Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
How to Be the Go-To Lawyer in Your State (Like Tim from Iowa)? | Tim Semelroth
What if your law firm became as recognizable as a top sports team?
Tim Semelroth, Iowa’s only board-certified truck accident lawyer, joins Brian to reveal the branding, marketing, and community engagement strategies that took his law firm from three attorneys to seventeen—and made him the go-to lawyer for catastrophic truck accident cases in Iowa.
Inside this episode, you’ll learn:
✅ Why personal branding (like Tim’s “Tim from Iowa” strategy) is a game-changer.
✅ How diversifying practice areas protects against legal industry shifts.
✅ The SEO genius behind MockTrial101.com and how it builds powerful backlinks.
✅ How “underpriced attention” in sports marketing helped Tim outmaneuver competitors (hello, Caitlin Clark 🏀).
✅ The #1 mistake lawyers make when speaking at conferences—and how to turn every speaking gig into new referrals.
Tim’s not just building a firm—he’s building a brand that sticks. If you’re serious about scaling your practice, securing better cases, and making an impact in your community, this episode is a must-listen.
🎧 Hit play now and start building the firm of your dreams!
👉 Want to connect with Tim?
📩 Email: tsemelroth@fightingforfairness.com
🌐 Website: MockTrial101.com | FightingForFairness.com
📱 LinkedIn: Tim Semelroth
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
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the most dangerous number in business is one and specializing in one type of case, getting your cases from one source. And so I've always remembered that. And as our firm has grown, we've tried to diversify so that it doesn't matter what happens at the state house in Iowa, it doesn't matter if a particular insurance company becomes unreasonable to deal with. We're still going to be able to keep the lights on. We're not going to have to worry about laying people off.
Speaker 2:What if your law firm's brand was as recognizable as your favorite sports team? What if marketing wasn't just about ads, but about community engagement, strategic positioning and standing out in a crowded field? Today I'm talking to Tim Semeroth, iowa's only board-certified truck accident lawyer, who's built a thriving practice by branding himself effectively, diversifying his legal services and using unique marketing strategies, some even inspired by sports icons like Caitlin Clark. We'll dive into how Tim leverages speaking engagements, builds relationships through mock trial programs and maximizes referrals, all while making a real impact in his community. If you're a lawyer looking to expand your influence, attract better clients and future-proof your firm, you don't wanna miss this episode. Hit play and let's get started. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2:Today's guest is my friend from Iowa, tim Semelroth, who is Iowa's only first and only board-certified truck accident lawyer, and Tim and I are going to talk about branding yourself, truck crashes and mock trial of all things. Tim, welcome to the show. Hey, I'm happy to be here. So let's talk about that, because you told me I don't know whether you have recently developed this Tim from Iowa moniker or now that you have told me that you're using it. I just hear you say it all the time. Every time I hear you introduce yourself, it's Tim from Iowa. I'm the only board certified trucking accident lawyer in Iowa, and I assume that you're doing that so that if somebody like me, who's a car crash lawyer in Virginia, ever stumbles across a trucking case or a catastrophic motor vehicle case in Iowa, you're the one that I'm thinking of. So can you tell me how that started? Well?
Speaker 1:as I started to attend more national meetings, I realized that being from Iowa is unique. I would get up you know I was talking at a CLE or something and I would say, hey, my name's Tim, I'm from Iowa. I bet that I'm the first person from Iowa that you've ever met, and it would always get a laugh because you know they're just there, aren't that many of us. You know there's there's only three million people in the whole state and, and it's cold I'm wearing a sweater today because it's so cold. People don't come and visit very often, and so I realized that that could be my superpower when I'm going to national meetings is hey, I'm Tim, I'm from Iowa. You need anything? Let me know.
