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
Purpose-Driven Social Media for Modern Law Firms | LexSummit 2025 Breakout Session with Mike Rafi
Step into a packed breakout room at LexSummit 2025. The coffee is still warm, the questions come fast, and trial lawyer Mike Rafi is as candid as they come. This session is about social that serves a purpose. Not chasing viral hits, but speaking clearly to the people who might need you, and to the colleagues who might send you your next great case.
We start with the simple idea that wins on every platform: be useful. Mike walks through how he chooses a lane, why daily posting is easier than it sounds, and what a good 60-second video actually says. We talk about writing for clients and referrers at the same time, turning a website visit into a call through basic retargeting, and handling the occasional troll without losing your voice.
There is no fluff here. You will hear what has actually moved cases for modern firms. Short LinkedIn posts that build trust over time. Local stories that make your value obvious. Speaking gigs and bar journals that scale your reputation. Clear calls to action that turn attention into intakes. We close with a simple plan you can try this week: pick one platform, commit to two repeatable content types, and set up a small system that keeps you consistent when the docket gets loud.
Recorded live at LexSummit 2025. If this conversation helps, share it with the lawyer who keeps saying they will start posting tomorrow.
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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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Hello my friends and welcome back into another episode of Life Beyond the Reefs, the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own design and build the kind of practices they actually like showing up to on Monday. Today's episode is a recording from one of these fall conferences that I was at. The episode you're about to hear is a conversation between Mike Raffi and I at FileMind's Lex Summit, which was earlier this October. I got invited to be on a panel with Mike talking about how to use smart social media to grow your law firm, and frankly, I think he's done a much better job of it than I am. Um I have maybe 20,000 followers on LinkedIn, and maybe 2,000 followers on Instagram, a thousand films for my video of my kid eating costumes. Mike has, I think, almost a million across all platforms. So really, I was just there to learn. Before we dive into the episode, I want to share like three things on a meta level I think you can take away from this episode. Number one, be nice to your vendors. People that are selling you stuff more and more often, software companies and technology companies are putting on their own events. And if you are if you like their service, you should like their service. And you can be a vocal supporter of them. Whether or not you have a following right now, you are much more likely to get invited to come out and speak on their stages. If this is something that you're interested in, right? So if you're trying to grow your own leadership following or create even just some social proof within your own client base, you are an important employer. One way to do that is to get a money to speak when software companies stages anymore. Software companies are losing their minds. So it'd be nice if I just lose opportunities like this. Number two, when you get an opportunity like this, bring some collateral to give away a box of 50 copies of running the market up to this event. I did not ask before I get away from the book. Wait, I asked when I was holding a box of 50 copies of the book. He said, Yeah, of course you can. I think they probably wouldn't let me do it anyway, but it's always easier when you're standing there with a box of the books. And that's cool. Attendees had a nice little stage rush. That's that always feels good. People want to take a picture with the book with you again, more and more social. You can do this from anything from a book on how to run a locker room, which that one is, down to how to handle your divorce case in Iowa or whatever your practice area is. Right. So bring your stuff to give away. When you are having these talks in a book, works well because people just don't throw books away. And the last little meta bit of learning is to get the recording. Most of these conferences now are recording at least the audio, if not also the video, and that allows us to take the thing that we've put one bit of effort into and turn it into at least five or six different pieces of collateral. So, an example of that, right? This podcast is a repurposing of the conversation. I'm also going to take the clips from this podcast generated in Riverside by Riverside's AI and push it out on social media as video clips. Two two uses of it. I'm also going to take the transcript of this podcast and run it through ChatGPT and create some articles. Probably we'll turn into a social media post or two, and you might compare with me a little bit using ChatGPT to write some of my link. And I talked about how I might utilize that. But use it to write articles or emails in my voice, sharing content and what I think is helpful, useful information. And then the last thing that we stumbled upon by EAI within the last quarter or so is he created a list of all the state board journals and using the revision or journals that are out there, all the editors, email other research free. And so every quarter now we're sending articles that have been written based on content that I've created tomorrow. Through the use of AI, touched up by me in my voice. And I've done it through, by the way, a GPT that's trained on actual stuff. So I trained a GPT on renegade learning marketing and on a bunch of articles that I have already written. That's where the knowledge base is. It's it's knowledge of the knowledge base in my voice of things that I've already said. That's how we're creating these articles. I don't know what the message is in your practice area, but for me this is working. And that's gonna be another use that we're gonna get out of this report. And so hopefully you can take those things and learn from them as you be putting on the panels and way to speak. Everything for me about software but down to local community bits. In this episode, we dive into why social media is about trust first and why most law firms still suck at it and aren't very good. How to create content both for referral sources and for clients and not just for the algorithm. And what it's like to have trolls come at you about thick skin and how to stay authentic. I'll say there is one more piece of um of practicality you can take back in your your law firm. I share a simple retargeting strategy and some follow-up ideas. You could steal that, it's probably gonna take you more than a week to put it into practice. It's taking us more than a week to figure out how it works, but it's another practical tip. I love giving these um practical ways that you can actually take. Go and do something in your law firm because success comes from action, not just from listening to podcasts. So if you've gotten value out of this, I'm I got two asks for you by the end of this episode. Number one, send this episode to one lawyer who keeps running their mouth about how they're going to start posting on social media. And make this the catalyst for them to actually start posting on social media. Number two, hit that follow or subscribe button. Either on my social media, Instagram, or LinkedIn of the places that I am most active. Or hit subscribe in the app you're listening to this podcast right now and leave a quick five-star review. Helps other lawyers find the show, helps us grow the show. All right. Let's roll on with the Lux Summit panel, hosted by my friend Molly Callahan and with my friend Mike Raffi on how lawyers can use social media to build trust and grow their practice. I hope you enjoy.
