20. Get More Clients: Build a Referral Network for Your Law Firm ft. Michael Cowen

[00:00:00] Michael Cowen:
This is really a golden age to be a trial lawyer. Cause there are so many great lawyers that are giving back and teaching and sharing right now. There are so many more opportunities to learn now than there ever have been before.

[00:00:11] Bobby Steinbach:
Welcome to Hot Docket, a show where we talk about winning marketing strategies that have built the most successful law

[00:00:16] Andrew Nasrinpay:
firms.

[00:00:16] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Join us every two weeks for the latest trends and tactics to grow your law.

[00:00:21] Bobby Steinbach:
Hey everybody and welcome to the Hot Docket Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking all about trucking.

[00:00:27] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Yep, this is going to be an interesting episode because these are the big cases that everybody wants. And I think we’ve got an awesome guest with us this week.

[00:00:35] Andrew Nasrinpay:
We’ve got Michael Cowen and he is a specialist in trucking litigation.

[00:00:40] Bobby Steinbach:
Yeah, very exciting. The only, um, thing I’ve been thinking about is I almost wish we had like a product liability this week because I’ve got this terrible, uh, not to share, overshare. terrible poison ivy rash that I’ve been combating and I’m taking steroids for.

[00:00:54] Bobby Steinbach:
So if I go on a, uh, like a roid rage type of a moment during this conversation, let it pass. Um, anyways, thanks for joining us today, Michael. We’re excited to have you.

[00:01:06] Michael Cowen:
Thank you for having me.

[00:01:07] Bobby Steinbach:
Of course.

[00:01:12] Bobby Steinbach:
Can you tell us a little bit about why you became a lawyer and the journey you took to get there?

[00:01:16] Michael Cowen:
You know, I get asked that a lot. I don’t remember why I became a lawyer. I, I, went to college. I got a psychology degree, which was not going to be a particularly valuable degree. I was deciding about whether to go to law school or whether to go to grad school in psychology and decided that being a lawyer would be more interesting.

[00:01:36] Michael Cowen:
I had no idea what that entailed. I had two uncles that were insurance defense lawyers, but they both told me not to go to law school. And if you knew me as an undergrad, that probably statistically was not bad advice given my lack of study skills and my overindulgence and alcohol and other things back at that point in my life, uh, you, you would not have predicted that I would have been a particularly successful lawyer if you looked at me at the age of 19, 20, but I, I’m a rebel, but because of that, I didn’t ask for any advice, didn’t ask anything about the practice.

[00:02:07] Michael Cowen: And so I just. I decided to go to law school, got into a decent law school, and was going to do a very traditional career path. I started off with a judicial clerkship, and I was gonna, I started off working at a big Wall Street firm in New York, then the whole big law thing, but during law school, I had worked for two personal injury lawyers purely because they would pay me.

[00:02:28] Michael Cowen:
I had never made more than minimum wage other than waiting tables before law school. And one law, one firm paid 10 an hour, another one, I think I got 14 and it was just mind blowing that someone would pay me that much money. And I had money in my pocket for the first time on a regular basis. It was awesome.

[00:02:44] Michael Cowen:
But what I found in Big Law is I really enjoyed working at the PI firms more than I enjoyed working in Big Law.

[00:02:50] Bobby Steinbach:
That makes a lot of sense. And do you think that background in psychology kind of sets you apart now? Like, do you think you have an edge because you can kind of get inside the mind? So to speak,

[00:03:00] Michael Cowen:
no, I think that I think that’s a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

[00:03:05] Michael Cowen:
I think really it was, there were just a bunch of us trying to figure out what was wrong with us. Um, uh, cause I’m one of my best friends asked me that, yeah, you must be able to just really know what people are thinking. Like, no, you don’t, you know, some theory for the bachelor of psychology, you know, there’s like multiple different theories of personality and the way people think, but there’s not a whole lot of actionable information I got from my, My bachelor’s in psychology, um, so I think I’ve learned a lot more just through living life and working with different consultants and honestly working with my own therapist and, and learning who I am and, and learning to not project my thoughts and feelings on others and to be able to listen and observe and try to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling instead of using, letting my own fears or insecurities falsely attribute thoughts, feelings, and motivations to that they don’t really have.

[00:03:54] Andrew Nasrinpay:
So a lot of the firms that we have Uh, come on this show or direct to consumer and do a lot of marketing. You take a different approach. You guys are trial lawyers and you’re really marketing to other attorneys. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey and how you ended up, uh, becoming trial lawyers?

