Susan Barfield:
Welcome and thank you everyone for joining another Case Works live stream. We are joined today, I’m very excited and we’re going to be talking about the future of personal injury litigation. And we are joined by two guests. The first one, Jon Robinson, Jon is VP of SEO at Consumer Attorney Marketing Group, or as folks call it CAMG. And we’re also joined by a friend and a great personal injury attorney, Mike Lyons and Mike is a partner at Lyons and Simmons. So thank you both for taking time to connect with me today and talk about the future of personal injury litigation.
Mike Lyons:
Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Susan Barfield:
Yeah, absolutely. Why don’t we start off, Mike, if you would just give a little bit, tell us a little bit about yourself and also about the focus of Lyons and Simmons.
Mike Lyons:
Yeah, sure. So my name is Michael Lyons. I’m based out of Dallas. I’ve practiced for about 22 years, primarily in Texas, but the firm handles cases coast to coast. Our focus is catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death cases. Most of those cases are higher exposure cases. We don’t handle a lot of fender benders and slip and falls. And our practice is less of a volume practice and more qualitatively, a large case practice. We have a small segment also that’s dedicated to large commercial business disputes where we represent plaintiffs that have kind of bet the company type plaintiff’s cases. Usually in a business context, that’s probably about 15, 20% of our practice, but on balance, we are a firm that focuses on helping people that have had something terrible happen to them. Sadly.
Susan Barfield:
Yeah. And Case Works has had the opportunity to work with you on some of those cases. Let me ask you this. Why did you select personal injury as your legal area of focus?
Mike Lyons:
In all honesty, it initially began over office supplies. I was a kid hanging out in the office with my stepmother and who worked for a really prominent defense attorney who did primarily defense litigation. And I was just enamored with all the books and all the office supplies. And I would show up to school on Monday with great spirals and pens and post-it notes. And I thought, this is the profession for me. And 20 years later, the office supplies are great still, but there’s also some interesting stories. And I would say that the overarching reason that I got into personal injury and continue to enjoy it is I love helping people. And it’s very satisfying to me to have the opportunity to take somebody in their worst, perhaps the biggest adversity that they’ll ever face in their entire lives and try to bring them some comfort and some closure on a difficult situation.
Susan Barfield:
Yeah. That’s a different story on how you started as a personal injury attorney. Let me ask you this, to set the stage for our viewers and listeners, what can you tell us about the origins of personal injury law?
Mike Lyons:
Sure. Well, I’ll tell you that the origins in our country, I mean, we can go all the way back to the common law of England. I think people will probably doze off if we have to go that far back, but effectively there was a system that was set up in our country very early on to address civil wrongs. And unlike the criminal justice system where you’re putting people behind bars and trying to either deter criminal offenses or punish, the purpose of the civil justice system has always been to compensate. And because we can’t bring people back that have been killed and we can’t create a time machine to go back and fix civil wrongs that have occurred in the past.
Mike Lyons:
And so the idea behind our civil justice system is to compensate people, to hopefully make them as good off we can after a civil wrong occurs. And it’s something that I have to remind my clients of. A lot of times the client’s objective is something other than what the civil justice system can offer. And I think it’s important to understand that in every representation that people may have different expectations and you have to explain it to them.
Susan Barfield:
Sure. You mentioned 22 years of practicing law. Usually there’s one case that really stands out. Is there, do you have that one case that, I mean, I know all of them are important and you’ve impacted in a positive way, lots of clients and their families, but is there one case that really stands out to you?
Mike Lyons:
You know, there are a lot, I see a lot of my clients, through my memories of the cases that I’ve handled and I think about them and I think about what has happened and hopefully where they are now, families that have been disrupted or destroyed by something terrible. But to answer your question, I’m going to pick a case that happened in the relatively recent past. We worked really hard on an oil field disaster that occurred up in Oklahoma, in a little county called Pittsburg County, Oklahoma, which is in Quintin, Southeastern Oklahoma. And five men burned alive on a doghouse, in a doghouse, on a drilling platform in rural Oklahoma. It was the worst oil field tragedy in the state’s history. And it was the worst since the Deepwater Horizon disaster that we’re all familiar with. And that case was hard fought by lawyers on both sides.
