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The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Ep. 203 – Behind the Case: How Ben Glass Built a Niche Long-Term Disability Practice (Iowa Law Guest Lecture)
In this special recording of a guest lecture at the University of Iowa College of Law, Ben Glass gives students a rare behind-the-scenes look at how he built a national long-term disability (LTD) insurance practice—without relying on expensive digital ads.
This episode is packed with real-world insight into:
- What the ERISA long-term disability space actually is—and why it’s underserved
- How to build a multi-state legal niche that scales with systems, not billable hours
- The #1 marketing principle most lawyers ignore (but every business gets right)
- Why relationships, not algorithms, are Ben’s most profitable referral source
- The difference between transactional advertising and true “authority marketing”
💡 Highlights:
- Ben's approach to tribal leader marketing and storytelling to referral sources
- How a single $2,500 sponsored blog post led to a high-end national pipeline
- The 144-step internal process that doubles as a marketing magnet
- Why he built an entire referral stream from doctors, lawyers, and financial planners
- What to do when you’re brand new and don’t “have value” (hint: you do)
Ben closes the conversation by giving advice to future law firm owners: think like a storyteller, find a niche that needs you, and never bet your future on one marketing tactic.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glenn, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practices. For over 40 years, Ben has built a lot that stands for something bigger. Thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money. Each week, Beth brings you real conversations to get to work out. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_05:Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. Today's episode is something a little different. I was recently invited to speak at the University of Iowa College of Law to share the behind-the-scenes story of how we built a thriving ERISA long-term disability practice. Now, if you're thinking, that sounds dry, think again. This is a deep dive into how we built a profitable referral-driven business by focusing on an underserved niche, building relationships over ads, and using direct mail in the digital age. No fluff, no clickbait marketing, just real talk on what works and what doesn't. If you're a law student, new lawyer, or even a seasoned pro thinking about what's next, this one's for you. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_04:We are going to jump right into it. You've got uh Iowa's best and brightest here in the room with you. So I I told them that they've already been on your website. Uh they have heard your uh podcast interview with uh Jonathan Hawkins, and so I said that I would ask you about your journey into long-term disability cases.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, well, great. Well, thanks for having me, uh Tim and uh guys and gals. So let me just tell you what the practice area is so you have a framework. This is in the space, these are insurance policies. Almost every employee in America, as part of their benefits package, gets life insurance, health benefits, and a lot and a long-term disability insurance policy as a benefit, which if you cannot work because you're injured or you're sick, it pays a portion of your of your salary. Um, and because this benefit comes through your employer, it's governed by the federal statute known as ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. You don't really need to know too much about that. And so that's one space. So we call those group long-term disability policies. And I'm the guy you come to when your claim has been denied, right? And I get you back on claim and I charge you a contingent fee for doing that, and we'll talk about we can talk about that. Now, as young professionals, when you get out of law school, you're not always going to want to rely on your employer's group policy. So you're gonna go and talk to a broker at some point and get an individual policy, uh, individual long-term disability insurance policy. Same thing, kind of different rules for how the two types of claims get adjudicated if they've been denied and you hire a lawyer like us. But the marketing and the practice building for the practice is the same. And and I would merely suggest to you, um, and I call everybody youngsters because you're all younger than me, that if you're looking for an underserved practice area that needs lawyers and you can make money in, and it's really interesting work, then this ERISA long-term disability insurance claims plaintiff's work is a cool place to go. I first found this. So I am by trade uh like Tim, uh a personal injury attorney. For many years, I did not come out practice. So I've been in the profession 40. I run my own firm for the last 30 years, built a second company that teaches lawyers how to grow great practices that makes their families happy. They became lawyers. That's called Great Legal Marketing. Tim may have told you about that. And Tim's been a longtime friend and a member of that organization. That's how I met Tim originally, I think. Um in 1999, a case came to me. Um, it looked to me like an insurance case, a contracts case, kind of straightforward. The lady said, uh, but nobody else will take it, uh, they don't understand it. And I said, I'll take it and I'll figure it out. And it it was a little bit more than an insurance case because it was an employer-sponsored um benefit, insurance benefit. And so it came under ERISA. And