50. The Business Hidden in Rejected Cases

From Lobbying to Legal Referrals

Tara: Hey, y’all. Tara Lee, live from Miami Beach at NTL. This is Hot Docket Live.

Chris Rose: Chris F’n Rose.

Tara: Hey, Chris.

Chris Rose: Hey, Tara.

Tara: Thanks so much for joining the MeanPug podcast here at NTL in Miami.

Chris Rose: I cannot tell you how appreciative I am that you invited me. Thank you very much.

Tara: I heard it was a little bit of a journey for you to get here today.

Chris Rose: It was. I had to go through Detroit.

Tara: But you were so dedicated because this podcast meant a lot to you, right?

Chris Rose: It is pretty much the only reason for my existence. It is the culmination of my life’s efforts.

Tara: We have been talking to a lot of people here at this conference, and I was just reminiscing about how I met you. This was maybe three years ago at the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association conference.

I was working for a legal technology startup, and you were attending the conference across the way. You came over, swooped in behind the booth, sat next to me, and said, “Give me your spiel.”

I had honestly never been approached like that before in this space. It did not feel forced or weird. I thought, “Wow, this guy has some confidence.” You also have a huge following and a strong presence online.

Chris Rose: I think you mean an OnlyFans following.

Tara: That was my experience meeting you. I am happy to call you a friend. Tell us about your journey as an attorney, what brought you to the law, and where you are now.

Chris Rose: I wanted to go into politics. I like networks, relationships, and systems. I went into politics and became a lobbyist, which is just being a lawyer of a different color.

Tara: I did lobbying, too. I do not know if you knew that about me. I did two legislative sessions in Texas and then said, “I am good. Deuces.”

Chris Rose: Exactly. I did it in Nevada. I think we talked about that before. That is one of the ways we connected.

Then I was approached at a conference by Steno, the court reporting company. They said, “You are really good at this. Why do you not come work in our marketing department?”

I was looking for a change, so I went to work with them and learned sales and marketing over four years. They helped me expand my network and get to know people.

Life is about sales. You are always selling something. You are selling yourself, your business, or your time. Without them, I would not be the charismatic individual I am today or have the name and brand I have.

Can I say it now?

Tara: Yes.

Chris Rose: Chris F’n Rose. That is who I am.

I want to own a yacht so badly. It is not because I particularly like yachts or boats. You basically throw money away on them. But when I have enough money to throw away on a yacht, that is how I will know I have made it.

I am never going to do that working for someone else. I am a lawyer, so I started thinking about what type of law I could practice without actually practicing law. Then it occurred to me: mailbox money. I could work on referrals.

That is what I do now. I help law firms refer out cases. It is so much better than being a lawyer. I do not have to talk to clients. They are the worst. This is great.

Tara: I did get invited onto a yacht while I was here, but instead we are doing this brilliant podcast. Maybe one day both of us will get to experience yacht life.

Chris Rose: I promise I will invite you onto my yacht one day.

Tara: Perfect.

Chris Rose: I already have the name picked out.

Tara: Let us hear it.

Chris Rose: Diddy Party.

Tara: Okay.

Chris Rose: That way, when it is invariably in the news, people will say, “Of course. What did you expect? What did you think he was going to do with that boat?”

How LegalFlare Turns Rejected Cases Into Law Firm Referrals

Tara: You are now working in legal referrals. Tell us a little about your company.

Chris Rose: LegalFlare takes cases that other law firms originate but have to turn down for whatever reason. Maybe they do not think it is a case, it is outside their practice area, or it is outside their jurisdiction.

I move those cases to a network of attorneys I have established. They review each case in turn, and sometimes they sign them.

Right now, we have about a 15% conversion rate on personal injury cases, 11% on workers’ compensation, and 7% on employment law.

For cases that would otherwise be turned down, that is great. I can leverage the marketing of other firms instead of trying to compete against them.

Andrew: Do you handle any non-contingency work through your network, such as family law, or is it primarily contingency cases?

Chris Rose: It is primarily contingency work. In Nevada, maybe once a year someone comes across my radar who needs a non-contingency referral.

Tara: That is where you are from.

Chris Rose: Exactly. I am in Las Vegas. Someone may call me, or a person in my network may need a referral, and I send them to someone I know.

Otherwise, it is not really worth it. Contingency work pays more.

It is also not only case brokerage. I provide relationship management. I track these firms and hold them accountable. We know exactly how they are performing because I make more money when everybody maximizes conversion rates and case values.

It is not like sending a case into the ether through a referral marketplace. I always say you might sell an old pair of Reeboks on eBay and just throw them out there. But with cases, you need relationships. You need to know who the good partners are.