SPEAKER_04:Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us on today's session on how lawyers can use social media to build trust, strengthen relationships, and grow their practice. My name is Molly Callahan. I'm on the partnerships team here at Filevine, and I'm thrilled to introduce our panelists, leaders who have shown how powerful social media can be when used with authenticity and consistency. First up is Mike Raffi. Mike didn't want the usual lawyer introduction filled with case types and dollar amounts. Instead, here's what you should know. He's built a huge social media following by saying what's on his mind directly, honestly, and sometimes bluntly, but always with respect. Mike believes the real stars of his firm and staff, the real stars of his firm are his staff, not himself. He'll be the first to tell you nothing gets done without them. At home, he and his wife are raising three kids with a fourth on the way. Which means when he's not practicing law or making videos, he's brushing up on pre-algebra or the Capanama City Canal to keep up with his sixth grader. Please welcome before his wife calls and he has his sprint to the maternity ward, Mike Raffi. Our second panelist is Brian Glass, partner at Ben Glass Law, where he represents injured people against insurance companies. Beyond the courtroom, Brian runs a mastermind group with great legal marketing, helping law firm owners grow without relying on the Google Gods or expensive lead gen agencies. He's also the author of The Renegade Law Marketing, a book for firm owners competing in today's world of AI, digital first everything, and 800-pound gorillas. Please welcome Brian Glass.
SPEAKER_07:When I saw Mike's intro, I immediately had to look at mine and see if I'd given you like any chest lumping numbers that I then had to ask you not to say, and I'm proud that I did not. And I thought about not including you on that email, it's just to make it happen.
SPEAKER_06:That's what I thought about.
SPEAKER_04:Well, now that you've met them, you know that they already have a great rhythm together. So let's start with the big question. Why? Why should lawyers be on social media in the first place? And why did you decide to hone in on the channels you did when producing content?
SPEAKER_06:You're both looking at me. I have two answers to the why question. One, because my wife told me I could not. That is the main reason I do most things in my life is people tell me I can't, whether that's my kids telling me I can't do a cartwheel, I can't do a cartwheel, or whether it's lawyers that were up against saying you're never gonna win this case, whatever it is. My partners in my law firm saying we can't get that many intakes, that that's one of my main drivers. The second reason is because, and I mean this seriously, all of you and all lawyers are so bad at it. Um I do it because so many people are so incredibly bad at it. And I don't mean that it to offend you. I if you go back and I I've left I've left these videos on here for a long time, if you go back to 2019, 2020 when I started doing videos, they are terrible. Terrible. And if you watch lawyer videos, if that's what your feed hits on sometimes, they're so bad that if you're just a little bit better, if you're like a below average as opposed to just terrible, your videos are good because our space is so bad at it. So that's why. But my journey started with LinkedIn. I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point. But I'll let you uh do your thing because this is the LinkedIn king.
SPEAKER_07:Well, I I I'm just here to learn how to do videos well from you. Um, I'm surprised I got invited. Um, me too. So I I think that it is a uh to why why are we on social media at all? Because most firms are bad at it, and it's because of a way to build no like and trust with your clients before they hire you. Um because in this all digital everything, even if somebody, even if you were relying entirely on referrals, uh, and we hear that sometimes from lawyers, I don't need to be on the web, I don't need to create content because I I get all my cases from referrals. Well, most of your referrals are still getting one, two, or three names and they're coming to check you out. So for that reason alone, you need to be creating content and to be there because it gives your in clients the chance to engage with your content for an hour, six hours, ten hours, whatever, before they finally work up the nerve to call your law firm. And for me on LinkedIn, like it it was just easier for me than video. Video is hard. And if you look at my Instagram, my TikTok, I I have made lawyer videos. They don't get hardly any traction. My my content now that's video is much more personalized, um, personal uh brand stuff. Um, but LinkedIn is easy for me, it feels easy for me. It's just writing. And so it's a way to create relationships with other lawyers, uh, find mentors in the space. Like if you're a younger lawyer, you should definitely be creating content on LinkedIn and engaging with other lawyers' content. If for no other reason than you can come to events like this and have a reason to walk up to somebody and introduce yourself and say hi, and they'll know you from the internet. So that's kind of why I I'm on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, well, can I ask? You said about referrals. And my law firm for five years conjured 99% referrals, and then the rest were fan friends and family. Um, and then once we got a little farther, then former clients started referring cases. But how many of y'all are referral-based businesses? Doesn't have to be 90 or 100%. Please, come on, help us. Please. All right.
SPEAKER_07:You gotta go like this.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, yeah, yeah. That's now I see people. All right, so the lights up here are crazy. If that is you, if you are if you just raise your hand, you are the people that should be making content. Hear me out here. Uh, who has a group text with a bunch of idiots from college or whoever your friends are. Mine heats up around this time of year because it's college football season in Georgia where I went to law school, lost, and the people are still talking about it. That is my smallest social media group. It's like 12 of us. And uh the memes that go on there, that's social media content. The videos that my friends put up of me making fun of me making videos, that's social media content. My law firm, uh, when we have somebody maybe settle 20 cases in a shorter period of time, the first group that I go to to get more cases is that 12-person group. And then I go to the next group and the next group and the next group, and end up I I end up on LinkedIn, the bigger group, and so on. So all these little groups that you have are your social media or your network connections. And if you are operating your business through referrals, make videos, make content specifically for your referrals. I'll ask how many of all have seen my video of mine, at least one. All right. I make almost as much content that you have no chance of seeing. It's the content that goes to people who send me cases, it's the content who goes to our our clients, it's the content that goes to referral sources, it's the content that we do in-house for training. Y'all see maybe half of the videos that you have the chance of seeing half of the videos. There are so many more things that you can do. And if you have a referral source and then you hit him with a video, you hit him with a a what would be a LinkedIn post, but you copy it and paste it into a MailChimp. That is the best kind of marketing I think you can have.
SPEAKER_07:Are you doing that one to one or is that one to many when you're sending that to your referral sources?