so I started to learn that whole world. Um, and I did it. This is kind of pre-PACER, if you know what PACER is, the uh federal online uh filing system, um, and kind of pre, almost pre-internet. I'm so old. Um, so I had to learn it like by getting my butt kicked by defense lawyers for a couple of years. I would give you this tip. In the world, when you get out there into the world, if you're in a small firm or you're build your own firm, whatever it is, if you want to learn a practice area, like one of the quickest ways to learn the substantive law and the procedural law, if you're in a state that has a robust online filing system, is to go find 10 fully completed cases. Like maybe they went to the state Supreme Court, download everything and read it all. If you read 10 cases, everything in the case files, like you'll know 80% of what you need to know. It doesn't matter the practice area. This is really easy to do for federal practices like ERISA, like employment law, like Fair for Act, these sort of things. If I was going to start a new practice area, particularly in a federal practice uh zone, it's exactly what I would do. Find 10 fully fleshed out cases, download everything, read all the briefs, all the judges' opinions, look at all the procedural things that happened in the case, and I would tell you that you will know 80% of what you need to know. And then you can start. So you have an advantage that I didn't have. So let's talk about what we're here for, really is marketing. The other thing I'll say, the other thing I'll say about this practice area is because it is federalized, I pretty much can practice, do a large part of this practice anywhere in the country across state boundaries because a significant part of the practice, according to the federal regulations, can be done by anyone. So you could appoint anybody to be your representative to do the appeal back to the insurance company. You don't really need to know what that is yet. But I'm allowed to cross state boundaries pretty liberally. And then if we litigate, in some federal courts, I we can just pay some money and fill out a form, and we don't even need local counsel. But in most cases, we'll get local counsel in that jurisdiction. So that gives me an advantage that I can play anywhere. The other advantage we have is that, as I said, it's an underserved practice area. Like there's not a lawyer, a lot of lawyers who do this stuff, and um, versus the other half of Ben Glass Law, which is a personal injury practice, much like um a substantial part of the work that Tim does. So that's a highly competitive. There's a way to do it there too, but it's a lot easier if you find a space in the legal profession where there aren't a bazillion lawyers in that area, and then you make it sound really complicated to everybody who's outside, right? And you develop systems. Of course, in marketing, so so my client is someone, my my main client is someone who whose benefits have been denied. So they have made an application for benefits. The insurance companies said no. And in fact, one of the domains that we own is fredenialetterreview.com. And I got that from watching late night commercials about all the other things in the world, like you know, garage doorrepair.com. Like, oh, that's cool. I'm gonna do this, make some easy to remember domain, buy it, send it. But that's what we're looking for primarily. There's a bunch of ways to make money in this practice, but primarily you've been denied your benefits, and now you are looking for somebody like me. So, of course, we have all the sort of typical consumer-facing information on website. We don't spend a lot of money on digital advertising because of the other things I'm gonna show you or talk to you about. Um, but we do what you know everybody else does fill your website with interesting information. You go on YouTube and you make a bunch of instructional videos about the practice area. So that'd be another place if you were interested, you can go on YouTube, look for our long-term disability channel, and kind of see that. But everybody does that. So there's nothing very special about that. We just do it well, and we've been doing it for a long time. The real thing, though, I want to show you a little bit, is really what I call like principles of marketing. Principles of marketing haven't changed in hundreds of years, right? Media changes when I started yellow pages. That was kind of it, yellow pages and TV. But today a million choices of media, but the media that is popular today in January of 2026 could change on a dime. So understanding marketing principles is what will carry you through years and years of of the profession and years and years of changes of media. So the number one thing that we do outside of this direct-to-consumer website stuff is what I call marketing to tribal leaders. Who else is talking to my client and who could send me a lot of cases, more than single, single, single, right? And how could I get in front of them and be interesting? So another marketing principle, but it's really a life principle, is this is always asking yourself, what can I do for you first? You got to put value into the world first, and the world will send value back to you. Um, I guarantee that. Um, and so we began to look like, all right, who's got who has who's talking to people who might be a great client for us? Social security disability lawyers. You don't need to know sitting in class today what Social Security Disability Lawyers do, but mainly they're also talking to people who, because of injury or sickness, cannot work. So that's a federal system that provides a safety net for people who can't work. All right. My