are. Delisi replies why it really depends on the firm and their needs, but when her and Michael chose to hire an agency it was initially beneficial because she and Michael needed support with graphics to make their ideas a reality. The graphics and creative support they received were crucial for testing out different strategies and figuring out what worked best.

One of the biggest cons of hiring a marketing agency is the cost. This varies depending on the agency, but after you pay each person for their services it’s usually not cost effective vs. doing it yourself. Michael and Delisi urge listeners who do not want to hire an agency to utilize contractor services such as Upwork to hire freelance designers and copywriters, or contract local talent. They also discuss why they parted ways with their marketing agency and Michael’s #1 tip for what to avoid when deciding to hire an agency.

After parting ways with their agency, Delisi and Michael decided it was time to hire more employees for their marketing department, namely a full-time graphic designer. They discuss their initial concerns with doing so, they both agree the numerous benefits for both marketing initiatives and case graphics have far outweighed those concerns.

Delisi and Michael conclude this episode by discussing where they are now and why it works for them. In addition to managing the firm’s marketing, Delisi now manages the intake department as well. They discuss how this has improved the performance of both departments and why it’s important for your marketing and intake departments to be in sync. It also helps that Delisi is on the management team at the firm, something Michael notes as a major difference between in-house marketing and having a marketing agency. Since Delisi is a part of every major firm decision, she is invested in the firm’s well-being, not just making the marketing department look good.

Michael emphasizes that while this was a 20-year process in the making, the goal should be to do at least some of your marketing in-house to invest in yourself and your firm so you can get the cases that YOU deserve.

This podcast also covers why digital marketing didn’t work for their firm, how lettuce on a McDonald’s quarter pounder is wrong, tax write offs, the initial challenges of moving your marketing in-house, utilizing Facebook groups and the Nextdoor app for organic leads, how they conduct their annual marketing meeting (and why you need to have one), and so much more!

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38 – Wayne Pollock – The Court of Public Opinion

By Michael Cowen — 4 years ago

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In this Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael Cowen sits down with attorney and founder of Copo Strategies, Wayne Pollock, for an in-depth discussion on the court of public opinion [copo] and how it can affect your clients, cases, firm, and reputation.

Having graduated college and working in public relations for a PR firm for about four years, he was introduced to the legal world through one of his clients at the time, Fox Rothschild, now an AM Law 100 law firm, which inspired Wayne to go to law school. Graduating law school from Georgetown University, he went to work at a big law firm for six and a half years as a litigation associate while he never stopped liking public relations. Wayne describes himself as an attorney focused on the court of public opinion, which really means he helps other attorneys and their clients, ethically, strategically, and proactively engage public opinion in order to help those clients resolve their cases favorably. Wayne does this work to help the attorneys build their practices, he also goes in as a consultant to law firms, and other times as limited scope co-counsel to the actual clients. Overall, his goal is to help clients resolve their cases favorably through the media and through outreach to the public, essentially blending media strategies with legal strategies, and ethical compliance with defamation avoidance.

Wayne describes the launch of this offering from his firm, mainly because he didn’t see this kind of fixture being offered to attorneys and clients. Often, he describes seeing, attorneys and clients who are talking to the media in connection with active litigation, but they didn’t seem to have a strategy. They don’t seem to be thinking about what’s happening in court when they’re saying things publicly. They certainly aren’t always thinking about the ethics. And he’s also seen plenty of press releases where the PR firm or the law firm is clearly defaming the other side. So, he took that need in the market and thought his services could be used in a different way, thereby launching his firm a couple of years ago, to do just that.