[00:04:12] Michael Cowen:
Sure. Well, I left New York and went to go work for a trial lawyer who paid me less money, but he’s, but he did teach me to try cases. He let me try cases and he sent me up to the Jerry Spence Trial Lawyers College back in 98 as a baby lawyer, which was a fantastic way to start a career. And he had a referral.

[00:04:30] Michael Cowen:
a network of referring lawyers. And then he decided to quit with about three weeks notice when I was about to turn 29. And I ended up with my own law firm. I somehow kept at least for the small car wreck cases nobody wanted. I was able to keep those referring lawyers. And then I started getting verdicts on those cases.

[00:04:48] Michael Cowen:
And frankly, I didn’t have the money or the time to market the public. and kind of develop the referral based practice. Later on in my career, when we were doing better, we did some marketing to the public, but I looked at it once and, you know, we’re spending a lot of money, a lot of time, but my average fee after paying the referral fee on my trucking cases that were referred to me was more than triple my average fee on the cases that we got direct to consumer.

[00:05:13] Michael Cowen:
So I said, well, the, Um, this doesn’t make any sense. Why am I doing all the money and time on the direct to consumer if I can get enough of these referred cases to, to keep going and, and to have a practice? And so at that point in my career, I made the, I made the decision to just, uh, do attorney referral.

[00:05:31] Michael Cowen:
I mean, if someone calls us, we’ll take the case, but we’re not out there hustling for the cases to the public. And you know, you still have to really focus on that attorney referral relationship and, and maintain it. We have people that have been referring us cases since the nineties and that we still The relationship and a lot of that has to do with, you know, find out what are their pain points, what are, what, what.

[00:05:51] Michael Cowen:
gives them a pleasant experience. What are the biggest issues they’ve had when they were referring to other people, which I’ll tell you, if anyone wants to get referral based business, never changed the deal on somebody. That’s the number one way to never get an, no matter how much the case went South on you, keep your deal.

[00:06:05] Michael Cowen:
The other thing is communicate with them. They said, I feel like, I’ve talked to people when they said, I’ve referred a case to someone else and I’m like, it went into a black hole for two years and either I got a check in the mail at random or I got a call saying, oh, the case went south and we’re either going to have to sell it cheap or we’re going to have to, uh, you know, cut, cut, cut the fee down and cutting the fee down can work as long as they know what’s going on and keep them up to date.

[00:06:27] Michael Cowen:
And the third thing is don’t have the clients calling them back complaining about the service your firm is giving. If they refer someone to you and the clients are like, well, they’re not returning my phone calls or they were rude to me. They’re not going to want to refer you more cases. I guess there’s a fourth one I didn’t think of is it makes sure your staff doesn’t shit on the reforming lawyer I mean I mean because seriously, I mean sometimes you know A case is not in perfect condition when it gets over and I tell my staff if if they could do it without us They wouldn’t necessarily need us.

[00:06:54] Michael Cowen:
But you know, even if you would have done it differently. You don’t tell the client, the referring lawyer didn’t do a good job on the case cause they’re going to call them up and bitch them out. So it’s a important that you treat them with respect and treat the clients really well and just communicate well and don’t change the deal on them.

[00:07:11] Bobby Steinbach:
I love that you’ve taken like these lessons and kind of distilled them to these four key points because a lot of firms, They think the only way to succeed is going to direct, direct to consumer and at the expense of other channels, like attorney referrals. Um, and it’s not, and it’s all marketing. Like if you’re marketing direct to consumer, that’s one type of marketing.

[00:07:32] Bobby Steinbach:
If you’re marketing to other attorneys and maintaining those back end relationships, that takes just as much work. It’s just a different type of work.

[00:07:39] Michael Cowen:
It’s a different type of work and it takes a budget. You can’t just assume that because you’re a good lawyer that the world is going to be the path to your door.

[00:07:47] Michael Cowen:
Uh, we. Put on seminars. We have, we have our own podcast. We target people, we take them out. Uh, I just. I started a new program. I hired a sales rep away from a life care planning company. And her biggest job is not, I mean, she is supposed to go out and prospect, you know, new potential referring lawyers, but her biggest job is update every referring lawyer on every case every month because it’s easier to sell to the converted.

[00:08:11] Michael Cowen:
And so if someone is already referring you cases and then you are letting them know, Hey, we are working on this case. This is what we’re doing. These are the questions we have for you. A lot of those conversations end with, Oh, by the way, I’ve got another case. You want to look at it? Um, so to me, like the better you take care of your referral partners, uh, the, the more referrals you’ll get from them.