space is directly adjacent to them. And most Social Security disability attorneys do not do ERISA long-term disability work. I don't know why, because I make a lot more money per case doing my work than they do in theirs. But one of the things you'll find in the profession is everybody has their space that they like doing and then they get good at. So that's a that our primary then tribal leader is a lawyer who's doing social disability work. And the way that we get in front of them primarily is by old-fashioned Jurassic marketing, direct mail. Letters and newsletters that we address, lick and stick, and send to them that usually are not like, hey, we're really great, come look at us, like we're the best, we're the biggest. But what we try to do is be storytellers. And so today in 2025 and 2026, every single month, going out to our database of Social Security lawyers, stories. Here's some interesting cases that we worked on this month or this past month. Here's a couple times uh in 2025, I argued in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals twice. Very interesting cases, which might not be interesting to a lay person, but to someone who's already working in the space of disability and helping people, like we hope is interesting. And what I want them to see every month, and while we anonymize the story, so we take the names out of the stories or we make up fake names and we tell them these are fake names, but behind every story, there's a disease process. So someone might have fibromyalgia or cognitive disability or some sort of cancer. There's an occupation. Oh, I'm a dentist. I represented last year we finished a case, I represented a coal miner from Southwest Virginia, a guy who I didn't even know this existed in America, still, a guy who would lead a dozen men and women deep into the mines of Southwest Virginia to mine for coal. Like, who knew that this even like maybe I'm I live in a bubble, right? Um and so and so you've got a disease process, you have an occupation, we want to tell stories about occupations, and of course, we tell stories about the insurance companies, and there's probably five or six or seven kind of major insurance players in the space, right? Who's who if you're in the disability world, you would recognize these lawyers. So importantly, I'm getting in front of them, of the Social Security lawyers, every single month, written letters, always with some storytelling, but always also with a here's something I could do for you. So, for example, we've developed uh we have a 144-step process that we use internally at Ben Glass Law to process these claims. And I would say to Social Security lawyer, hey, I've got a 144-step process. It's not exactly what you do in SSDI, but if you'd like to see it, just email me or give me a call, I'll send it to you. That document is really a marketing document. That document says it really is demonstrating authority by showing all of the work that we do that goes into a representing uh LTD, long-term disability clients, and saying to that Social Security disability lawyer, hey, if somebody calls and they also have a long-term disability claim, or they only have a long-term disability claim, call Ben. Like call Ben Glass and his team. So that's primary. Second thing, like, all right, what other lawyers have my future clients? Well, if we go adjacent a little bit to SSDI, we look at things like workers' compensation and personal injury. And one of the things that the lawyers who do that work need to know is that a lot of their clients who they're already helping also have a policy that's my area of expertise, and they don't even know to ask. So I'm raising awareness of this additional claim that these lawyers' clients may have. And again, I'm the guy to send them to to figure out whether they have a claim that's valid. Of course, we pay referral fees, and every state's got different rules about how you pay referral fees. But Virginia's very liberal and basically clients agree, and clients love it when they get into the hands of an expert. The second thing we did with the workers' comp and the personal injury lawyers is turns out that when you settle one of those cases, if your client also has a long-term disability claim that's pending, this settlement can affect the dollars you get on this claim. And there's a right way and a wrong way to settle the personal injury or the workers' compensation claim. And a lot of lawyers in the personal injury and workers' compensation space who don't understand anything about ERISA and think like, that's a different world. I don't want to be a part of that world, they actually may potentially be committing a legal malpractice, right? Because they're doing things over here and settling in a case that could affect adversely the long-term disability case. So that's like, oh, okay. Ben should be speaking on this and writing articles about this, right? So the short the line to be a speaker, you'll find this out, like associations, local bar associations, state trial lawyers, they're always looking for speakers, right? I say, I'm gonna come and teach your workers competent personal energy lawyers how to avoid malpractice, they go, yes, come, right? So speaking, writing articles for those journals is another way to get in front of them, to establish authority and expertise as a way to get in the door. By the way, when you're out there in the world and anyone ever invites you to speak, a principle of marketing is make sure that talk gets recorded. So if the if the people who invite you to speak are not recording it, I hire my own videographer to come. So you can go on YouTube, you can search for Ben Glass Speaks to Virginia