When it comes to being in the media, Wayne admits it’s daunting for many attorneys, mostly because unlike a normal litigation practice, there are no rules. There are literally no rules of evidence, no rules of procedure, and it’s somewhat of an “every person for themselves” type environment, and that’s difficult for attorneys to get used to. He points out there are obviously ethical rules and defamation rules, but in terms of how you engage with the media and what you say, there’s really no set core set of practices that are established. Regardless, Wayne still encourages his clients, and their end clients, to always be thinking about the court of public opinion and engage it head on as a part of their legal toolkit, because often times, they find that what happens in the court of public opinion impacts what happens in the court of law in this era of social media, online news, and the viralness of both. From Michael’s previous experience, he’s also found competing mindsets of the ego of wanting to be on TV and wanting to be quoted, pitted against the fear of not wanting to cause harm to anyone, especially his clients. Wayne goes on to discuss the privilege issue and how it is a huge problem when law firms hire outside PR firms. He explains it all in detail, but once he realized that he could help get around the privilege issue by serving as an attorney, the light bulb went off and he said to himself, “I guess I’m just going to have to do this myself.”

Wayne defines the “court of public opinion” as people who are not parties to a legal dispute, but whose perceptions of the dispute could impact how the dispute is resolved and how the litigant’s reputation or prosperity could be affected. He goes on to describe the many different types of pools of people who can be affected by the court of public opinion, as well as organizations who stand for the same kind of qualities a client, or their case, do which can help bolster a case by piggybacking on the case and drawing more attention to it. Wayne also describes the effects of the ripple far and wide when information is spread in the court of public opinion, whether it is compelling others to call in with crucial evidence or even developing additional suits with others who have experienced the same thing being tried in a current case, all of which adds to the snowball effect that is created. He’s even had judges tell him they will dot their i’s and cross their t’s that much more closely when they know they’re involved in a high-profile case because they know more eyeballs are on them. And he adds exactly how plaintiff attorneys can use the court of public opinion to their advantage to fight the David v. Goliath fight against the big law firms hired to represent defendants.

From a marketing perspective, Wayne talks about how being seen in public media outlets can give an attorney instant social proof of the work you’re doing, by literally seeing you in action. “It’s not just you sending a press release or someone visiting a website. They see you quoted in an article, they see you being an advocate for a client, and they think to themselves, wow, he/she really knows what they are doing. Maybe I should contact them. That’s a lot different than just Googling ‘trucking attorney in Texas’ and hoping that somehow they get to you.”

Michael and Wayne explore a myriad of topics surrounding the court of public opinion throughout this episode, including: the ethics surrounding being in the media and the change of societal narratives and perceptions; anchoring – a tactic rooted in psychology and persuasion; the rules of professional conduct when engaging with the media; getting consent from a client, especially with the understanding that there are many mean-spirited people in the world who are ready to say bad things; core factors to consider when determining if a case is newsworthy and how to frame cases to be “sexier” in the eyes of the media; and so much more. This episode is one to listen to several times for attorneys who are thrust into the spotlight feeling unprepared, as well as for attorneys with cases that could have greater potential through exposure from the court of public opinion.

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BACKGROUND

Wayne founded Copo Strategies in 2016 after spending over a decade achieving favorable legal and public relations results for his clients.

Prior to starting Copo, Wayne was a litigator at Dechert LLP, one of the largest and most prominent law firms in the world, with more than 900 attorneys worldwide, and more than $1 billion in annual revenues. In his more than six years at the firm, he obtained favorable outcomes for clients by analyzing and presenting complex legal and factual issues. While at the firm, Wayne worked on high-stakes, high-profile matters that were often reported on by local, national, and international media outlets. For example, he was on the Dechert team that represented the ten former independent directors of Lehman Brothers in the wave of investigations and litigation triggered by Lehman’s September 2008 collapse. He was also on the team that represented Takata, a leading automotive parts manufacturer, in litigation and regulatory investigations related to the company’s recall of tens of millions of potentially defective airbags. And, Wayne was on the team that represented the Marshall family in litigation against Vickie Lynn Marshall (a.k.a. Anna Nicole Smith).

Before law school, Wayne practiced public relations at The Star Group, a one-time Advertising Age “Top 100” marketing communications firm. In his four years at the firm, he developed and executed public relations and marketing initiatives on behalf of regional, national, and international clients. While at Star, Wayne cultivated relationships with journalists and secured dozens of placements for clients in national and regional media outlets including USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, regional television network affiliates, and national trade media outlets.