SPEAKER_06:It's so specialized at this point that there's I mean, I made a video recently. I sponsored a mock trial tournament and I made a video series for mock trial kids. And I think y'all can see that now. We made it five, but half of the videos on the YouTube platform are private invitation only. And oh, and so you so yours are still they're hosted somewhere. Ben and I really don't know. We purposely did not talk before this. So we are we figured that this would, we would just keep asking each other stuff. Yeah, so if I want to, if if uh if you've sent me, let's say I don't know, somebody in the office goes, I'd love a nursing home case. I don't know why. I go, shit, I haven't made a video of a nursing home video in a while. I will then go back and see who are the five people that have referred us nursing home videos. I'll make a nursing home video. Voy your videos are different than the ones that you see. There's not the graphics, there's not the crazy stuff. At least in the the There's not sh my shit, my my head doesn't explode. It's not shit like that. But the lawyer videos go directly to those five people or those 15 people. Or if it's anyone who's ever sent me a car crash, they get a video. The last video I just made was why you should file your cases sooner and not wait. You know, how many of y'all wait around while your client's treating and say, well, we're in the treatment stage? Why file the case, get it through discovery, and then you're already nine months, twelve months, whatever your timeline is down this down the road. Maybe that much closer to a trial. And I made a video, sent people like that. What I'm really telling everybody, I'm like, send it to me. Send me your business, right? Don't sit on your cases, send it to me, I'll move it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. I mean, and I think there's a lot of power in in videos like that that are designed. So a lot of content the lawyers make or don't make is because we are afraid we're gonna be teaching somebody how to do their case, right? And so the content that you're making, whether it's a book or lead magnet or a video that you're putting out to the world, like there's almost no fear that you're gonna be teaching an end client how to do their case because people are searching for information on the internet for one of three three reasons. Number one, like they actually do want to know how to do their case, in which case they're not gonna hire you anyway, because they're looking for that information. Number two, they're looking for validation that you know what you're talking about, right? And so with our videos, we we are showing them that, hey, we do know what we're what we talk about. And there's a certain category of clients that you can like convince it. This is actually really hard. And for you, this are lawyers who you can convince you actually shouldn't be filing your own cases, you should be sending it to me, because shit is actually really hard, especially in Georgia.
SPEAKER_06:I mean, I fear is the biggest motivator. I worked here so I can say this, not make it political. I was a writer and a producer at Fox News Channel. If you haven't maybe watched that recently, fear is a very headsef with the without the tattoos. Man, I said I wouldn't get political. But um, you know, fear is the biggest motivator. Now, now, now. Do it now. If you don't, you're gonna die if you take Tylenol. My wife's pregnant. Don't take Tylenol, you're gonna die. Don't do this. You gotta move now. And that is not how we market, but you can subtly do that. Like we do a lot of negligent security cases. That the biggest anti-selling point is that if you have a really good negligent security case where someone's shot, the reason it's really good is because there was 20 shootings in the last three years at that place before. Well, congratulations. Now you took this single incident uh event, and now you have 20 other cases that you're investigating. So you have 21 cases built in. Nobody wants to do that. I don't know why we do that, but we like it, and but that's you know, that fear that, hey, you don't have time, you don't have skills. If you can implement that a little bit, it's usually accurate.
SPEAKER_07:So I'm I'm gonna ask my question of you before I forget that I had this question before. You you've got a Georgia practice. Are you that in other states at all? Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee. All right, it's Georgia, Florida, it's four four states. But you're making content and you have a huge audience, so you must be getting calls from New York to California to Hawaii. How do you manage that?
SPEAKER_06:Not very well. That's why I'm here going on these seminars. I think I think I'm the protestable person that should be at this seminar because everyone is about growth. Have you all been to a talk about growth, growth, growth? I'd like to say, Ben, or I think our session's the most important one, because if you don't have the cases coming in, none of this other shit matters. Yeah, it just does not matter.
SPEAKER_07:Your case management software does not matter if your phone isn't right.
SPEAKER_06:We can implement this in FileBine. I have no cases. You cannot pay for the add-ons. How much? No. It's only it's only cost per case. Um, so we're gonna be banned next year. I guess next year it's not Sandy, it's in San Diego. But anyway, uh, what I will tell you, I guess, is that we don't do it well because there's two ways to do it, I think. There is the way that you build the infrastructure and you plan to grow, as if that's possible, and then you already know a lawyer in Omaha, and you already know a lawyer in Honolulu, and then you know who you're gonna send your case to. When in reality, half the reason I'm here is to meet somebody, and I literally met somebody from Omaha, so that way when we get the call, we have someone that we can send to. So right now it's trial and error, it's building a network as much as we can. Um, and maybe something we learned this week will help us.
SPEAKER_07:So if you have what I call like an uh alphabet soup practice and you're a lawyer, you should absolutely be making content on LinkedIn. Um, Brewster Rawls, who's in Virginia, is the FTCA guy. My dad, who's an ERISA lawyer in Virginia, is the ERISA lawyer, and we handle those cases nationwide, right? And so most lawyers, when they come across a case like that, they have no idea what to do with it, because we don't know somebody in Wyoming who handles that kind of a case. But if you're in a niche practice, you absolutely should be creating stuff on LinkedIn where you are not talking about the seven things to do before you get divorced, right? Because this content is going out to lawyers, right? All of my content, the vast majority of my content on LinkedIn is mentorship and practice building tips for lawyers that are like three to 10 years behind myself. And most of the time I'm actually just writing a message to myself about something that happened in my office, right? And changing a couple things and mentoring myself. But you br build your personal brand that way, and then every 10th post or so remind people that you're a car crash lawyer in Virginia or an FTCA lawyer or or whatever it is that you do. But then when people come to events like this or they trip across a Wyoming car crash case, they know, hey, I've got somebody who I've seen in my feed again and again and again and again and again. Yeah, I could pick up the phone and give that person a call.