Workers Compensation Lawyers about ERISA disability claims. That marketing principle, that life principle is if I'm doing something once, I want to be able to think about how many different ways I could repurpose it. And even if today I can't think of how I will repurpose it, I still want to have it. I'm gonna put it into my little library because I'll think tomorrow, damn, I should have recorded that talk. So the next thing we did is is to think, okay, who else? Or what kind of claims do we want to have? So part of what you'll, I'm sure, learn in this class is talking about like what I described as who do you want to see walking in the door, our avatar client. Well, I like to represent people that make a lot of money because if they make a lot of money, they typically their benefit is higher, and I I'm charging a percentage of that benefit. So we started saying, hey, we're the lawyers for CEOs, CFOs, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and doctors. All these folks who have complicated financial lives. Now we were doing that work. I didn't sign up for any, I didn't ask anybody permission to be the guy who was the rep the lawyer for these high wage earners. We just started marketing it. And we created marketing pieces for it. And then we looked around. All right, tribal leaders again, speaking or communicating with these guys and gals. Well, number one, financial planners, number two, estate planners, so so all sorts of people, but particularly people that make a lot of money, they are carefully structuring out their financial life. And so they're getting advice from state planning lawyers, financial planners. So again, now how can we get in front of those people? Well, you identify them and you add them to your mailing list. And then what happened, and this has been a game changer in the last 18 months or so, is I found out that in the medical space, everybody knows who Dave Ramsey is, right? Big financial guru. Well, in the medical space, there's a there's a there's a handful of people that have huge brands teaching doctors how to have great financial lives. So how to save, how to buy disability policies, how to invest in real estate, how to how to sell their practice, how to build financial wealth. That's kind of cool. They didn't have anybody coming to them to talk about long term disability insurance claims. So we entered that world. We found uh one organization in particular, it's called the White Coat Investor. We said, How much does it cost to put a couple of Sponsored blog articles on your site, and it was I don't know, it's$2,500 or$5,000 a year. Something that's not a lot of money. And oh my gosh. Until recently, we were the only ones there. Now, some other lawyers have followed us to the space, but we impressed the owner and he had me on a podcast. And every time that podcast plays, or I do anything for them, my phone rings off the hook. Again, the principle is he's a tribal leader. If he says, call Ben Glass, he sounds like a smart guy, or he lets Ben Glass come on his podcast and talk, and I do sound like a smart guy, then folks, doctors from all over the country, call. Um, and we do, and just the end of that one is so these people are people that are not, their claims have not been denied. They have a recent diagnosis, early onset Parkinson's, a tremor of some sort, a back injury. That's you know, these doctors work really hard. Like if especially if you're a surgeon or you're doing any sort of procedures, actually work unbelievably hard physical hours. You wouldn't you wouldn't imagine unless you sort of talk to a bunch of them. And for them, we do a consult. Like, all right, here's your uh disease, show me your policies, and they'll often have multiple policies. So they'll have the group policy of the organization they work for, the hospital or the healthcare clinic they work for, and they'll have bought these individual policies because again, they're listening to the Dave Ramsey of finances who tells them to go buy a good disability policy. And I sit down with them and I charge them$2,100. It takes me about an hour of my time. My team does some prep, but just in the lawyer space, a one-hour console for$2,100 is pretty good. But we're talking about guys and gals who make hundreds of thousands or million dollars, and so the value that I'm imparting to them is high. Um, and we we chat, and the object of that whole call is to make sure that they never need a lawyer, that they fill out the forms right, that they think about what they what they tell their business partners, how they structure their practice, if they're gonna sell their practice, all sorts of stuff that I find very, very interesting. And it's and it's um, you know, they have again, they have complex lives. So except for the little bit of money that we pay on putting sponsored ad sponsored blog posts. So again, it's information. It's not really, it's not an ad. It's like, here's some good information about these policies, here's good information what what insurance company looks for in these policies, and then getting in front of them and speaking, right, costs very little money. And it and it's for us so much more powerful than trying to buy ads because one of the things you'll find in the world is that the price or the cost of an ad spend in a lot of practice areas is shooting through the roof, right? Particularly in the personal injury workers' comp space. Like just so many lawyers and now non-lawyers spending money doing that. So that's today, I spend most of my time taking care of what we would call my herd or my tribe, my referral sources, making sure we know who's sends us cases almost every week, right? And again, every