Publications, Media Appearances, and Speaking Engagements

Please click here for a list of Wayne’s publications, media appearances, and speaking engagements.

Education

Wayne graduated in 2009 from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was Senior Special Projects Editor for The Georgetown Law Journal.
Wayne graduated magna cum laude in 2002 from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, where he majored in public relations.

Court Admissions

Wayne is admitted to practice law in all state courts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He is also admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Personal

Wayne resides in Center City Philadelphia. If you keep an eye out, you might find him running on one of Philadelphia’s numerous running trails, desperately trying to keep Father Time away from his knees.

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34 – Sonia Rodriguez – Hindsight in the PI World

By Michael Cowen — 4 years ago

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(11 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

In this Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael Cowen sits down with Cowen | Rodriguez | Peacock partner, Sonia Rodriguez, for another installment of TLN Table Talk to answer the questions of our listeners. This episode focuses on advice for our up-and-coming personal injury attorneys on the things we know now and wishes we knew earlier in our careers.

Starting right off in the broad sense of the industry, we start with a question about what advice would we give to a lawyer who is in the first 2 years of practice. Learning the hard way, Sonia states why it is critical for a successful personal injury law practice to understand the difference between a PI practice and a typical business practice when you are talking to bankers and lenders. The discussions you’ll have with bankers and lenders about lines of credit and assets in regards to your practice can sound like a foreign language to certain bankers, so you really need to find a bank that knows the PI practice and knows that many times the assets you have are going to be intangible, and are more likely to be in your file cabinet or on your server. Michael also points out how the banking regulations have also tightened up in recent years where it has become harder for PI lawyers to borrow against their case list. To this point, Sonia suggests once you have a few years under your belt, you should start saving/hoarding your money so you can borrow against your own investments and savings when you want to. They both agree once you hit your first big case, you don’t want to start living like that has become your new lifestyle every year or every month and you need to live below your means for a long time. Michael recalls avoiding the temptation to go buy the expensive Mercedes and shares how his first house was only $67,000, which was in stark contrast to other lawyers who went out and bought big houses and could barely pay their credit cards or make it month to month. It was with this foresight and now shared knowledge, that Michael reveals his early financial habits have led him to build the successful practice he has today.

Providing additional advice for PI lawyers just starting out, Michael weighs the pros and cons of gaining experience by starting in a district attorney’s office (hint – it’s not advised…and for good reason). He goes on to suggest several much better ways to gain experience and learn from other attorney’s experience, this podcast being one of them, which will prove to be more advantageous in building a solid foundation for a personal injury practice. Thinking from the other end of the spectrum, Sonia also offers advice regarding business relationships and how they are bound to change over time and shares the key factors you need to consider before entering into a partnership, regardless of the current or past relationships status. A lesson the majority of seasoned attorneys would likely agree with, hindsight being 20/20. Michael, being one of them, recounts one of the things he knows now that he wishes he knew earlier, and how he wishes he had spent a seemingly small amount of money early on to hire a lawyer to draft his agreements with other lawyers. Being lawyers, he says, “we think we can do it ourselves,” and in the process, we end up overlooking the holes in an agreement and only looking at it through rose-colored glasses as if nothing will ever change in the relationship. Michael reveals, in his own hindsight, the amount of money he’s paid out on legal fees to draft things for him now, has turned out to be less than 1% of what he’s paying people that he wouldn’t have had to pay had he had those agreements in place. LESS THAN 1%!

Sonia transitions by discussing the amount of stress brought on day-to-day in this industry. Our bodies were never designed to handle these amounts of mental or physical stress that can come with a heavy litigation practice, she says, and on the plaintiff’s side, it can also be very easy to become emotionally invested in our client’s cases. As a trial lawyer, you need to find a mechanism for an outlet, such as exercise, meditation (if it works for you), or even journaling, in order to maintain your mental health. Michael adds that you need to find a balance in order to internalize and feel your client’s pain without it taking you over. The Harvard Business Review published a great article about the stress and anxiety of being a perfectionist, as we tend to do in this line of work which also lays out several options for mental self-care.