SPEAKER_06:So back in 2019, I was trying to go back, but there were too many posts and I couldn't, I think it was 19. I started doing LinkedIn posts every single day. The one thing I'm good at is consistency. If you're not gonna market consistently, just don't do it. Like done once a week is not consistent enough. I would tell you anything less than once a day is not is not consistent enough. So I started LinkedIn posts 2019, um, and I did them for two and a half years. I hate fucking LinkedIn. Sorry. I at this point I hate LinkedIn because I think it's just a bunch of bullshit and the content, and that's why Ben and Brewster and the and the guys you just named, that's why they stick out and to me, and I'm like, oh, that that's good. Um like it's actually meaningful. It's not, you know, the the the AI emojis that you know it's written on chat GBT, and some person's like, in sixth grade, this happened to me and it changed my whole life, and now I'm a great personal injury lawyer, and I'm just like, God, kill me. Right. Um, so but long story. Sorry. So yeah, go ahead, please. My wife left me last week. Here's what it told me about personal injury law. No, it wouldn't even be that related. It'd be like, my wife left me, and that's what told me about consistency and marketing. And I'm like, So um anyway, I have ADHD if you all haven't caught on. Um, you were talking consistency. Yeah, I'm about I can get my best self back on track. Yeah, but all right, good. I'm there, squirrel. So I did two and a half years, and the the best thing that I did was I did an intro, and you said that every tenth post you remind people what you do. Every single post, every single day, I wrote Georgia personal injury lawyer tip of the day. Georgia personal injury lawyer tip of the day. And I had somebody once in the elevator be like, You're the Georgia lawyer with your personal injury tip. And I was like, fuck, this is working. And then I got so sick of tired of doing it that I but it was a memo to myself. I didn't pre-plan them. There was no chat GPT to give me a hundred prompts that I could schedule out. I would they should have been called like things I think about when I'm sitting in traffic in Atlanta. Like that's what they should have been called. But that moniker, that name alone was the most important thing that I did. Nobody I didn't care if you read the lesson message. I needed you to read the Georgia personal interval. It's really funny because that's exactly what I told people not to do.
SPEAKER_07:Okay.
SPEAKER_06:No, that's I just but but the brand on the Georgia personal entry lur, I I get that. Um sometimes it would be Georgia personal injury lure and then something totally different. My wife is pregnant. Yeah, right. I don't care. I don't need to get to that part.
SPEAKER_07:I just care you get to the Georgia person injury part. And then the engagement goes way up because people are like, that's not a Georgia personal injury tip.
SPEAKER_06:That's perfect. Yeah. I I had people by by the end of it, people would email me and be like, You left that tip three years ago, and I'd be like, I'm sorry. Like I thought about this twice. That to double the value.
SPEAKER_04:How do you two get inspiration from your content from all of your posts?
SPEAKER_06:I know Mike, you touched on this a little bit, but how do you do yours while you're sitting there if it's if it's a memo to yourself?
SPEAKER_07:I think bad shit happens in my office. My team is sitting in the front row. And thank you for being here and seeing that. They know you're not gonna embarrass them. Sometimes it's about shit that happened in my office, right? Sometimes sometimes I'll I'll be running and I'll listen to a podcast and I'll hear something and I'm like, uh, all right, that's great. And I'll put a little personal injury tip or law firm growth twist on it. And then I'll uh I so I use a tool called Buffer while I'm running, and before I forget the thought, I'll just record a voice note into buffer and then I'll come back later and and edit it up. But most of it comes from stuff that's happened to me, right? Uh the other good thing about using a tool like Buffer or VistaSocial is another one, is there are days when you have five great ideas and there are days when you have no ideas. And so you can trap the idea in there and plan it out. Um it's free for like uh 10 posts. So you can plan it out. Uh it comes out at the same time, every morning, whatever. And then sometimes inspiration strikes in the middle of the day, and you're like, I gotta jump on this news story and and say something before it goes viral. Or um, so that's another way to build. But yeah, most of the things that I post are just things that happened to me or things that I heard and was like, here's how that would apply in a law firm growth context.
SPEAKER_06:Mine are similar. Um, I have a greater delay though, because it's video. I have to film the video, I've got to edit the video, I've got to post the video. Two and a half years ago, three years ago, when I started doing this, I was in the once-a-month camp and I would write down stuff that usually made me angry. And then 28 days later, when I sat down to do the videos for an entire day, I didn't even remember what I was angry about. So that has morphed over time. And when the videos got popular, um, I remember I was on my honeymoon when the first video got really popular. I had not looked at my phone, looked down. There's like a hundred thousand notifications. And that had never happened to me. I mean, I was posting for a long time without any engagement. Y'all don't y'all don't like see that part where you're sitting there every day, every week with your partners being like, should we keep spending money on this? And they're like, No, you suck. And nobody wants to watch your stuff. Look at the metrics. And I'm like, no, but I think it's gonna work. And we were close so many times. Consistency. But then when they got popular, the problem you run into is, okay, now a marketing company or a video company has you, right? Because you have to keep putting out the content. And if you don't, then what happens? You lose it. And if they want to charge you double, triple, they got you. So we hired somebody in-house, and that's kind of grown a little bit. Luckily, the guy that we hired that does the filming lives not far from me. So he works full time, so it's not weird for me to call him up in the middle of the day and just be like, hey, come over. So we film two or three times a week, but only for like an hour or two. And obviously, we've gotten pretty, we've gotten pretty um, what's the word I'm looking for here? Good. Good, yeah, that that wasn't the word. Gotten pretty um efficient at it where you know we can make, I can make 10 videos in an hour and know that they are videos. But the best ones that come from me, we don't sit down for the most part. I don't sit down and say, I'm gonna make a video about Ben Glass's post on on LinkedIn and the content of that. I sit down and his name is Logan. Logan just knows how to press my buttons and he goes, What's going on in your life? And we film in the first 20 minutes, we don't talk about anything that you think is anything. And then that runs into something kind of like this. I mean, we could I could have made a hundred videos out of what you and I have said, right? We will. I hope we'll we'll get the audio at least.
SPEAKER_07:So that's that's a tip, right? So one of the things that prevents lawyers from making content is we hate sitting down and staring at the camera, right? But if you just have somebody in your office who can sit next to the camera and ask you questions. That would be so weird to do it alone. People think I do it alone.