Tara: Do the shoes smell, or are they fresh?

Chris Rose: Sometimes they smell, believe me.

We had a case recently involving a six-figure commercial policy. Law enforcement had cited our client, so the case had already been declined. It was sent to me, and I referred it to someone who obtained the video.

It turned out to be a huge case. We all did well, and it started with a case that had originally been declined.

It did not cost the originating firm anything to send it to me for another review. I like to think of myself as a layer of redundancy.

Evaluating and Ranking Attorney Referral Partners

Andrew: Do you keep the receiving firms’ criteria on file? How do you match the case with the firm?

Chris Rose: When you say “the firms,” do you mean the originating firms that fit my ideal client profile or the firms that receive the cases?

Andrew: The firms that receive them.

Chris Rose: We have an accountability process. First, there is the introduction. Who are you? How are you?

I will be honest: from the first moment we hear from a firm, we are grading it.

How quickly do they respond? How eager are they? How quickly do they schedule the meeting? How do they conduct themselves during the meeting? We take notes.

If they seem like a good fit, we move into onboarding. Then we look at how quickly they respond, how quickly they provide documents, whether they send proof of malpractice insurance and proof that the attorney is in good standing, how quickly they schedule onboarding, and whether they are attentive during the process.

Those are all good indicators, at least at the beginning.

When we add them to the system, they start in the bottom tier. They are not priority firms yet. We use a waterfall system, and the better they perform, the higher they move.

Firms fall out all the time. It blows my mind how hard firms work at being bad.

Why Speed Matters in a Law Firm Referral Network

Andrew: Besides their initial responsiveness and the onboarding requirements, what else do you evaluate?

Chris Rose: Strong, robust intake is huge. Who is handling the intake?

When a firm has a good intake system with several people reviewing cases, they are usually very responsive. The leads go out immediately.

We track how long it takes from the moment we send a case until the firm reviews it. We also track how long it takes them to decline it.

At first, I thought time to acceptance would be the most important measurement. In reality, time to decline is often more important.

As long as the firm makes a decision, I can route the case to another firm. Each lead usually receives at least three reviews. The faster we move it to the next firm, the more likely it is that a viable case stays alive.

When firms take too long to review a case, it is potentially withering on the vine. Intake is huge.

Building an AI System for Legal Referrals

Andrew: We have talked to many people about intake being a pain point. What does your technology stack look like?

How do you receive information from firms that are discarding these leads? Are you using a ping-post system or building something custom in Salesforce?

At a high level, suppose I am a firm that wants to integrate with your software. Is it point-and-click, or would developers need to be involved? What would I need to do if I wanted to receive cases?

Chris Rose: I am developing all of this myself. I am a lawyer by training, but with AI, it is incredible what is possible.

On the flight here, I created a system that accesses our lead inbox, parses the data, and determines what is in the body of the message.

It can identify the case type, who sent it, and the jurisdiction. Then it routes the lead into our system. The system determines where it should go and tracks everything.

I cannot tell you how incredibly sophisticated it is. It is all custom, I have built it myself, and it is all done with Claude Code.

Building a Custom AI Intake System

Chris Rose: I do not know how deeply you want to get into this, but I also built my own AI assistant.

Tara: That is so cool.

Chris Rose: I call him Cato, for anybody who is a Green Hornet fan.

He does everything. He answers my emails and Slack messages and communicates with my manager of operations, who has her own AI assistant.

The speed at which I can build software to handle this work is incredible.

The next phase involves interpreting the replies we receive. The system is already doing some of this, but it will be able to determine what a reply means.

Does it mean the case has been accepted? Is the firm investigating it? What does the update mean?

I am developing that now. After that, the next step will be integrations. At the speed we are going, that may be only two weeks away.

One of my largest firms, which will be both sending and receiving cases, uses Clio. I am going to see how I can integrate with them.

API connections are incredibly fast now. Give me 12 hours, and I can build something that will blow your socks off.

Andrew: Are you currently integrated with systems such as Litify or Filevine?

Chris Rose: I am not integrated with any of them yet. That is the next step.

I have to review their API connections, see how they format their payloads, and determine how to parse the information so it can enter my system. All of that is easy enough to figure out.

The first step is having someone who wants to use the integration. The second is determining how they send information to me or how I need to send information to them.

It is really quite simple. The biggest steps are project analysis, project requirements, and implementation.

Andrew: On an average day, how many leads move through the platform?

Chris Rose: I would have to ask my manager of operations. We process a little more than 300 leads per month right now, so I would estimate about 10 each day.

Using Legal Conferences to Build Relationships and Authority

Tara: Many trial lawyers and plaintiff attorneys know you. I think you attend more legal conferences than almost anyone else.