Michael continues to state, as he has on many episodes of this show, to get out there and try more cases. There is never a shortage of cases to be tried in any firm. And no one will remember the cases you lose as you gain experience or even years into your practice for that matter. He goes on to say that you do not suffer a reputational hit for losing a trial and how he has actually lost more cases than some people have ever tried, but still has tons of referrals coming in because attorneys remember the ones he’s won.

Throughout the rest of this episode, Michael and Sonia discuss topics like: the power of saying “NO,” the importance of reputation; how to use a cost/benefit analysis to determine the right cases to take on; their opinions on paying for online profiles with various legal organizations, what to do in discovery when you think the other side is hiding something from you; how to (and more so, how not to) attract leads online; tricks to leveraging social media and pitfalls to avoid when using it; and many others along the way.

These Table Talk podcasts could not happen without the interaction and questions submitted by our listeners. We are eternally grateful and encourage you to continue to send us your thoughts, ideas, and questions as we love sharing our experiences with them.

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27 – Michael Mogill – Becoming the Obvious Choice in Your Market

By Michael Cowen — 4 years ago

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(10 votes, average: 4.70 out of 5)

In this Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael Cowen sits down with author of The Game Changing Attorney – How to Land the BEST CASES, STAND OUT from Your Competition, and Become the OBVIOUS CHOICE IN YOUR MARKET, and legal marketing expert, Michael Mogill, for a discussion on how he’s helping law firms drive meaningful results. Mogill and his team at CRISP Video produce videos for attorneys across the country in order to help them differentiate themselves and stand out from their competition. Which, in short, means they do everything from filming videos and editing to running ads and driving leads for their attorney-only clientele. Essentially, everything from start to finish in the legal video marketing space.

Mogill’s beginnings started when his family immigrated from Europe when he was 4 years old. They didn’t speak English and basically came with just $500 in savings. And while he’s always been entrepreneurial, having started a web company at age 13 writing HTML out of his house, he actually studied to be a doctor, took the MCAT to get into med school, but wasn’t sure if that was the path for him despite the pressures of his Jewish family. So, he took a year off and got a job first washing dishes at a dive bar and then washing lab equipment at the CDC. In the meantime, he bought a camera that he figured would just be a hobby and perhaps a good life skill to have. Then, in 2008, he started a video company, called CRISP, again with outside pressures of people telling him it wouldn’t work and if it did, he’d never be able to compete with the big agencies. This was also a time when YouTube was just starting to take off and videos were nowhere close to as accessible as they are today. Mogill explains that it wasn’t the simplest sell back then, nor was it easy (recounting 21 failures before the company really got off the ground); citing that his big breakthrough finally came to him through the hostess at a Texas Roadhouse at a time when he didn’t even have enough money for next month’s rent. The story he tells of his rise from rock bottom is one you simply have to hear to believe. Spoiler alert: He’s made it pretty big in the video production space having worked with companies like Coca-Cola and Red Bull. His shift to work 100% with attorneys and law firms wasn’t necessarily expected or even planned at the outset, and also came from unlikely beginnings paired with the drive to succeed.

Digging right in, Cowen asks Mogill the big question, as in millions of dollars big, of how can solo and small firms compete with their marketing (video or otherwise) and not get lost in the noise of the big firms that have $5M+ marketing budgets? And while Mogill boils it down to simply differentiating yourself, his insights on the content being produced in order to create an emotional connection with potential clients, versus joining the “we’ll fight for you” crowd, are thoughtful and CRISP (pardon the pun). Mogill uses Ben Glass’s video as a great example where his video talks more about the children that he has adopted in order to create a connection, with the viewer with little information about his firm. Which may seem to counterproductive when trying to promote a law firm, but to Mogill’s point, it’s much more effective to draw people in, using emotions and feelings they can relate to instead of a laundry list of the services your firm can provide. That “why” behind an attorney’s journey into wanting to practice laws also helps to create a sense of authenticity as well as to humanize each firm.