state has rules about what you can pay or how you can deal with referral sources, but kindness, sending gifts, doing things I learned from my master in mind group, like if Tim is he is a referral, but we go find out where he went to college and buy him the really nice switcher that he wouldn't buy for himself. Little things like that. So sending personal notes too, like reading the newspaper, oh wow, here's somebody did something good. Here's Virginia Lawyers Weekly. Let's send them a note of congratulations, right? The point being, you don't have to build a practice based on advertising. And actually, when you're building it based on pure advertising, you're playing in a pool that has a lot of players in it. When you're building it on relationships, on speaking engagements, on direct mail, you're playing in a pool that very, very few people play in. And then the skill to learn is how can I be interesting? All right, because most you guys probably haven't been to a lot of lawyer, like continuing legal education talks, they're all drop-dead boring, right? Except for the ones Tim and I do. The rest are just they're just horrible. Um, and so figuring out how I can be an interesting speaker, tell stories, show authority without bragging. And and today there's a ton of resources. So the place I would go, and I know you've I know that you all are looking at a bunch of um um you know marketing, good marketing literature, but make sure, and I'm sure Tim is really like you gotta you most of my great ideas don't come from inside of legal, right? I want to know how does the bagel bakery get customers? How does a hair salon get customers? How do they keep them for life, right? How does a car dealer do that? And so I'm always on the look for how other people in more and other competitive industries market. Let me tell you just a couple things. And Tim, Tim, you asked me like about numbers and stuff. I'm a visionary. If I had had that before, I would have, I would have gotten them for you. We just came off, so our firm every year does a two-day off-site retreat with our leadership team. We talked about all this stuff. I have no idea. I know that we convert over 80% of the people who call us whose cases that we want. So we've got a great sales and intake team of one who's wonderful, a woman who's personally offended if someone who'd be a good client for us doesn't sign with us. She is terrific, right? Um, but 80 or over 80%, probably 85% of the cases that we want, we get. In part, there's less competition in my space, in part because we developed a lot of collateral material that says, by the way, let me send you a link to Ben spoke to this exclusive group of workers' compensation lawyers on our podcast, the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. One of the recent episodes was my argument in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the highly technical, kind of boring argument, but it's authority. So we can say to clients, hey, if you want to see him working or listen to him working, here's a link to listen to Ben work. Um, and so my team has has these other assets at their disposal, which they can use, which again, a YouTube video or a podcast, like we create it once, it goes up once, and all you need to know is where to go and find it. I think that, and then the last thing, and then I'll be open to questions, is the mistakes I made early on, and what you will see when you get out there, if you're running your own practice or you're in a small practice, is falling for pitches, right? When you are you are young in the profession and you don't have a lot of cases, and the guy calls and says, Hey, we can get you, we can make you the lawyer for the union, and we're gonna put your ad in a union newspaper, like just run the other way, right? And so the mistake is not learning enough about marketing to be able to have an intelligent discussion either with a vendor who is selling you something, or if you have a marketing professional in your firm or a fractional marketing professional, you gotta know enough, I think, to be able to have intelligent conversations about how will we measure success? How are we gonna track this? Are you the vendor curious about who my avatar is? What happens if you send me too many crappy leads that don't even fit my avatar? Like, how will we have a discussion? How will I pay you? And so the more that you actually know your numbers, or my case, like I got people that can tell me numbers if I need it, right? And we have a full-time marketing professional in-house, and we try to make decisions based upon like if we send a dollar out, how many dollars does it bring back? And the more dollars it brings back, the more dollars we want to send out on that channel. Again, and I'll end with this like again, the media always changes. Google changes the way it shows sites and websites and what it shows. And so you have to have, I think, a diversity. Like one is a very dangerous number. And I think you have to understand the principles. What the way lawyers lose money a lot is just by you don't know what you don't know, not asking the right questions, not having good tracking. And the best way to really, when you're out in the world, do that is to get involved in groups. There's you know, also to mastermind groups, and um, you know, again, look for ideas also outside of uh the industry. So let me just stop there. Hopefully that's helpful in some way, shape, or form. And uh Tim, anything, any direction you'd like me to go in or uh Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, we we've got time for two or three questions.
SPEAKER_01:So does anybody have a question that you want to ask them?