SPEAKER_06:I do it alone. Really?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:That's so weird. That's why I have an attraction. So no, people ask me all the time in the comments who's he talking to, and like there's nobody in the room. I'm like, no, that would be so terrible to not talk to anyone. Well, we the problem is that the way we do it is probably the least efficient editing way because I'm having a conversation and we don't know that that's going to become a video until we watch it later, or sometimes you kind of can tell. But there's a lot of ramp up. There's a lot of ramp up.
SPEAKER_07:But this is this is another hurdle, right? Because it feels weird having somebody in your office who just sits there and asks you questions, unless you have that relationship with your guy. But that's uh that's a Gary Vanderchek tip. They broke down the metrics of of their produced videos, and he's like, Well, this guy's videos are off the charts, and this guy's videos are not. Like, what's what's going on? The only difference was one of them had somebody sitting behind the camera when he was made like.
SPEAKER_06:Let me give you a tip. Let me give you a tip. So I was a TV news reporter before I went to law school. And one time I was on a uh a story with somebody, and the guy has Monica Lewinsky hanging from his camera. So the reporter has in the lens of his photog, he's got Monica Lewinsky taped down hanging. And I'm like, what is that? And he says, the best tip I ever got was that when you're when you talk to someone, and I was like, Why do you pick Monica Lewinsky? I did not get an answer. Fox News. But when I talk, I he was probably CNN. But when I talk, I think I'm talking to if I ever had to do a video alone, which I really haven't done in a long time. The ads, like a true ad is really difficult for me. Yeah. Because then I have to look at the camera and I have to say something, and it's I'm speaking. I might, sir, I might imagine you. Don't take this the weird way. I might imagine you next time because I I'm I think of someone. I think of Michael Jordan. I don't know why. I talked to Michael Jordan. Okay. But that is a way to try to bridge that gap to make sure that you're talking to somebody. Now, you can also put a little pressure on yourself because you take any reporter, because that's ultimately what you're doing, is you're acting sort of like a reporter. If you know you can do five more takes, your first two are. That's right. Your third's gonna be bad, your fourth's gonna be bad, and you're gonna go with your fifth. So just say to yourself and be real with it, not like my kids who play video games and then start losing and restart the game. Or say, I'm not going to restart. This is gonna be my only time I do this, and then just live with it. Then just live with it. And that's what reporters do when they're live. That's their best take.
SPEAKER_04:What's your approach? I mean, you know, posting on social media can inherently lead to some negative comments or feedback. What's your approach to dealing with that? And how do you overcome?
SPEAKER_07:So you don't get a lot of it on LinkedIn. There's not a lot of public negativity on LinkedIn. People either, you know, they block you or whatever, and that's fine. I have a video of my kid that I took while we were in Italy that's on my Instagram. It has like 12 million views because in the caption I said something about Parmigiana and it's Parmigiano. And all of the Italians dropped in and like, you're an idiot, uncultured American, stay in your country. That just it hurt my feelings for a while, but I just started blocking them. But it's it's funny, like the different different platforms behave very differently because I posted also on TikTok, and TikTok everybody loves it. I don't have hardly any negative things.
SPEAKER_06:I don't have hardly any negative things on TikTok, but the Instagram you user17486, like Bro, you need to go if you want to be if you want to cry, like they say what every good day you laugh, you cry, whatever the list is. I'll show you my YouTube comments. Oh, YouTube's. Yeah, no, YouTube's bad. So um so so you do have to have a little bit of thick skin for this. I think I have extremely thick skin and hurts my feelings all the time. All the time. But I'll I'll take it away from me. So with doing the videos, it's wild. It's probably this isn't shocking to you here at the File Bind conference where y'all track everything that everyone does. But you know, you can imagine the the YouTube analytics of what they can track, right? Like if I wanted to, I could run a ad only to people who have watched my video more than three times. They have this age range, they're this gender, they live in this state, and I can even I don't know why I would do this, but I could even say they probably most likely make more than this amount of money. I mean, so it can get very specific. Um, when I look at my analytics, it's all bros. It's all guys. It's like bros. Like it's all bros who wear vests and you know play golf. Like that's who watches my video. Good insurance policies. Yeah, that's what I mean. That's a side business. My I wrangled my wife, who at the start of the story remember was she said, You can't do this. And I said, Yes, I can, and I don't think she still thinks I can do it. But I got her to agree to do a podcast. And we did one last year and we're doing another one this year. To give you an idea of the comments and how bad it can get, is that the comments on the podcast are extremely, extremely nice. And she reads those. And my wife writes back and she like like the other people are nice. If we take a short, we make one of those videos 60 seconds and then put that on YouTube Shorts or TikTok. And TikTok, if we post on my account versus if we post on the podcast account, the podcast account, nice. My account or the the YouTube Shorts account, my wife will not read those because they are terrible. They are terrible. And I'll tell you something scary. I mean, after one of the most recent shootings, mass shootings in the country, I I can't keep track of them, forgive me. Um I uh somebody posts on ours that on mine that all lawyer, all personal injured lawyers should die starting with you. That's not an uncommon comment, by the way. That is not uncommon. When I looked at his picture, he had a shotgun, and I said, I'm not gonna write back to that one, obviously. Um, so it I did videos, I made videos a couple weeks ago, like two or three weeks ago, and we talked about this on the podcast that's I think is coming out today or is out. I got afraid. It was the first time ever. I was in my own head making videos, being like, maybe I shouldn't say that. Somebody's gonna get real mad about that. And so I don't mean to scare you all, make videos, but I have a polarizing conversation. Personality and the comments follow suit. The comments follow suit.
SPEAKER_07:You mentioned analytics. I'm just curious whether you do any retargeting, pixeling for people who have come to your website and then you resend them your stuff.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, relatively new. Us too. Yeah, I mean it it takes a while to grow the followers, it takes a while to get the views, and then it takes a while to figure out what you want to do about it. Well, so but what Ben's talking about is when someone comes to your video, watches it, how are you going to re-engage them again?