Mogill talks about the state of legal marketing along with the saturation of many firms focusing on the aspect, that it is all about the money and boasting about the size of cases won. He notes how today’s society wants to work with companies who go beyond the money and care about individuals, especially the millennial generation that loves to see businesses contribute to their community and pay things forward.

Once you’ve found your great story that differentiates you or your firm, how do you get that story out there, asks Cowen, while noting the extremely high prices of pay per click (PPC) in the legal market? Mogill agrees that PPC is not likely the answer but has found social platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, have worked very effectively for video marketing because you can target your audience fairly specifically. From a cost perspective, especially when talking about video content, Mogill points out how he has generally been able to push traffic at a rate of about $0.01 per view, and goes on to discuss the paradigm where if an attorney was to take what they would spend on just one billboard and put the investment, instead, into getting their video content out via YouTube and Facebook ads, the reach, and level of targeting would be similar to the reach of 100 billboards. All of which you can specifically target and track.

Mogill talks about the tactic of playing the long game, where on 364 days through the year, a personal injury attorney is not relevant to your audience, but on the one day, when something happens to them, it becomes extremely relevant, but how do they know who to call? Was it the last billboard they saw? Or, more likely, it’s the person who stays top of mind on social platforms where they then remember all the things they’ve seen you do for the community and have seen your story and are reminded of it consistently. And if they don’t remember, they reach out to a friend, who also has potentially been targeted and been exposed to your information. Most firms are marketing in a way with Google PPC toward the 3% of people who are ready to hire an attorney on that specific day while hitting the other 97% with the exact same messaging, for whom it’s not very relevant. In short, Mogill’s belief is you have to make someone a fan before you make them a client, by producing consistent content that nurtures someone’s perception of you or your firm over time.

Cowen and Mogill discuss a myriad of other legal marketing topics, including how attorneys can create great content that puts a spotlight on their “why,” the importance of living up to your marketing, predictions for where legal marketing is headed, and several other results-driven insights. The energy and expertise Mogill brings to this episode is a great resource to learn from for any attorney looking to compete with their marketing in, what we all know too well as, an overcrowded and noisy marketing space.

BACKGROUND ON MICHAEL MOGILL

Michael Mogill is Founder and CEO of Crisp Video Group (www.crispvideo.com), the nation’s fastest-growing legal video marketing company and the author of the “The Game Changing Attorney” (www.gamechangingattorney.com). He’s helped thousands of attorneys — from solo and small firms to large practices — differentiate themselves from competitors and earn millions in new revenue. Crisp has been named to the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing companies and has been awarded Best Places to Work. A sought-after speaker, Michael often presents at national conferences on innovative ways to create exponential business growth. His advice has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Inc., Avvo, ABA Journal, The Trial Lawyer, Huffington Post, and Wall Street Journal.

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22 – Paul Byrd – Understanding Conservative Jurors

By Michael Cowen — 4 years ago

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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

In this Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael Cowen sits down with author, speaker, and seasoned trial lawyer, Paul Byrd from Arkansas for a deep dive into the minds of conservatives and what we can do to better communicate with them on juries. Kicking things right off, Michael and Paul agree that the likelihood of having a jury panel made up of only liberals is not only low, but likely not preferential either as Paul points out and sets the tone for the conversation.

As a self-proclaimed “Republican trial lawyer,” Paul talks about the juxtaposition of not being felt trusted in trial lawyer arenas because he is a Republican, while also not feeling trusted in Republican arenas because he is a trial lawyer. This is something he never really understood in terms of why they didn’t seem to fit together as he feels strongly there are many values that cross over between the two and has led to his study of conservatism in the courtroom.