[00:08:30] Michael Cowen:
And it’s so much easier to get like a, a small base of people referring you a lot of cases than it is to try to get like 100, 200 different referring lawyers.

[00:08:37] Bobby Steinbach:
And how do you use technology, if at all, to kind of aid you in that, like making sure that these people have a touch every month? Are you using, um, a CRM or using like email software?

[00:08:48] Bobby Steinbach:
Can you walk us through any of that stack?

[00:08:50] Michael Cowen:
Yeah, we’re using Filevine, and in the case, there is a date of last referral, uh, lawyer update, and then we can, uh, we use a company called LegalBI to run dashboards, and so we can, uh, Abby, our business relations manager, can, uh, Run a dashboard of people that need to be updated

[00:09:10] Bobby Steinbach:
amazing Can you tell us a little bit about what makes trucking cases and our cases with?

[00:09:15] Bobby Steinbach:
Commercial policies in general a bit different than you know volume PI

[00:09:19] Michael Cowen:
Absolutely, it’s because you can build value on a case by finding corporate negligence that will get a jury upset That will make a jury feel like this company is a threat to them, them and their families. And if they don’t do something about it through their verdict, that another tragedy will happen and they will be in danger.

[00:09:37] Michael Cowen:
And so, you know, when it’s just a car wreck, it’s usually, I mean, outside of, you know, alcohol, drugs, maybe distracted driving, it’s usually just an accident. Uh, someone made a momentary lapse. They caused an accident. And it’s an individual human. And no matter what the jury instructions are, jurors want, if they feel that there’s a liability, they want to compensate, but they also don’t want to bankrupt.

[00:10:00] Michael Cowen:
And so there’s this weighing on their head, and it’s very difficult to get, you know, multiple seven, eight figure verdicts against individuals, or settlements for that reason, against individuals. For the non economic damage components of a case, because there’s this fear, like, well, if we give a bunch of money for paying, we’re going to put this person in bankruptcy or we’re going to ruin their life companies.

[00:10:17] Michael Cowen:
It’s different companies. They’re, you know, they still do that calculus. So the bigger the company, the more likely they are to follow the law and allow a full measure of non economic damages, but they really being able to go into the, why, why did this happen? And it’s so many times in trucking and company vehicle cases, the why is because of a bad decision, a company may knowingly made.

[00:10:38] Michael Cowen:
In order to try to profit and examples are hiring bad drivers. It’s hard to find drivers out there. I get it. But then you’re okay. Instead of turning down work, I’m gonna hire somebody with a bad driving record are not spending the time and money to train your drivers are either not monitoring them at all are allowing them to continue driving without.

[00:10:57] Michael Cowen:
Uh, any kind of remedial training or extra supervision when they’re doing dangerous things. They get, they get tickets, they get other wrecks, uh, those kind of things, making them drive more hours are pushing them to drive more hours that are safely, then they can do safely in a day and that is allowed by the regulations.

[00:11:16] Michael Cowen:
So when you have those kind of corporate misconduct, it does two things. One, you know, it gets the jury mad, but two, you’re able to go take the, the time span of the case when you’re not just talking about. The moments before the collision, you’re talking about months or years that this company had knowledge, they had an opportunity to fix it, and they chose not to do so.

[00:11:36] Michael Cowen:
And that’s just such a more fun case to try and a case that has more value.

[00:11:40] Bobby Steinbach:
And when you go after this type of a case, do you tend to start from the position of economic damages or do you tend to start with like the story? Uh, because this book, we’ll link it in the comments. I’m sure a lot of our listeners already read it, but I, I read it kind of recently.

[00:11:56] Bobby Steinbach:
I’m running with the bulls. The whole theory there is how to get. outsize results for clients, right? And you know this obviously better than we do. But one core thing I took away is there’s kind of two ways to start the negotiation. One is from the point of economic damages, the other is from the story and like the point of non economic.

[00:12:15] Michael Cowen:
Yeah, negotiation is actually pretty far along our process because I, I believe in trucking and company vehicle litigation you have to litigate some in order to establish what the value is because value has two components. One is, you know, what are the damages, uh, which is mostly non economic in my opinion, in most cases.

[00:12:34] Michael Cowen:
But the second is what is what I call the piss off factor. Like, what did the company do or not do that might make a jury mad and you just can’t tell that from a police report. You have to go in there, you have to look at the driver’s hours of service, you have to look at the driving record, you have to look at their safety training, or lack thereof, uh, you have to look at their safety performance history, get, do an open records request to the government, and get what kind of warnings they’ve had, what kind of safety data there is on that company, and really put the picture together.