SPEAKER_07:Oh, I'm going to challenge you. You don't need the follower and you don't need the views to do that because you can just do it from your website. So what we've set up now is you come to my website, you don't fill out a form, you don't call us, you start seeing the law firm social media content, which is different than my social media content, right? All of the law firm social media stuff is educational stuff about the court. All of my, the vast majority of the video stuff that I'm making now is personal branding for me. But this is a way for us to this web traffic that we put in so much time and effort and money to get to come there in the first place, and then they clicked off for some reason. It's a way for us to continue to re-engage with them and it's cheap, right? Like spend a dollar a day on 15 videos retargeting people that have already come through our funnel.
SPEAKER_06:Well, that's what everybody says. That's what I've always heard, right? That you want people to get to your website. And when I started making videos, it was how are we going to get you, video watcher, to my website, to my website, to my website. I don't give a shit if people come to my website. I care if they hit call now. And I care if they search, oh, what's that guy that makes videos? Raithy. Oh yeah, I'm gonna So I we have stopped trying to get people to our website as much as we have for a decade now. So because I don't know the value, and maybe it's my website's not good enough, but I don't know what value you can get from my website that is better than my content.
SPEAKER_07:Well, maybe you have a more sophisticated follow-up funnel from somebody who's in your content, right? All I'm trying to do is get somebody who's been to the website wants to come back. Right. And I think that's a lower lower barrier than somebody who's scrolling and sees a video about car crashes and it's like, oh, in fact, I do need a lawyer. Let me call this guy. Because for most of us, and a lot of the people in this room are single-event personal injury lawyers or team members at a single event personal injury firm. Like, people do not care about their insurance policies until they've been in a crash and they find out that their insurance policy sucks, right? And so all the content that we make about that is completely and totally worthless, except in this, I think, in this retargeting fashion, where there's somebody who's already been there once. You just didn't do what I wanted you to do. I just got to remind you at a really cheap cost per click that I still exist.
SPEAKER_06:Casey's my office manager is here. Can you write down that I should make a video about uh rental cars? Because what you just said, the one thing that comes up is that that people I because I try to think of things that relate lawyer stuff, right? That relates to everyone. The people that get the most mad at me for no reason is when their insurance policy doesn't give them rental car coverage and then they're just confused by that, like where's my rental car? And I'm like, you don't have the coverage. I don't say it like that. But that's a good video. So I'll make it.
SPEAKER_07:Passengers in an Uber, like what the fuck?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:Like state minimum UM policies. Sorry, I know this isn't about that.
SPEAKER_04:So once you're you have interest on your website, they turn into leads. How do you make sure they don't slip through the cracks? How does a tool like lead docket help with that?
SPEAKER_06:Ah, there we go. Tool tie-in. How does a tool like lead docket help with that? I can give you mine. Last year, last year there was a um uh there was a firm that I came, I came last year, I had not implemented FileDon yet. So I'd signed up, but it hadn't, so I'm I'm walking into this thing, right? And I have no idea what the heck anybody's talking about. But somebody put up lead docket, and they're a lead docket in live time. There's a firm that has, you know, tens of thousands of leads every month, like you know, one of those crazy ones. And I just watched it move, like lead to this one, to opportunity, to here. And it was happening in real time. I don't know what the hell he said through that whole presentation. I just took my my phone and videoed all his cases just moving around. And mine doesn't move as fast as that, but that is what we have done with lead docket is I could right now tell you the status of pretty much anything and any case where it lies, and it it's almost difficult. Somebody will find a way. It's really difficult to drop a lead. To drop a lead Oh, and once they get in that funnel on the lead docket, it's tough to miss them.
SPEAKER_07:I mean, well, I mean, there's really two parts to this, right? So multi-source attribution is really, really hard. Even with a tool like lead docket that tells me that somebody came in through my Google Business profile or through a certain page on my website, um, or that they they that they reported that they were referral, or that they say that they saw us on a billboard, and I don't have any billboards, right? This stuff that's really, really hard to track all of that. Lead Docket lets you get a little bit closer because at least I can figure out what's the last thing that you did before you came in. Um but I I know Adam Lockwood is here somewhere. The podcast, there he is. Podcast that he produces, lunch hour legal marketing, they talk all the time about multi-source attribution, right? And so this is another another plug for creating this social media is to be everywhere or give your clients a perception that you're everywhere so that they can call in and misreport how they found you. The cool thing about Lead Doc, and I'll give you a plug, is um it's got a it's got that hard-coded field that tells you exactly where they came from, but it also has it also, um, no, you can't change if they if they dial in, yeah, they dial a tracking number, that's hard-coded. But your team should also always be asking who referred you to us, two reasons. Number one, most people will not tell you that they were referred and then found you through Google, right? So this gives you an opportunity to go back to your referral sources and thank them. Number two, it's social proof. It's telling you, telling the end client that most of your clients come to you by referral from some other lawyer or doctor or somebody in the community that's that's no like and trust, right? So it's just a little subtle way to build into your onboarding and sales script that like we're not just internet lawyers um who are creating content.
SPEAKER_06:And on that point, there's a third thing. I want to know every time someone finds me and hires us from a video. Because can you imagine watching videos of mine? I don't know why I I I can't I don't watch them sometimes, but imagine if you watched weeks of videos and then you call me and then you never speak to me. Like Oh, that's interesting. That would suck. So you get on the phone with people who call from videos. If you, if you get me, if you get to me from social media, I will talk to you within the first day usually of you signing up with our firm. I'm gonna explain to you that, hey, you, depending on the case, I got a guy I represent right now, I talk to him every two days. Casey can say, Charles Boykin. I talk to this guy every two days because the case warrants it. But there's a lot of people that I talk to up front and I give them the explanation of. You're not gonna see me every day. I have a great person who's gonna work the hand day to day of your uh of your case. They're excellent. I'm involved in the decisions, I truly am. And here's what I my role is. And hey, at the end of the case, you know, if you need something at any time, you let me know. But at the end of the case, you're gonna see me again and we're gonna talk.