Like many trial lawyers, Paul’s desire to reach jurors, and to reach voters who wanted to vote in the courtroom forum, has always been met with some resistance from those who are fiercely independent. Paul’s in-depth understanding of the interesting history of the Scotch/Irish in America, and how it paved the way for conservative thinking, helps to lay the foundation of working with conservatives in the courtroom. When asked how trial lawyers might learn from and relate to people who may have a more conservative value system than themselves, Paul suggests talking to experts in the field as well as using solid focus groups. Michael adds, from his own experience, that they can also take an introspective approach and work on themselves, learning to talk to people, listen nonjudgmentally, and understand that conservatives are still good people by and large. In other words, take the time to listen to people, even if it’s not what you want to hear, in order to gain perspective.

In this day and age, it is hard NOT to bring up the topic of social media, given the politically charged climate on social platforms, to which Paul brings up a great point that although they tell jurors not to look on social media to find lawyers involved, they commonly still do. He goes on to describe how people will typecast you as much as you typecast them with the posts they may find in your social accounts, so it is likely best to stay away from partisan posts in today’s world. Michael adds how he tends to avoid posting political things to his feed as some juror could potentially be immediately turned off by it regardless of which side of the issues he’s on. He also goes on to say if you can start the conversation with an open mind, you may be able to convince someone one way or the other, but if they are turned off before you begin the conversation (perhaps by seeing a politically-charged post), the likelihood of there being any movement is slim.

Paul points out how some of the biggest verdicts have come from the most conservative juries and sometimes it simply becomes a matter of helping your jury understand what the rules are. He gives a great example regarding a case which involved horseplay around a pool where a man was pushed in, broke his neck, and drowned. His focus groups were leaning one way with the understanding that the man who was pushed in was the jokester; but once the rules were laid out by way of the pool manufacturer’s safety warnings and revealing the pusher was the homeowner, the case became much easier to solidify because the group understood what they were defining as the rules.

Michael asks Paul if there are any buzz words or behaviors which can alienate a conservative jury. To which Paul expresses how it can actually work against you if you focus too much on trying to make jurors feel sorry for a client because it was a horrific injury. He goes on to say that jurors have become hardened over the years having been exposed to so much that empathy or sorrow will not carry a case alone anymore. You really have to find the rule or the “why” moment in a case of how the wrongdoer should be held responsible.

The conversation culminates in a discussion about how “non-economic damages” are viewed by jurors and the conservative spin which has likely brought us to where we are today. Paul first directs his attention to the argument regarding the caps placed on non-economic damages in some states and how some view these decisions as unfair toward particular sets of people (ex: stay at home parents) where there is no pattern of lost wages or income. He then digs deeper in a couple of examples to really make you think a little harder about what’s “real” to those who have been catastrophically injured while using plain English to cut through partisan lines and strike the core of most every human. It’s truly fascinating how Paul thinks about these things and we were glad he was willing to share his thoughts and insights with us and the rest of the Trial Lawyer Nation.

Background on Paul Byrd

Paul Byrd has been representing deserving injured victims for almost 30 years. After clerking for a trial court, Paul went into private practice in 1988. Paul’s practice has focused on civil litigation with an emphasis on representing consumers in product liability actions, both individually and in Mass Tort Litigation. He is the Immediate Past Chair of the AAJ Product Liability Section and on the Board of Governors of AAJ. He has spoken on “How to Talk to Conservatives” all over the United States and has a current video on the topic published by Trial Guides.

In November of 2000, he was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal due to his work in the case of Brownlee/Whitaker vs. Cooper Tire and Rubber Company. He also appeared in a Dateline NBC documentary regarding the same case in January of 2001.

Paul has also represented farmers in agricultural litigation regarding genetically modified crop contamination that had global as well as national and local implications.

Paul is a past President of the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association. His message to his fellow members as President was “You went to law school to make a difference!”.

In 2012, Paul was a co-recipient of the Outstanding Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association.

He is the managing member of the Little Rock, Arkansas office of Paul Byrd Law Firm, PLLC.

He has an “AV” rating in the Martindale-Hubble Legal Directory, has been recognized by the Mid-South Super Lawyers, and is also a life member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum.

Affiliations

Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association
American Association for Justice
American Bar Association
Arkansas Bar Association
Pulaski County Bar Association
St. Thomas More Society

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