Speaker 2:And we were talking just yesterday on one of the mastermind calls and somebody made a mention that you had posted a five in the morning gym selfie and I said that wasn't a gym. I'm at the gym at five in the morning selfie. That was I'm from Iowa selfie because you had the yellow and black t-shirt on.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I, if I can wear something that says I'm from Iowa. Because the thing is is that when that email goes out in the firm or you get a call from wherever you are in the country and the question is, hey, we need somebody in Iowa to do this, I want them to think of me. First it's like, hey, I know this guy in Iowa. I bet he knows something about this judge or he may not do that type of law, but I bet he can point me in the right direction. And they're absolutely right. I mean, there are probably two degrees of separation from every lawyer and judge in the entire state of Iowa. And so you know, you can get online and you can look through a bunch of websites, or you can give me a call and I can give you the answer in five minutes.
Speaker 2:What's interesting about Iowa is it's you know it's not a small state, but you said only 3 million people and you were running the largest injury firm, at least as far as I can tell, in the state. How many lawyers are you all up to? We have 17 lawyers now 17 lawyers, and I was just looking at your LinkedIn profile. It doesn't look like you've ever worked anywhere else except for the federal government for a year clerking and then as an adjunct professor teaching law school. So when you got out of school, did you start your own firm or did you join one and then become elevated a partner? What did that look like?
Speaker 1:I joined a firm and it actually goes back to what we're going to be talking a little bit about. I made the connection through mock trial. My college mock trial coach always told me hey, if you decide to go back to your hometown and practice law, you got to look up my friend, john Riccolo. And John and his partner, dave Baker, had started a firm and they were a boutique plaintiff's medical malpractice firm. And after the third person told me, hey, if you ever go back, you got to look up this guy. That was ultimately what led me to reach out to John and, yeah, I've had the same parking spot for 28 years.
Speaker 2:Well, it is a small state, and when you joined the firm, how large was it?
Speaker 1:It was. I was the third lawyer, so it was the two guys that founded the firm, and then me.
Speaker 2:So incredible growth. And now you guys, it's motor vehicles, but it's also workers' compensation, social security, disability, kind of a broad swath of the injury landscape. But it's all contingency fee-based right. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, we do. We do Plans, employment law cases too. You know what I tell people is and this was actually a lesson that your dad taught me, probably 15, 20 years ago. You know, the most dangerous number in business is one and specializing in one type of case, getting your cases from one source, and so I've always remembered that. And as our firm has grown, we've tried to diversify so that it doesn't matter what happens at the statehouse in Iowa. It doesn't matter if a particular insurance company becomes unreasonable to deal with. We're still going to be able to keep the lights on. We're not going to have to worry about laying people off.
Speaker 2:That's right. Iowa was that state that several years ago did something to the workers' compensation law that really gutted that practice area.
Speaker 1:Yes 2017,. The meatpacking industry decided that they didn't want to pay for shoulder injuries anymore, and that led to this huge court reform package that really changed the workers' compensation practice in Iowa.
Speaker 2:It is really amazing the impact that the state legislature has, because we saw this happen in Florida just a couple of years ago, where the rules changed about how we calculate medical bills, and Georgia right now is going through a push where Governor Kemp has pushed forward like 10 tort reform initiatives. I guess, and maybe you know only three of them get through. But if it's the right three, then it really changes the way that our practices operate. And as somebody who's you know, my fear, as a 40-year-old, 41-year-old, with kids that are 11, 9, and 6, is that the year that they hit college is the year that something is going to happen with self-driving cars and my entire practice area is going to evaporate. And so you've solved for that a little bit by diversifying across practice areas, but at the same time, your practice area is only catastrophic truck injury cases, right right, that's what you know, and it evolved to that.
Speaker 1:I've handled every type of personal injury case over the course of 26, 27 years. But about gosh, what was it? Maybe like 10 years ago, I realized that the cases that I enjoyed doing because they let me use all the tools that I liked using focus groups, computer animation, that sort of thing were the trucking cases, and so I started going to national conferences and started you know, I went to a truck driving school in Montana and then, ultimately, I got board certified in 2019.