[00:13:01] Michael Cowen:
So if you have anything more than just, you know, a simple, like, you had a sprain, it got better in 12 weeks case. Uh, if you have like ongoing, you know, lifetime pain, they’ve had injections, they’ve have a hernia disc, whether it’s surgical or not. I mean, I mean, having surgery sucks, but having pain that’s not surgical, but you’re still going to bother you the rest of your life sucks too.

[00:13:21] Michael Cowen:
So if you have that, you, we really want to follow suit before we evaluate the case because we want to make sure we’re doing that. And then the other side is what is the human story? And I got this. I stole it from Rodney Jew. I paid him a lot of money. I can’t say I stole it, uh, but I learned it from Rodney Jew, which is what did they love to do before?

[00:13:38] Michael Cowen:
What was their life like before? What are they left with now? Which is how was their life different because of this tragedy? And then what is the hope for the future? How can money make their life better? Whether that’s an economic damage or that’s like, you know, they, can’t do this anymore, but they could spend money and do something else that would at least bring them some joy.

[00:13:58] Michael Cowen:
And when you do that, then you can get a picture, a good idea of what it’s worth. Maybe you have to do some focus groups. Maybe there’s all this big data stuff now that I’m fascinated with trying to figure out what all that’s worth, but really don’t tie it to the economic damages because most of our trials lately, we’re not even presenting the past economic damages.

[00:14:16] Andrew Nasrinpay:
That’s very interesting. So can you tell us a few things that were the biggest changes in your career That lets you open up your personal branding to be able to take on all of these awesome cases. Because a lot of times when we bring on board, we on board a firm and we ask them like, What type of cases do you want?

[00:14:37] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Everyone’s going to say, I want a case with a big commercial policy with super serious injuries. And a lot of times those cases end up being, uh, they’re gathered by the big, uh, firms that are doing a lot of advertising. Whether it’s through TV or digital. And then most of the time they get referred to a boutique litigation shop like yours.

[00:14:59] Andrew Nasrinpay:
You’ve developed that personal brand over time. Can you kind of give us the timeline around that and what let you actually do that? Because not everyone can just get those kind of referrals. Yeah, it takes,

[00:15:11] Michael Cowen:
it takes time. So, honestly, I had to start from the bottom. I, I, Before he left, my old boss took a docket of 50 [00:15:20] low property damaged chiropractor only cases where the chiropractic clinic was under investigation by the insurance company.

[00:15:28] Michael Cowen:
Um, and they almost all had to be tried. I mean, just they were a whole docket of crappy cases that almost all had to be tried. And he also gave a 50 percent referral fee because of the volume, which makes no sense at all. I can see why he quit. Good guy, good guy, great trial lawyer, not the best, best businessman in the world.

[00:15:47] Michael Cowen:
So, um, I tried a bunch of those cases and I got my butt kicked on some, but like on every third case I popped it over the policy limits that, you know, and at that time in Brownsville, Texas, where I lived at the time, nobody else was getting over medicals on those cases. And every third case I was getting between, you know, 40 and a hundred thousand dollars on a case with discover and not a whole lot of property damage.

[00:16:08] Michael Cowen:
And so people took notice. And so I started getting opportunities to try better cases. And better cases. And part of it is you have to go and try them. You have to try some cases if you want to build a referral based brand. I mean, you know, I was talking to Alex Shannara, uh, billboard, King of Alabama, and he’s a great person and I’m trying to get some referrals from him, but he flat out says, okay, Mike, what’s your biggest verdict?

[00:16:31] Michael Cowen:
I mean, just, That’s a big factor for him because he’s not, no matter how much he likes me, I mean, he spent a lot of money to get that case and I’ve got competitors that have big verdicts. You have to go out there and try some cases and you’re not going to get big verdicts unless you go take some chances and get your butt kicked sometimes.

[00:16:48] Michael Cowen:
And it’s just, it’s part of the process. You also can’t be shy. A big thing for me is learning to, you know, you, you need to go and speak at events. Senate first. You kind of have to speak on whatever you can speak on and make sure you do a good job, turn your paper in on time, you know, give a good presentation, never, never no show, and I’m part of it, honestly, when you first start, it’s about kissing ass, you have to like figure out who’s on the committee.