SPEAKER_05:Just to let you know, I won't want to brag, but I'm the guy who brought to the legal profession conferences and seminars based on the business of law twenty years ago. So you have a you know, a guy's done this for a long time.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, thank you, Ben, for being with us here today.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:The question I have is uh you mentioned earlier that a good way to you know do marketing and you know, to kind of build your reputation there is all to kind of put in value first into I guess the system or the whatever the and so I was wondering how if you could speak more on like how say like an attorney fresh out of law school, right? Isn't as valuable, right? As a more experienced attorney, like then you know, likely does it have that many connections too? Like how can someone like that, you know, kind of build, you know, or or like insert value into the system there?
SPEAKER_05:Yes. So the way the way to do this is to be in it and it to learn to be an interesting person and to learn like you are beautiful and your story is unique. No one else in the history of the world has your exact story. And so, but especially for young lawyers, like things like how did I even get here? You you know, when you start to get calls, every call again, anonymized, can become a story. I do think that although I'm not a huge fan of volunteering for committees for bar associations, but getting involved in in, if you're gonna do one, like get involved in the committee that is creating events, either webinars or continuing legal education, live events, that's where you'll start hanging out with the lawyers who have a little bit more experience than you do. And what you will find when you do that is they are drop-dead boring. They may be very smart, but they are boring speakers. 90% of them, right? And so again, developing that skill of being an interesting person who goes and whatever the practice area is, go and study the practice area, learn some of the frequently asked questions. It's easy to do. You go on other people's websites, create some video or some pieces that answer frequently asked questions. You're not stealing. The answers are all the same across all of the websites in the world. They just are, right? But you can, even when you are young. So even when I was a young lawyer, like I and I had the advantage, I uh was in a small firm and I did get to hang out with a lot of experienced trial lawyers, but that led to stories and things that I could talk to clients about or potential clients, or most importantly, I could get on stage and speak about. And I just tell you that the bar for speaking and speaking well is low. And then I would the thing that uh, you know, pick your practice area. It would be fairly easy, and today, like AI will help you, like what you don't know, but fairly easy to start create marketing pieces that when somebody calls you a hundred years ago, my team was able to say, Hey, well, thanks for calling. Did you know Ben wrote the book on car accident cases in Virginia, which was absolutely positively true? Like I had written a book, it wasn't Westlaw on car accident cases, but it was practical advice that I knew just from being out for a couple of years that you could find out like tomorrow. Like you go and figure this out. You have a unique story, don't be afraid to tell that story. Most people, and particularly lawyers, uh, surprisingly, are like they don't want to tell their stories too much. And they don't know how to do it in a way that's not bragging.
SPEAKER_04:All right, we've got time for one more question. Anybody got one?
SPEAKER_03:I have a question. So I know you talked about how over time, like the mediums that you use have changed. And I know we also talked about in class how having like one consistent message is important. So, how do you make sure that that one message kind of threads through all those different mediums that you use?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so that's a great question. So there's two things. So our message outfacing is we help the sick and injured tell their stories to skeptical insurance companies, right? Easy thing to remember, it is what we are, and it is what we do. All I'm doing, if I represent you, is helping you tell your story with that case or about about that case. So it's not hard to keep that theme consistent. What will get in your head, I will tell you this, is the vendors who are like, well, Billy Bob down the street is saying this, so you should say this too. And a principle of marketing is like if everybody else is doing it, like figure out first, don't do that and figure out what to do. I tell the story, and Tim's heard it, you know, when I first started to get involved in marketing and learning, I went to the library, regional library with probably 50 yellow page directories. And I went through and looked at all the lawyer ads for personally. I wanted to see what they were saying. You know, you get through five of them, and then the the rest of them are all the same anyway. So that's when we sort of developed back then. Like, if you've been hurt, before you talk to the adjuster, hire a lawyer, or sign any forms, like get our free book. And so we started marketing the book, actually. So it's not that hard. What the hard thing is is developing is creating a message or a tagline or whatever that is unique, that is you. We've built a company, a law firm here where people will thrive, where the internal team thrives. We believe if that's true, that the clients will be well served. And so everything we do internally is based upon will your life be made better? Again, the team's life be made better. And everything outfacing is we help you tell your story to skeptical insurance companies who are who are really saying that you're a liar. You and your doctors are lying to you. Great. All right, Ben, thank you very much. All right, you guys are in the hands of a master.
SPEAKER_01:Have a good day. All right, bye-bye.
SPEAKER_00:That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit GreatLegalMarketing.com or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.