Speaker 2:So you said that this is the practice area that lets you use all the tools. Is that simply because the cases are larger and can justify the investment into things like focus groups and computer animations, Even if, I don't know, like in Virginia, anecdotally you can't use many of those computer animations? If you get the trial, At least that's what most people will tell you. I don't know whether that's the case in Iowa, but is that just with the size and the scope of those cases? Because you can make them about systemic wrongs instead of one incident, one harm and because the injuries just tend to be larger. That's why you can use all those tools Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there aren't too many fender bender sore neck cases. If you get hit by an 18-wheeler, they tend to be catastrophic and so the damages are significant. They justify the investment of your time and your money to get the best possible outcome.
Speaker 2:I say the same thing about motorcycle crashes, except that many times in motorcycle crashes you don't have the insurance coverage to justify that investment. I looked back Tim before we got on here in the GLM database and the first thing that you ever bought from us was in 2006,. You bought something called the GLM Deluxe Toolkit. Do you have any idea what was in the Deluxe Toolkit back in 2006?
Speaker 1:I am sure that it was a three-ring binder with a lot of photocopied sheets. I think I've told you this. I met your dad actually before GLM existed, on a ABA listserv and we started sharing resources back and forth. It's like, hey, here's my 10 tips for how to deal with a doctor after an injury, what do you think? And so I got I remember getting the first great legal marketing sales letter, which was in typical Dan Kennedy style, was like 25 pages long. So yeah, I think your dad once told me in the database I'm like, you know, customer number seven.
Speaker 2:That sounds about right. I didn't look at the customer number, but I looked at, I looked at. I always like to look at mastermind members and try to figure out what was it that first attracted them like, first got them to raise their hand and ask for the thing. And so it's. It's curious. You know, sometimes back in the day we're running ads in state bar journals. It was a period of time where we were flying around the country doing these save your law firm style seminars, and back in the day we were the only game in town. But now there's a new one Just about every other weekend. You can go to a conference and you do go to conferences just about every other weekend, but we appreciate you being a GLM lifer.
Speaker 1:Some of them are marketing conferences, but I try to go to conferences. When they'll, let me get up on stage and speak, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so let's talk about that, because one of the things that I think you do exceptionally well and you gave a presentation at our summit about smart sponsorships but is the ability to not only give the speech but then repurpose the material in eight different ways so that you've got your audience, that's in the room, but you're also raising your level of authority with everybody who's on your mailing list, who engages with you on social media, who sees you on LinkedIn, and so can you talk about some of the purposeful ways that somebody who gets invited for the first time to speak on a stage can think about maximizing that opportunity. Sure.
Speaker 1:So you want to think about before, during and after. So let me give you an example from before. So one of the things that I try to do is, when I agree to speak at a conference, I try to identify who all the other speakers are, and then I reach out to them through email or social media LinkedIn ideally and, just you know, connect with them, say, hey, I'm really looking forward to you speaking and I want to make sure that we touch base while we're at this conference together. Then I make sure that everybody I know through my social channels knows that you know, hey, somebody in Las Vegas thought that I was qualified to come here and speak. Or you know, or you know Virginia or wherever, and that raises up the profile because you know, being a personal injury lawyer, you know we joke that what is an expert? It's a guy from out of town, and and so you know when, when people see that, hey, you know you're coming to this event, then they start to think of you as well. This, this must be a guy who knows what he's talking about. During the event, you know, what I tell the lawyers in my firm is hey, if you agree to speak at an event. You're there for the whole time. You're not just going to fly in and you know. You know, swoop in, give your talk and leave. You are there to speak. You know, go to the cocktail reception and you're there to attend the other speakers presentations. Because people like, for example, maybe they have a case in Iowa that they want to talk to somebody about, they're not going to run up to you right after you're done speaking. Maybe they're going to come up to you during the next break or maybe they're going to come up to you at the reception that night. And so you want to be there so that if people, anybody who's there wants to talk to you, that you're available and you have a chance to make that connection.