[00:17:14] Michael Cowen:
Like, if you wanted to speak at AHA trucking litigation group, join the group, go to their dinners at the winter and summer convention. They have a dinner, show up to the dinners, make, become friends, you know, if you drink, go drinking. If you don’t drink, at least go have lunch with the people making the decisions.

[00:17:29] Michael Cowen:
So that way you get a shot. But at some point you don’t want your brand to become dependent on whether people on the committee think of you that day or whether people like you or don’t like you on that committee. Because as you start. Growing in success, there will be jealousy and there will be people that that don’t want to see you succeed or feel like you’re speaking too much of that.

[00:17:50] Michael Cowen:
You’re too successful. So we started doing our own, uh, our own branding presentations. It started off just lunch. We would do a free lunch for local lawyers and we would present like 1 hour and get them 1 hour of credits. And from there, it grew to, you know, doing a seminar. Our first one, we weren’t brave enough to do just us.

[00:18:08] Michael Cowen:
So we did it with a couple other firms. But now we just do our own seminars with either just me, or me and other people at the firm speaking. But even then, I mean, if you want people to attend that, it cannot be about, I want you all to come listen to me so you can learn why you should refer me cases.

[00:18:26] Michael Cowen:
Cause no one’s going to show up to that. It has to provide value to the people that are going to be there. So you always need to be providing value. And I have an abundance mentality. Like I give away all my trucking forms. I give away. If you want a depo I’ve taken, that’s fine. You can have it. You want the discovery I send, you can have it.

[00:18:42] Michael Cowen:
I don’t, I don’t hold back anything because frankly, the person who’s not going to refer out a case is going to refer it to me anyway. And the person who is going to bring in, and, and maybe they, they bring me in at the beginning. Maybe they, they get into the case and they realize they’d like some help. I think they’re more likely to do business with a person that was generous and instead of saying, I’m only going to share with you if you give me something, saying, here, here’s what I have.

[00:19:04] Michael Cowen:
If you, if I can add value, I’d love to work with you, but if not, use this and do well. And I want you to well, and I will celebrate your success and be happy for you.

[00:19:11] Andrew Nasrinpay:
There are a lot of those trial lawyer seminars and a lot of them are hosted by, you know, Um, and then I think the other attorneys that have great personal brands think like Lanier Trial Academy, all those sort of things.

[00:19:22] Andrew Nasrinpay:
If you had to rank your top five trial lawyers and you can’t put yourself in the list, who else would you put on that list and what do you think they’re the best at? And what makes them great?

[00:19:34] Michael Cowen:
I would definitely say Mark Lanier. Um, I mean, a billion dollar verdict that you actually collected. I don’t know if that’s in the personal injury or death space.

[00:19:43] Michael Cowen:
That is really rare in his, his program that he puts on. is so useful. I mean, I’ve only been once, but I went away with a list of things in, in, from at the top high end, like the psychology of stuff he uses, but the other thing, like the document camera, he uses learning that there’s a double wide that he calls King flip chart.

[00:20:05] Michael Cowen:
Let’s just, just change the way I try cases. Cause it’s so much bigger and more stable than the old tripod flip charts I used to use. Uh, so I wouldn’t think linear would be up there in the trucking world. I would say Joe freed for sure. Uh, Joe is. I mean, he’s a wonderful friend and a great human being, but on top of that, he is the real deal.

[00:20:23] Michael Cowen:
He knows his stuff and is effective in trial. And he had a recent case against Amazon and it’s on CVN. It’s totally worth watching. He and his partner, Michael Goldberg, did such a master for a job and they put on the plaintiff’s case in a day and a half and got a 16. 2 million verdict on what most lawyers would think is a very complicated case, but they worked so hard to turn it into a simple case.

[00:20:46] Michael Cowen:
And so Joe has been such a blessing for me. I know he’s not active anymore, but you got to say Jerry Spence, I mean, he was legendary and again, not only does he have the track record of, of really doing it in the courtroom, but then you’ve got the, uh, the fact that he’s shared so much and has given so much back through, used to be the trial lawyers college and they had all that ugliness and now it’s the Jerry Spence trial lawyer, Jerry Spence trial institute or something like that at his ranch in Wyoming, but I think Jerry still deserves his spot on the Mount Rushmore of trial lawyers.

[00:21:20] Michael Cowen:
Now, I’m gonna get in trouble because I have so many friends and, um, you know, I’m gonna have to only come up with two more names and there’s so many great trial lawyers out there and I don’t know everybody, so there’s other people, um, you know, Michael Lieserman, totally different approach than Joe Freed, but again, gets incredible results and really does a trial approach that’s more love than anger, uh, which I really like.