At one point, I subscribed to your trial lawyer conference calendar. I do not know whether you are ever home.

You have traveled to state and national events throughout the country, and we are at one now. Which conferences have been the most successful for you?

Some have great attendance but do not provide many opportunities to interact or engage with attendees. I want to hear from the person who is out there attending these events.

Chris Rose: I am happy to spill my guts.

First, we should establish the criteria. What is the purpose of these conferences?

For me, a large part of it is establishing authority and credibility through relationships. I film myself at these events and take photos with people. That shows who I am talking to, who is in my network, who I have access to, and who accepts me.

That demonstrates authority to the many people who silently watch all of this online.

Any event that attracts well-established people with a lot of authority is good for helping me get my name out there.

I also get to pick up pearls of wisdom. I have been a huge fan of Jen Gore for a long time. I love what she does, who she is, and what she represents. I have been a disciple of Jen Gore forever.

Attending these conferences has helped me learn from her. Mike Morse has also been great to me, and I have learned a lot from him.

The best conferences are usually national events that bring together people who are willing to talk openly about their businesses.

NTL is fantastic. I also love CAALA Vegas because it is a party. Lawyered Gras has been really good. I know it is a party disguised as a conference, but it has been great.

For networking, I really like MTMP. It is not necessarily because of the educational material, but because of who attends. That is also a party.

Those are all tier one.

Tara: You just listed a bunch of parties.

Chris Rose: I did. I do not know if you are picking up on my vibe.

Below those, tier two would include the marketing conferences. PILMMA is pretty good. TBI Med Legal is a mix.

Tier three is usually the state trial lawyer associations.

Tara: What are your favorite state events?

Chris Rose: I love Denver, so Colorado is great. Texas is fun.

I am prohibited by law from saying anything bad about Nevada. I love the Nevada Justice Association.

Why Personal Injury Margins May Tighten

Chris Rose: If I had to say something to balance all of that praise, it would be that trial lawyers are usually terrible businesspeople.

When I attend these events and try to talk to them about business, many of them are running their businesses into the ground.

If personal injury margins were not so high, many of these firms would not have successful businesses. Those margins will not remain this high forever.

The cataclysm is coming.

With efficiency gains, market consolidation, and especially autonomous vehicles, we are going to see those margins begin to narrow.

Smaller firms with two, three, four, or five trial lawyers that focus primarily on litigation and referral work may begin to fall by the wayside because the margins will not be as strong as they once were.

When autonomous vehicles become widespread, that is going to eliminate a significant portion of the industry. It does not need to reduce the volume dramatically to have a major effect.

Andrew: Suppose autonomous vehicles significantly reduce trucking accidents. A large portion of the biggest commercial cases would disappear.

The same applies to Uber and Lyft. If trucking and rideshare cases decline, many of the most valuable cases go with them.

Chris Rose: You are exactly right. The oasis is drying up, and the firms that are not paying attention are going to be the ones that die out.

When people ask, “Is AI going to take my job?” the answer is yes if that is how you frame the question.

The better question is, “How can I use AI to become better at my job?”

That is the paradigm people need. I would not even say they need to adopt it, because it is something that is innate in some people.

Ten or 15 years from now, this world is going to look completely different. Most people do not see it because they are not paying attention.

AI, Employment Law, and Lead Quality

Andrew: Over time, most people agree that cars are becoming safer and accidents will become less common.

How do you think AI and changes in the labor market will affect employment cases and current employment-law caseloads?

Chris Rose: I do not see AI affecting them that much because employment cases do not stem from AI. They stem from employers who are [expletive].

Employers discriminate against employees. They fire people when they become pregnant or for whistleblowing. They do not pay them what they should, or they force them to work off the clock.

Maybe AI will help regulate some of that, but those are fundamentally bad business practices.

Andrew: Do you think those issues could happen more frequently if companies begin laying people off because they need fewer employees? Could claims increase?

Chris Rose: No. Everybody is already mad at their boss.

Probably 60% of the leads I receive are employment-law leads, but our conversion rate for employment cases is only about 7%.

People say, “My boss would not give me my birthday off, so I want to sue,” or, “My boss fired me for calling a customer ‘see you next Tuesday,’ so I want to sue.”

Those are not reasons you get to sue your employer, but everybody thinks they can. I do not see that being significantly affected by AI.

The Origin of “Chris F’n Rose”

Tara: I met you as Chris Rose before you became known for attending all these conferences. Now your badge does not simply say Chris Rose. It says Chris F’n Rose.

Where did that come from? What is the story behind it?