Speaker 1:And then, after the program is over and this is actually an idea that I got from an old Dan Kennedy conference he had a guy speaking who was like a master in creating infomercials and they talked about the famous Cindy Crawford infomercial, about where she was like selling skincare products. And initially they said when they created the infomercial, they had positioned Cindy as the expert and it tested really poorly because they're like, you know, cindy Crawford, she's been blessed by good looks and being rich. I doubt that she's also a genius when it comes to chemistry, and so they changed it to no, we're going to have Cindy say hey, because I am in the position I am, I can find the world's best experts. Let me introduce you to this genius scientist from France who has this product, and so that made me realize.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't want to come back after one of these conferences and post on my socials hey, this is what I talked about. Because people are like, yeah, okay, sure, but if I come back and I talk about the cool things that I learned from other speakers at the conference and then I link them in. So if I come back and I talk about the cool things that I learned from other speakers at the conference and then I link them in, so if I'm at a conference that you're speaking at, brian, I'm going to. You know, I'm going to do a post when I get back. Hey, here are Tim's top takeaways from this conference and here's this great idea I learned from Brian Glass, and then I'm going to link to you, and then I'm going to link to you, and so that way I'm not. You know, it gets insufferable to hear somebody saying I'm the expert on all these things. Instead, I'm just the curator. I know smart people like Brian, who you know who have things that would be valuable for you to know.
Speaker 2:So that's all really good. Are you doing anything in these talks to capture email addresses? I know you have a physical mail list. Are you doing anything in the span of these talks to curate that list?
Speaker 1:Yes, and I think this is a tip that you guys gave. So I now have a slide at the end of my presentations that has a QR code and it goes to a page on my website where it has my slides. So you know anybody who's been to a conference, you see people snapping pictures of slides along the way and I just say, hey, listen, anybody who wants one, you're going to have a chance to. You know, to go to my website, download the entire slide presentation and, of course, when they do that, I get their contact information and then they're going to get thrown on a special email and print list that is specifically for attorneys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's always. I mean, there's too many speakers to do the two things that you said not to do in this. Like I flew in on Monday, I gave a talk Tuesday morning and I'm flying out Tuesday night and so you're only at the conference for four hours and then you don't make any effort to capture anybody's attention. Like there's no lead gen piece, there's no offer to okay. There's a five-step process. Here's the first three. If you want the next two here it is, by the way, that part's free, right.
Speaker 2:So much of the information that we teach inside a lot of these groups is very similar to the stuff that we're giving away.
Speaker 2:Right, I'll give you away a piece of it, and we're not trying to keep anything behind a paywall, but I do need your email address or your mailing address so that I can continue to market to you, right? And speakers maybe it's just a lawyer ego thing, but probably not. We just expect people to remember who we were right. And speakers maybe it's just a lawyer ego thing, but probably not. We just expect people to remember who we were right. I mean, how many cases have you handled where somebody had a crash four years ago and can't tell you who the lawyer was, because the lawyer hasn't done any of the follow-up that you and I are doing in our practices with the mailing campaign that, as you say, if the only thing I'm doing is showing up in your mailbox, so you have to throw my letter away once every 30 days, and I'm happy with that Right. Just reminding you that I'm still alive and I'm still practicing law, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean anybody who has ever done an intake of a plaintiff's personal injury client. They, you ask them have you ever been involved in any sort of litigation before? Oh yeah, my wife had this case six years ago. Oh well, who represented you? And they say a name and I said, well, he's a good lawyer, why didn't you go back to them? They don't say, oh, it's because they didn't treat me well. They don't say oh, it's because they charge too much. Most of the time, all they say is you know what?