[00:21:45] Michael Cowen:
I think he’s a very real person, really believes in what he does and again, he’s, you know, Um, I think I’m biasing myself towards people that just give back. There’s probably some, like, awesome, incredible trial lawyers that kick butt and, but just, you know, spend their time, you know, on yachts with a bunch of models instead of teaching other lawyers how to do the same thing.

[00:22:03] Michael Cowen:
And good for them. I mean, no, no judgment, uh, but it’s, I just don’t think of them as much cause I don’t see them on the circuit. And I guess if I have to pick just one more and I’m, and I apologize, I mean, I’m, I’m between Rex Paris and Nick Rowley. I mean, Nick, obviously his results are incredible. He’s also giving back a lot.

[00:22:22] Michael Cowen:
His teaching, his books, um, have helped me. But then Rex is like, so on the cognitive science, again, his verdicts are incredible too. And I’ve just never seen someone go in as much into the science and psychology in the way that brain works as Rex does. So I had to give you six. I know I could probably come up with 20 more, but there are.

[00:22:45] Michael Cowen:
This is really a golden age to be a trial lawyer because there are so many great lawyers that are giving back and teaching and sharing right now There are so many more opportunities to learn now than there ever have been before.

[00:22:56] Bobby Steinbach:
on that topic of giving back Are there any mistakes that you made earlier in your career that you want to give back and and you want new lawyers?

[00:23:03] Bobby Steinbach:
To know about so they can avoid them.

[00:23:05] Michael Cowen:
Oh tons tons On the trucking part the biggest mistake I made when I started is I didn’t know that trucking cases were different than car wreck cases You And, you know, I got, I treated a trucking case just like a car wreck case, which is I got the case in, I got the police report, I got the medicals, I sent a demand, or filed suit, and they paid me more than they paid me on a regular case, so I thought I was doing a good job.

[00:23:27] Michael Cowen:
And then I had lunch with another lawyer, and he was making fun of somebody else. He goes, yeah, I have a case, trucking case, and this other lawyer has another plaintiff, and that dumbass doesn’t even know what the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations are, and he starts laughing. And I pretended and laughed along with them  because I didn’t want to look stupid, but I didn’t know what the federal motor care safety regulations were either.

[00:23:45] Michael Cowen:
Uh, and so I, there was no Google yet. I think it was Alta Vista or something like that. I went back and typed it in and saw that there are these regulations and there’s all, all this stuff out there about how the company can be negligent. And, you know, there wasn’t great web stuff back then. There was not as great of a Sealy, um, There wasn’t even a trucking litigation group through AHA yet, there was no ATAA.

[00:24:08] Michael Cowen:
And so, you know, I, I just realized, Oh my gosh, I am not getting full value in my cases. I’m not working them upright because no one ever taught me how to do it. Uh, so I think that was the first one that I hired. My first trucking expert, uh, he’s since passed away, a guy named Don Asa, another guy named Roger Allen, who’s still active.

[00:24:24] Michael Cowen:
And they started teaching me and instead of just having them write a report, I would go fly up with them. It’s like, teach me what I need to look for, teach me what to do before I would do depositions and, um, just. over the years learned. So I think that was the one big mistake. Other things. I hired a lawyer away from a referring lawyer once.

[00:24:41] Michael Cowen:
That was really stupid. Um, I apologize for doing that. If you’re listening, that was more than 20 years ago. And again, it was that before that other lawyer was going to leave that firm and stuff. But I mean, it was, I was young, immature, wasn’t thinking about how upset someone would rightfully be with me for, for hiring an employee away from someone that was nice enough to give me business.

[00:25:02] Michael Cowen:
Uh, so yeah, don’t do that. That was a big mistake I made. I think the last one is the, I let fear hold back my personal branding for a long time. Like when I started a podcast, like, who am I to start a podcast? Who am I to put on a, a seminar where I’m the only speaker who would want to come to me? Uh, and I think I probably, I, I definitely could have done that, like in 99 or 2000 when nobody cared who I was and I, you know, yeah.

[00:25:27] Michael Cowen:
Yeah. I’ve, I hit a verdict for $76,000 on a case. Big deal. You know, no one’s going to come listen to that. But I think I probably could have started doing it earlier. I just didn’t have the confidence to do it. So I think just going out there and putting yourself out there more is a good idea

[00:25:44] Andrew Nasrinpay:
on that same topic.