Chris Rose: When I went to law school, I wore a tie and tried to look sharp. I decided I was sophisticated and professional now, so I tried to go by Christopher.

Everybody in my class called me Chris Rose. People naturally prefer two syllables when referring to someone. I understand that.

Eventually, I said, “Fine. I am Chris Rose.”

Then I started attending more conferences. As I began to find myself and step into this personality and persona, I would walk into rooms and people would say, “Chris Rose.”

I listened to what people were saying. The more conferences I attended, the more people started saying, “Chris F’n Rose.”

So much of life is about going with the flow and listening to what people are telling you.

That is also what I solve in business. What are your problems? Talk to me. What is the path of least resistance? How can I systemize, optimize, and scale it?

That is the genesis of the name. I did not choose it myself. People started calling me that.

It became official when I attended a Nevada Justice Association conference. The person making the name tags was a friend of mine, and that is how she wrote mine.

That is how it came to be.

Authenticity, Branding, and Going With the Flow

Tara: We have recorded several interviews today, and a common theme has been being your authentic self.

You did not decide, “I am going to become Chris F’n Rose.” It was already happening, and you leaned into it.

Now everybody knows you by that name. It is cool and different. I remember wondering whether you were even allowed to put it on your badge.

Chris Rose: I am allowed to put that on there.

I think what we are talking about is being pulled in a direction.

I studied a lot of Taoism when I was younger, and I still subscribe to much of it, especially the concept of going with the flow.

When you try to swim upstream, you only tire yourself out. But when you allow yourself to float and see where the current takes you, you can often do quite well, as long as it is not taking you over a cliff. You still have to remain aware.

Tara: We had a woman attorney on earlier today who talked about being told in law school that she had to wear a black, blue, or brown suit, with no pink and no lipstick.

She decided she was going to be herself and do what she wanted to do. She is doing very well.

You have also broken away from those expectations. Many people in the legal industry, whether they are lawyers or other professionals, feel constrained by those norms.

What advice would you give lawyers who do not want to fit into that box?

Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

Chris Rose: This is something I struggle with quite often because I am always shouting from the mountaintops that you do not have to be what other people expect.

You do not have to be constrained by the systems you are part of.

I tell my friends this all the time, especially my friends who are defense attorneys. I hate every one of them, but I still tell them.

If I had to boil it down to one thing, it would be this: find what you love and do more of it. Discover, realize, and recognize what you hate, and do less of it.

That may sound flippant, but it applies even on a daily or minute-by-minute basis.

I have found that my zone of genius, where I operate best, is doing things I love, things that excite me and give me an endorphin high.

The things I do not like doing, I typically procrastinate on until someone else does them or something breaks. That is because I am not going to do well at something I do not enjoy.

When I talk to defense attorneys who are trying to make partner while everyone above them is yelling at them and they are working in toxic environments, I want to tell them they do not have to live that way.

There is so much more available.

Embrace the unknown. Get uncomfortable. Push yourself. That is how you grow and become comfortable being uncomfortable.

That path is not for everybody. Some people are deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty, and it may never become comfortable for them.

But for people who are unhappy where they are now, I would say: stop accepting it. What are your options?

If you are a lawyer and worried about what might happen, you are probably not going to become homeless. Your floor of value is high. Even if you lose your job, somebody will likely want to hire you because you are a lawyer.

What is the worst that is going to happen? Take the chance. Jump. You are going to be okay.

The worst possible outcome for many lawyers is still better than the best possible outcome available to many other people.

Lean into that.

I just go. I have the confidence of someone who is not often proven wrong. That is because I enter situations thinking, “I will figure it out.”

Eventually, you become comfortable swimming in the unknown and figuring things out as you go. I think that is the biggest part.

Connecting With Chris Rose and LegalFlare

Tara: The people have spoken. It is Chris F’n Rose.

If your firm does not want to take certain cases, you can pass them to Chris, and he will help find them a home. He is not afraid of it at all.

Chris Rose: There are a few good ways to find me.

The first is by email at chris.rose@legalflair.com. You can also go to LegalFlare at legalflare.com and find out all about me.

Or you can turn off the lights, say my name into a mirror three times, and I will appear. It is one of those party tricks.

Tara: I am not going to try that. It sounds terrible.

Chris Rose: There is a waiting list.

I really appreciate you inviting me in the first place. That means a lot to me. I also appreciate you accommodating me while I battled the airlines.

Tara: It was a strange week for travel. I am glad you made it.

Chris F’n Rose.

Chris Rose: Chris F’n Rose.

Tara: What is your favorite podcast?

Chris Rose: Hot Docket by MeanPug.

Tara: That is exactly what I wanted to hear.

Thank you for watching Hot Docket Live from NTL Miami.