Speaker 2:That. That never crossed my mind. Well, my experience they can't even remember the name. Yeah yeah, maybe you're just in a smaller legal community, but I you know, I think there's so many of your clients from five years ago that just can't remember who you are. All right, I want to talk about two, two marketing things that I think you're doing exceptionally well. One is mock trial and the second is Caitlin Clark, the mock trial. So the setup for this is you have built, I think, one of the best organic strong power backlink campaigns, and you did it from a place of let me provide this asset for free to school URLs. Right, that's a terrible way to put that, but talk to me about the Iowa mock trial program that you've run. Sure.
Speaker 1:So while Iowa is in a very big state, we are very big into mock trial as an extracurricular activity. We have middle school programs, we have high school programs, so there are, you know, a thousand kids a year in the state of Iowa who are participating on a mock trial team. And so where this idea for mockockTrial101.com came about was all three of my kids have participated in mock trial, but it was my middle son, joe. He went up against a team when he was in high school that wasn't very good, wasn't coached by a real trial lawyer, and so it was like clubbing a baby seal and we were talking about it. Afterwards he's like. He said that was so unsatisfying to go against that team, and I said, well, then do something about it. And so from that came this idea of he spent the summer at my office interviewing the lawyers in my firm about how to do an opening statement, how to do a direct examination, how to introduce a piece of evidence, and then he cut those into these short one, two, three, four minute video lessons and uploaded them onto a platform called Teachable, and then he actually got the URL mocktrial101.com, and so we started promoting that. And so, of course, he came to me and said hey, dad, I'd like you to, I need that. And so, of course, he came to me and said hey, dad, you know I'd like you to. I need your credit card so that we can buy this URL and do this sort of thing. And I said, fine, as long as we brand the firm and the videos are the lawyers at my firm. So it's the full name is actually mocktrial10, powered by fightingforfairnesscom, which is our URL, and it just has a little icon here, that on the top corner, otherwise doesn't say anything else about our name. So we showed that product to the Bar Association and they thought it was great, it's free, it solves a problem that a lot of these teams had, which they couldn't get a lawyer to come in and teach them how to do these things before the competition. And so they started promoting it. And now we're, I think, four years in and we've had over a thousand people, a thousand students, teachers, parents who have who have signed in to this course and it's a free course, who have signed in to this course and it's a free course. And I don't use that mailing list for any marketing because they're mainly children, right, but the thing is is that they're. All. A lot of these schools, the Bar Association, are linking to that page, which is hosted on our website, and so we're getting the SEO benefit of that, and so it's been great.
Speaker 1:I'll tell just a quick funny story. We were at the middle school state championship this fall and two of my partners were with me. We were coaching a team that my partner's daughter was on, and all of a sudden, this teacher came up to us in this hotel lobby and said OK, I just want to warn you that there are a bunch of kids who are fanboying over you right now, and they they're like, they recognize you from the mock trial 101 videos and they can't believe that you're all here together. It's like the Avengers, and so that's that's the kind of publicity that you just all here together, it's like the Avengers, and so that's the kind of publicity that you just can't buy. And it's been a great program for our firm, for the state of Iowa, and then, thanks to your firm, virginia has its own version, and so I think Washington State, kentucky, a couple other states do now as well.
Speaker 2:So your son, joe, helped us build it for Virginia. We didn't get the traction that you had in Iowa. I guess Virginia maybe doesn't have the mock trial culture that Iowa has. We've struggled to get Northern Virginia schools to adopt that and opt into it. Is Joe, if people are listening in states that don't have that product built yet? I know he's in college now. Is he taking another business right now?
Speaker 1:You know he was just asking me for money the other day, so he might be. Yeah, reach out to me and I'm happy to put you in touch.
Speaker 2:If you're not in Virginia, iowa, washington State, kentucky and I think you mentioned one other state this license is up for grabs and you can run this playbook in your state. Just reach out to Tim.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about the only, the only, the only caveat is is that it's got to be free to the students. That's it's a great service and it gets your name out there, but it's not something that that he's going to build so you can charge kids. There's plenty of people who want to make money off of coaching kids.