SPEAKER_07:And you and you also have to be careful and authentic with the content that you're putting out there about what you can and can't achieve in a case, right? So there are lawyers that put out, every time they settle a case, is a picture of a client with a big check, and then there's a picture of the car with no damage on the back of the car, right? So this is the way to piss off all your future clients who have scratches on the back of the car. I play this game sometimes in Virginia Lawyers Weekly where I'm like, what facts did the lawyer leave out of this case description that make this sound like a good result? And if your marketing is the same and you're leaving out facts that are important to the client experience, you're only setting your clients up to be pissed off at you at the end of the case.
SPEAKER_06:I got a pre-suit offer and it was five dollars. And then after two years of work, we got five hundred thousand dollars. That's a whatever times that is of multiplier nonsense. Well, yeah, you wrote a demand that didn't comply with the statute and didn't provide medical records, so of course they only offered you five dollars. I I never set a demand, so it was a no-offer case. I've learned so I I learned that no one cares about your verdicts. Nobody cares about um the big checks. And I hate, I hate, I hate big checks because I think they do a disservice to our industry for a lot of reasons. I'm like morally opposed to big checks. But the marketing that you do has to be authentic to who you are and what your brand is. I mentioned earlier that I don't use a marketing or a video company because I don't want anyone to have me where they can upcharge me or do something like that. I want complete control. With that said, though, I am kind of hogtied a little bit where I think you all may disagree that I have to make good quality videos. I was in a I was in one of the seminars, maybe you were in there too yesterday, with um the Law Brothers. They put up the commercials and said, and I was like, shit, that is really good quality. And I knew exactly what they're talking about. They were saying I made a commercial. Commercial was extremely expensive, but people said, wow, that represents that quality of your commercial represents how good of a lawyer you are. And they said we did other content too. I think I am past the point where I can legitimately pop up a phone and sit in my car and give you a video because that worsens my brand. And I don't want people to think that they're hiring a lawyer in a car with a phone up. With that said, though, if I was starting, yeah, that's what I would do. I would never have gone to the really good production. I would be an iPad guy.
SPEAKER_07:I I just think it's off-brand for you because all of your stuff is polished and there's lights and there's flashing and whatever. I know. And so so then you would lose some brand, not credibility, and I don't think you would be diminished, but it it wouldn't be immediately recognizable as one of your videos. Uh and so, but it but if that's what you have to start with, like the cam uh iPhone 17 camera, iPhone 14 camera is amazing.
SPEAKER_04:Well, thank you both. I feel like we've covered a lot of ground and you too could go over there. We're gonna keep going being asked to start speaking. Uh but we'd love to hear from you all. Any questions that you have for Brian and Mike, um, let us know. We've got a mic runner.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I thought about that when I was saying it. I because we expanded different states. So for a long time, I I I said I did Georgia personal injured lawyer tip of the day. One of the main reasons I stopped doing that on LinkedIn is because I didn't want to be only Georgia. My Instagram was Georgia, I think it was Georgia Lawyer. I think it was Georgia Lawyer. Okay, yeah, it was Georgia Lawyer. We stopped. So now it's just Mike Rathew. So hopefully the the name is worth enough.
SPEAKER_07:Um running out in the hallway to see if Georgia Lawyer is available as the Instagram handle right now. I'm here. I'm here. Yeah. So I post daily, do I ever do recycled content or is it all uh new material? So LinkedIn, and I don't know if this is the the upgraded thing that I pay for or if it's everybody, but it'll show you your analytics. And so, yeah, if I'm at a loss for what to post, I'll go back into my last 365, I'll copy and paste it, I'll throw it in the chat GPT, I'll ask it to rephrase it. Um so I'll I'll I'll do that um every now and then. Yeah, nope, no problem. You cheater. You cheater. I'm trying to help people. Well, let me let me tell you that's a good idea.
SPEAKER_06:Let me tell you how let me tell you how I use it. I use chat GPT sometimes ideas, but they never actually work out.
SPEAKER_07:I don't use it for ideas, but you know, I use it for like, hey, I have this idea for a hook. By the way, I have a book up here, and before you leave, if you like one, I have about 50 copies of the book, you come up and get it. But I uploaded the manuscript of the book to ChatGPT. I created a GPT, and then when I have ideas, I'm like, here's the idea for the hook. Pull the information out of my book and write the body of a LinkedIn post. That's good. Yeah. Okay, that's good. And then I'll and then I'll ask it, uh, and it has started to ask me, do you want me to make it spicier? I'm like, I do that three times. And then I post the remove all emojis so no one knows. Remove the emojis, remove the M-dashes, get rid of the hashtags at the bottom, and then post it.
SPEAKER_06:I don't reuse any content that you'd see. Every video is new every single day, 8 15 Eastern time, with a long video on Wednesday, that's the podcast, and a long video on Friday, that's uh usually a six to fifteen minute video about a somewhat more advanced, more detailed legal topic. But TikTok existed before YouTube Shorts, so I have about a year or so of TikTok content that's never been on YouTube. So every once in a while I'll throw one out that doesn't have a beard and people get confused and I laugh. But no, I don't the only content I recycle is if one does extremely well in a certain demographic, then I will use that to retarget people and and push them in other video.
SPEAKER_05:Got a question for you right here. Yeah. Um, once you guys got consistent with your posting, how long did it take you to hit 10k and then 100k?
SPEAKER_06:I haven't hit 100k. Fair enough. But I have no idea. I don't have a hundred thousand on Instagram. I've I honestly don't know. I've pretty much plateaued on TikTok about two hundred and sixty or eighty thousand. Um, mainly because I I go on TikTok sometimes. I don't know about y'all, but I don't follow anybody. So the algorithm's so good I don't I don't need to follow anyone. So I honestly don't care about the followers, I care about the views. So sorry to not answer your question, but that's the answer.
SPEAKER_07:I started posting daily on LinkedIn in October of 2022. I had 900 followers at the time. I have almost 20,000 now. The followers, this is the same thing. I had 10 million impressions last year. 10 million people scrolled and saw my name, right? So I don't know that the follower count is more than I don't know that the impressions are important.