[00:25:45] Andrew Nasrinpay:
I know you have a book and your own podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about those as well as Other, other areas where you think trial lawyers should definitely check out the content because it’s going to help them out.

[00:25:57] Michael Cowen:
Yeah, I’m really proud of my book. I wrote a book called Big Ring Justice. It’s available on Trial Guides.

[00:26:02] Michael Cowen:
Um, I know there’s a discount code too, so you all can put in the show notes. I’ll give it to you after the show. If people want to get it, uh, trialguides. com. But it’s really, I spent five years on it and it’s really everything as of about a year ago I knew about tracking cases. So. It starts off with the big picture of theory, which is my theory of what motivates jurors to allow a big verdict.

[00:26:26] Michael Cowen:
Uh, how to discover and create the story that would, would have the jurors conclude on their own that the defendant is a villain and that they need to be heroes and save the day through their verdict. Then talks about kind of how the trucking industry works so you can understand what the, What the points you’re going to be looking for and then it goes into different types of cases It starts off with that kind of big picture, you know bad drivers fatigue Training and then just goes to a bunch of specific crash scenarios.

[00:26:54] Michael Cowen:
If you have a rear end collision This is what you need to do. These are the resources that you can use to prove liability if you have from you know from Everything from you know, the 18 wheeler rear ending you which is pretty simple to your client ruined the 18 wheeler Why would the 18 wheeler be responsible?

[00:27:10] Michael Cowen:
And, and everything in between. And so I’m really proud of it. I put a bunch of work into it. I’ve been told by other people, it’s very useful. I would advise people to check that out if you want to do trucking work. Um, my podcast, that’s really a labor of love. I started it off just for fun. I didn’t really expect that it would take off.

[00:27:28] Michael Cowen:
I didn’t know if anyone listened to it, but I didn’t even know what a podcast was before I started it. And then someone I knew was on the Stone Cold Steve Austin podcast. And I grew up as a. Kid, uh, I mean I was a white kid in the trailer for the first couple years of my life So I was naturally a professional wrestling fan growing up And so someone I knew was gonna talk to Stone Cold I wanted to hear that and so I got the podcast and at the time I was training for a marathon So I had all these long boring runs.

[00:27:56] Michael Cowen:
I was looking for a trial lawyer podcast at the time I didn’t see much out there that was useful content being released consistently There were people that had some awesome stuff, but they would like do a few episodes and they would fall off and maybe do another one a year later and then fall off.

[00:28:11] Michael Cowen:
And there were people that put out a lot of stuff, but it was self promotional and not very useful. So I just talked to my team, said, I want to do a podcast. Let’s find people that I can learn from that I want to learn from. And so if nothing else, if no one else ever listens, I’ve learned something and I’ve gotten something out of it.

[00:28:25] Michael Cowen:
And by that time, I knew enough people in the trial lawyer world where I had access. I mean, my first guests were like Josh Carton, Joe Freed, Randy McGinn, Lisa Blue. I was able to get some really, uh, big people and learn from them. I’ve gotten something out of almost every episode I’ve recorded. But I just told my team, like, let’s get 10 in the can before we start releasing them because we need to be consistent and I get, You know, caught up in trial or I go on vacation and we can’t miss an episode and then it’s just really taken off.

[00:28:51] Michael Cowen:
Now we have thousands of people listening to every episode and now I have people, instead of me begging people to come on, I have people trying to pitch themselves all the time to come on and it’s been a lot of fun. But really for me, it’s all about, you know, providing useful content to the listener because no one’s going to listen to it.

[00:29:06] Michael Cowen:
Just for me to talk about how great I am. It has to be something useful for them. And then, you know, I just follow my own curiosity. I figure I’m a trial lawyer. If Sometimes they’re marketing people, sometimes they’re trial lawyers, sometimes they’re consultants, management people. But if I find something that would be useful to me, I’m hoping it’s useful to the audience and so far it has been.

[00:29:24] Bobby Steinbach:
You, you hit a sore spot with me, uh, Michael. I had two things I wasn’t allowed to watch growing up. My mom wouldn’t let me watch, uh, Jerry Springer and WWE. Those were like the two off limits, I don’t know why WWE was off limits, but it was.

[00:29:40] Michael Cowen:
Well, having watched WWD and the E and the Attitude Era, that she probably was right on both counts.

[00:29:46] Bobby Steinbach:
Yeah, I guess. Anyways, I’m still bitter. Um, okay. Well, we like to wrap up here with a little game. We have a game with all our guests, different one for each. For you, we, uh, We thought it’d be apt to play a game we call Sleazy or Not Sleazy. Uh, given the world of legal advertising, there’s plenty of things that are walking a line.