Speaker 2:And that's, that's Sure. All right, let's talk Caitlin Clark. So at our, at our January meeting, you told me about the ad by TV, ad by strategy. You were running around, caitlin Clark, and how you had outsmarted all of your competitors in this space. I thought it was brilliant. So Iowa's favorite daughter is now how you buy ad spots for your law firm. So tell us about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I my wife is I wouldn't call her a huge sports fan, but when Caitlin Clark was playing basketball for the university of Iowa, it was destined, it was destination viewing. I mean I would say, hey, do you want to go out to dinner? And she's like no, the Iowa women's team is playing. And I, it just made me realize that Caitlin Clark was bigger, was becoming bigger than basketball, and this was like three years ago. So we do some TV advertising. And I reached out to our TV broker, who was based in Florida, and I said, hey, this is a few years ago. I would like to buy some ad time when the Iowa women play on TV. I'd like to have at least one commercial every time they play on TV. And I could just hear the skepticism in his voice when I made that request. And he's like all right, I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 1:And luckily, I had made this request before Caitlin's junior year and that's the first year that she took Iowa to the national championship game. And it just it just snowballed. And so I, it would crack me up, I would get these emails from this broker who, all in all caps, it's like you won't believe it, they just broke a new ratings record and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And and so it was, you know it was, it was fantastic. You know, all of these people who had grown to love Caitlin Clark watching her play basketball, they weren't going to be able to just quit that when she graduated and went to the WNBA. And so I called the broker and I said all right, the draft is tomorrow. Whatever team picks her up, whenever any of those games are going to be in Iowa, I want one commercial on the Iowa, you know, on the Iowa station that plays that game.
Speaker 1:And so she was drafted by the Indiana Fever and I still remember he called me up afterwards. He's like, all right, it's going to be $7,000. I'm like $7,000 per game. And he started laughing. He said no, $7,000 for the season. Who advertises for the Indiana fever in Iowa? You're like buy three. Yeah, you know, I mean I could never afford to have Caitlin Clark endorse our firm, but I was at least smart enough to know that. I just wanted to be nearby. And now I mean she has gotten so big that when I speak at conferences, you know, I used to put up a picture of the Field of Dreams and say you know, I live about an hour and 15 minutes away from the Field of Dreams. And now I just put up a picture of Caitlin Clark and I said, yeah, I'm from where she's from?
Speaker 2:Is Iowa wrestling the same kind of underpriced attention where you could buy ads around that in any area, or no?
Speaker 1:Yes, in fact, I'm going to the Iowa versus Nebraska dual meet tonight, and so there's a couple of things. First of all, I tell people, if you're a wrestling fan, you got to call me up, because Iowa City is 30 minutes away, and if you want to attend a wrestling meet with 15,000 people who are just amped up out of their minds, you've got to come to Iowa to watch a wrestling meet. So that's something that we're exploring, because now Iowa is the first Division I school to have an Iowa women's wrestling program, and so we have an Olympian who is on the Iowa women's team, and so we are definitely trying to figure out what sort of NIL opportunities are available related to the wrestling teams, because they're a big deal in Iowa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talked about that in January. Have you looked at all about what those deal structures might look like?
Speaker 1:I have actually was listening to a podcast with the collective the Iowa collective. It's called the Swarm, and so I've got a feeler out to the person who's in charge of that to find out what sort of opportunities we would have through that.