SPEAKER_06:The one thing about LinkedIn that's better than videos, I will say, is that LinkedIn does a better job of keeping it in your network or similar to close to your network. So your 10 million views, I'm gonna guess, is within, for the most part, two or three connections of you. And those people are maybe it's not localized, but they're two or three people removed at least, or at most, from someone that you know, someone that's in your industry. I get views all over the country, the world. So yeah, like I got offered a case in Belfast last week, and I was like, I've never been if you business trip, but obviously I can't handle that case. So my numbers are much higher than that, but that's why targeting, retargeting for me is so important because I need to know who watches the initial videos, and then I need to rein in my world, literally, the world of people that see my videos. Australia makes up like 4% of my views. It's all English-speaking countries, right? So Australia, the the UK, Germany, the there's a lot of crossover obviously with English, but so your 10 million has a multiplier compared to mine. Maybe.
SPEAKER_07:Every time I have a post that goes six figures viral, once you get outside those two bands and you get in your third-level connections, that's when the negative comments start coming in.
SPEAKER_06:Because people hate lawyers. Have you ever written a post or done anything and said this this shit's gonna go viral? And did it?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. So if you if you want a LinkedIn hack, talk about how grades matter or how grades don't matter. Talk about how law school rank matters or how law school rank doesn't matter. Talk about how big law is amazing or big law sucks. And you you can virtually guarantee that that's gonna get, even on a small account, five figures of impressions.
SPEAKER_06:I I asked that because I've never, I've never, I've thought, I've thought it before. I've been like, this video is great. And then it does terribly. The the video I mentioned on my honeymoon was one I made four months earlier. The guys that do the editing said, hey, this is a great video. I was like, this, nah, no, no. And they only posted it on my honeymoon because I wasn't around. And that's the one that I think I don't know, it's like 12 million views back then, whatever that was. That's the one that started the the growth of my account, and I thought it was a terrible video. So if you're out there saying to yourself, this video isn't good enough, nobody's gonna like this video. I have those thoughts all the time. Just post the video. Just do it. Just just do it. Just do it. Yeah, just even if it's terrible, just put it out there.
SPEAKER_02:Question back here. Sorry. Kind of a dual purpose question. Is it mostly just videos, or what about pictures with comments? And the second part of the question, what about the content that a company does for you? Or is it all original content from you?
SPEAKER_06:Mine's all original and no pictures. I guess Rachel and my office does pictures. Sometimes I forget we post pictures.
SPEAKER_07:Pictures won't do nearly as well on Instagram.
SPEAKER_06:They're just to build to path content out.
SPEAKER_07:Pictures are very helpful on LinkedIn. Anything that's gonna stop people from scrolling is helpful on LinkedIn and a picture does that. I don't have a company do mine for me. There are great ghostwriters out there. I think I enjoyed doing it. So I would never outsource it to somebody else just because I like it. Doesn't mean you can't be successful with it.
SPEAKER_06:Well, and that that brings up the idea that if you don't, if you're doing marketing or planning on doing marketing that you don't like, you are not going to obviously like it, but you are not going to continue it. It's not going to work for you. You know, like there's a billion, billion ways to market. I'm gonna throw one of the guys in my office under the bus. Alex Brown, my social battery, by the way, is like 25 minutes in real life. Everybody thinks I'm extremely outgoing. I'm not. So I got like 25 minutes and then I go into a shell and I go to sleep. Okay. So I'm there, by the way, but I'll happily talk to anybody afterwards. But Alex Brown in my office, his battery is 25 seconds on a good day. Like that is not like we don't want him around people. He's extremely personable, extremely friendly, but we don't want like that's not his thing. So he should never ever do conferences like this. He should not go to lunches. That's not how he should spend his time. Um find something else to do. Write a newsletter, do a group checks, do whatever it is, find something you like that you'll actually continue, and at least if it doesn't work, you've had a good time doing it. So yeah, that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_03:Hi. Uh I have two questions. One is you said you post every day at 8 15. Do you use a hi? Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. Hello. Um, do you use a scheduling app to make sure that you're consistent every day? And the second question I have is do you pull in support staff or other lawyers to partner with them for your videos, or are you both just solo in terms of your videos, etc.?
SPEAKER_06:Uh Loomly. L-O-O-L-L L O O M L Y is what we use. Am I getting trying to should I not say Loomly? Do you guys have like I thought somebody was giving me this like that's a competing product. Never know. I use that product. There's a there are a dime a dozen. And I have on the longer videos I do, people from office will kind of join the the world. I've tried to expand the world and be like, come on, you know, come come into the reality that is, you know, my videos, they just don't do well. YouTube only likes one face and it's mine. I don't know why.
SPEAKER_04:Well, awesome. Oh yeah. So we got one more, we can make it really quick.
SPEAKER_01:We don't know how much time there's okay over here. Do you know why's your data flow? Do you talk about a lot about retargeting, right? Um leaddocket is great. There's still not a fully integration to meta. We do a lot of webhooks, Sapier, of course, Google, all that. But do you use any other tools to pull all the data, let's say Domo, right? Or what tools are you using and what is your data flow if you know?
SPEAKER_07:I have a marketing director who maybe could answer that question.
SPEAKER_06:I don't I know we don't use Domo for it, but I don't know the answer. Casey and I went to see Domo uh before this and we were talking to them. Probably not for us, it seems. No, we don't pull anything. I mean, we have 15 people at our firm, so my job is is the marketing and bringing in cases. So I'm okay to open up the YouTube app and also open up the Instagram app. Like a I'll survive at this point.
SPEAKER_07:Let me just hawk my book one more time before you close. I've got 50 copies of Renegade Learn Marketing that I do not want to pack and fly back to Northern Virginia with me.
SPEAKER_04:So please come up and grab one after they're please come up and grab a book. Thank you all for your questions. Thank you to our panelists, Brian and Mike. Appreciate you guys.