[00:30:09] Bobby Steinbach:
Um, so we’re going to give you a marketing channel, I guess for lack of a better category. You’re going to tell us if you think it’s sleazy or not sleazy.

[00:30:31] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Sure. To start it off, lead gen services.

[00:30:36] Michael Cowen:
Theoretically not sleazy if they get you decent cases.

[00:30:42] Bobby Steinbach:
Alright, billboard advertising.

[00:30:44] Michael Cowen:
Not sleazy, if done right.

[00:30:47] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Facebook advertising.

[00:30:48] Michael Cowen:
Not sleazy, if done right. That’s the problem. The categories are all fine. It’s just, what do you do with them? So far, none of them are intrinsically

[00:30:56] Bobby Steinbach:
Let’s assume majority of Majority of channel.

[00:30:59] Michael Cowen:
Okay, not sleazy.

[00:31:02] Bobby Steinbach:
Uh, marketing law firms.

[00:31:03] Michael Cowen:
I love them. They refer me cases

[00:31:10] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Uh influencer marketing,

[00:31:16] Michael Cowen:
I don’t think that’s lazy and intrinsically

[00:31:19] Bobby Steinbach:
I’m really

[00:31:20] Michael Cowen:
open minded when it comes to marketing. Yeah. Well, it’s a good thing anything, you know

[00:31:23] Bobby Steinbach:
And the last one I I think I know your answer is going to be uh attorney to attorney marketing

[00:31:29] Michael Cowen:
Probably not sleazy. It can be

[00:31:32] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Can you give an example of when that is, Sleazy?

[00:31:36] Michael Cowen:
Yeah, you can like, get someone hookers and blow to give you cases.

[00:31:42] Michael Cowen:
That would be Sleazy. You know, paying someone’s associate to sign up a case for your firm instead of, I’ve heard of those things happening. Or paying an employee. I’ve had it happen to me once. Someone paid an employee at my firm to sign up a case for their firm instead of mine. Um, oh wow. Yeah. That’s sleazy.

[00:32:00] Michael Cowen:
There’s, they’re sle. No, but every marketing channel, I mean, other than just flat out bear tree, I don’t believe that any marketing channel is inherently sleazy. I think it’s on how you do it.

[00:32:12] Bobby Steinbach:
I think that’s fair. It’s just there tends to be channels that are dominated by sleazy approaches. It like Legion Legion tends to be.

[00:32:23] Bobby Steinbach:
Yeah.

[00:32:24] Michael Cowen:
I see a lot of deceptive legion stuff out there. I also see a lot of legion that is very deceptive to the lawyer because they, what they promise you and what you get for your money are very different.

[00:32:34] Bobby Steinbach:
Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, Michael, thanks for joining us today. This was a great episode. It was awesome getting to learn more about trucking litigation and you know, everything that goes into attorney to attorney marketing.

[00:32:46] Bobby Steinbach:
I think it’s been a really great, um, chat.

[00:32:51] Michael Cowen:
Well, thank you for having me.

[00:32:54] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Well, that was interesting. One thing for sure is I’m going to read his book and check out the podcast because every time I read a book about the different strategies that trial lawyers use, it gives me a new appreciation for everything they

[00:33:08] Bobby Steinbach:
do.

[00:33:08] Bobby Steinbach:
I think this episode has the best. I hope we don’t, um, F it up because I think this episode has the best potential for, uh, like links and resources. We talked about a lot of helpful stuff, even going like as deep as like the easel or whatever for presenting a trial. And, and, um, what Michael talked about for linear, what linear suggested.

[00:33:31] Bobby Steinbach:
Even something that’s like as concrete as that. There are a ton of those in this episode that we’ll make sure we link to so folks can, can leverage it.

[00:33:38] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Yep. It’s funny how sometimes it’s something that seems simple. A different easel is a big game changer.

[00:33:47] Bobby Steinbach:
Totally. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think that’s it.

[00:33:50] Bobby Steinbach:
No void rage on my part, which is a plus. So all in all, great episode. Thanks for joining and we’ll see you on the next Hot Docket podcast. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Hot Docket. We’re your hosts, Bobby and Andrew, founders of Mean Pug, the marketing agency for ambitious law firms.

[00:34:07] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Have questions about marketing or anything we covered today, email us at bark at meanpug.

[00:34:13] Andrew Nasrinpay:
com. Be sure to subscribe to learn more.