Speaker 2:Very cool. I thought about that a little bit. But George Mason is just. It's the only school that's kind of in our backyard. It's what you would call a commuter campus. It isn't really a big community around it. But I bet for $250, I could get the track team to post about me three times a year and my paralegal is a former pole vaulter on that team, so I'm sure I have some connections back in there.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah. Well, so I mean, there's actually a chiropractor in Iowa or maybe a chiropractor or physical therapist who is a genius, because he signed an NIL deal with one of Caitlin Clark's teammates and you know who's like one of her best friends, and so what happens is this woman posts on social media and then, you know, occasionally Caitlin will like retweet it and then boom, all of a sudden, now it's, you know it's worldwide, and so it's. You know there's all kinds of opportunities out there and I think we're all just trying to figure out you know what, the best way to go about it. You know that's, you know fair's all kinds of opportunities out there and I think we're all just trying to figure out you know what the best way to go about it. You know that's, you know, fair to the student athletes and good business for us.
Speaker 2:This is underpriced attention, you know, and you've grown now from a firm of three lawyers to, I think you said, 15 or 17. 17. 17. And advertising on TV and you have the Law Tigers franchise or license in Iowa. What other opportunities are you looking at for growth?
Speaker 1:Different physical locations. So we have offices right now in Cedar Rapids, des Moines and Dubuque, and there are other cities of 100,000 people or more in Iowa where we should probably be within the next five years. Any interest in a neighboring state? You know we had an opportunity. We had a firm in Minnesota who wanted us to consider buying them, and the thing is is that I'm just not, I'm not ready to learn how to practice in another state and we don't.
Speaker 1:We don't have the infrastructure to make sure that we would be giving the same sort of quality representation to people outside the state of Iowa. It's like all our lawyers are licensed practice in Iowa. We have a couple that are on the border of Iowa and Illinois, so they have Illinois licenses. But the reality is is that every state has just enough rakes that you can step on that. I think that in most cases we're better off entering into referral relationships. You know, my partner Presley, is the premier nursing home lawyer in the state of Iowa and so he gets called in to actually try cases in neighboring states. And that's fine if you've got good local counsel. But I don't know that we will become a regional firm. We're happy to be a big fish in the small pond that is Iowa.
Speaker 2:I think this is the lesson for listeners out here. There's a million different ways to run a successful law firm. We have members who want to be in several states, have expansion plans into several states. We have members who are my if I only my feeling, if I only control the five, 10 miles around my office like I'm pretty happy you have a much more diverse and a much more spread out population base out in Iowa, but you don't have to follow anybody else's path to have a successful law firm and you can do things like advertise on TV during women's basketball games when you spot this underpriced attention and do very, very well.
Speaker 1:So, tim, as we wrap this up, any closing thoughts or anything we haven't gotten to that you want to make sure we share, you know the thing that I hope people come away with is that it can be a whole lot easier working with somebody who knows the lay of the land in a particular location, and so you know, if I've got a Northern Virginia case, you know I'm going to reach out to you immediately. If people have cases in Iowa, I hope they consider you know calling me because, like I said, if I can't help them, you know I've got somebody in my phone who can't, just because we all know each other in the state of Iowa, and so you know it's. Your dad and I were speaking at a conference together and a guy from who lived in Illinois for a while and then lived in Nevada said you know, there's nothing there. There's no higher recommendation than you've got a guy. And so my hope is, after listening to this podcast, all your listeners know that they've got a guy in Iowa.
Speaker 2:And do it before, like three months until the statute of limitations. Just send the case early. You don't have any business trying to figure out how medical bills are calculated or what kind of expert you might need or if there's any. Any rakes to step on about a pre-filing notice, but just send the case. You will be financially far better off and your medical or your legal malpractice carrier will be much happier.
Speaker 1:Don't take cases in states where you don't practice absolutely I just I just saw today somebody posted that there's a there's a certificate of merit. That is relatively new in Iowa in medical malpractice cases. There is a Supreme Court or Court of Appeals decision about every three months on how people are screwing that up, and what I heard today is that malpractice carriers lawyer malpractice carriers are starting to drop people based upon the way that that statute is being interpreted.
Speaker 2:Traps for the unwary. Don't screw it up. Send your cases to Tim and I and have a great week, absolutely.