Mike Lyons:
There were a team of about 20 to 30 lawyers on the defense side and basically us and another group of plaintiff’s lawyers who were also representing victims. That case was very satisfying for us professionally and personally, because of the relationships we develop, not only with our clients, but also with our fellow plaintiff’s lawyers on that case. And I feel like we’ve made some industry changes. Some of it in the, at the commercial level, within the oil field industry, based upon safe drilling practices, a lot of it having to do with well control. And then I feel like we also opened some eyes with the federal government, the chemical safety board ultimately examined that catastrophe and conducted a full-scale investigation and rendered findings. Some of which I agree with, some of which I don’t, but in the end there was a collaboration among the plaintiff’s lawyers that I think really led to some effective change to hopefully prevent that from happening.
Mike Lyons:
And I’ll tack on one other, which is recent. And just because your viewers may have heard about this case, there was a neurosurgeon in Dallas named Christopher Duntsch who maimed or killed dozens of people. And ultimately it became a feature length movie that’s now on TV. And so it was a big case. I represented one of the victims. I was one of the lawyers early on to discover that this had happened. And we banded together and went to the Dallas district attorney’s office and demanded that they prosecute this man. He is now serving a life sentence in prison, but that was also very satisfying, not necessarily the biggest case monetarily, because it’s a healthcare case. We’re going to talk about that today, I suspect, but it was satisfying because I feel like justice, the intersection between the civil justice system and the criminal justice system actually worked well. And so that’s very satisfying.
Susan Barfield:
Yeah. I didn’t realize that there was a movie out about Christopher Duntsch. I remember when you told me about the podcast and I listened, I think I listened to the entire podcast and maybe one and a half days, I was just, I started listening to it and couldn’t quit listening to it. I think you were on episode six or something like that. I kept waiting to, to hear you, but super interesting. So I would encourage anyone that hasn’t listened and know about Christopher Duntsch and Dr. Death, definitely listened to that podcast. How have you seen personal injury law evolve since you’ve been practicing? Not only just evolved since you’ve been practicing, but also since COVID?
Mike Lyons:
So I’ll talk about two different evolutions that I’ve seen. One that’s very topical for the producers of this podcast. And then one that’s sort of unrelated, but related to anyone that has an interest in the evolving landscape of personal injury and wrongful death practice. One thing is technologically, the advent of web based marketing and the use of that both from a pay-per-click standpoint, lead generation standpoint, market share acquisition standpoint. And then if you superimposed, social media on top of that, it’s really evolved to the point that it is an important part of the practice. And it’s instrumental in making sure that people get your message and that you get in front of the right people and that those people can find you. And so the competition in that area has evolved. There are people who are highly specialized people like Jon, for example, that understand search engine optimization and understand how to segment and identify specific audiences for specific types of cases or specific types of leads.
Mike Lyons:
And I think it’s incredibly beneficial. So now I’m going to dovetail into the second thing, and that is there has been an evolving political climate, and I’m not here to talk about politics, but there’s a reality about what’s happening to the access to the courthouse, which I’m very concerned about. I spent a lot of time talking about it and a lot of my own personal resources fighting for, I don’t think that it is acceptable in this state, in Texas, where we are, or in any other state in our country, that the only people that should have access to the courthouse are large corporations and insurance companies. And the problem is, is that depending on who is in power, there are efforts underway every single day, every single legislative session, both federally and civilly or federally and statewide to try to block access to the courthouse, to ordinary citizens.
Mike Lyons:
So I think it’s great that lawyers can make sure that people know who they are and where they are for the particular type of case. It used to be people would have to read billboards or look in the back of a phone book to try to figure that out. Now, with the advent of the internet and web-based marketing people can go find the right specialist, hopefully. On the other side of that continuum is lawmakers who are passing mandatory arbitration provisions for things like insurance policies, mandatory arbitration, and virtually any commercial consumer contract that you sign. Judges bought and paid for by people with an interest to make sure that those arbitration provisions are upheld. So that what? So that you don’t get access to the courthouse, jury waiver provisions and contracts that prevent you from getting access to the courthouse.
Mike Lyons:
I had a fight recently in another state where a guy was burned almost to death by a cell phone while he’s driving down the road, hit an 18 wheeler head-on. Put him in a coma for three months. And guess what the cell phone manufacturer wanted to argue? When you bought this phone, you checked a box on an electronic form that said that you will arbitrate. In my opinion, that’s not fair. It’s an adhesionery contract and it’s wrong. These types of things, plus torte reform, are the new landscape that we’re all dealing with. The abolishment of mass towards, the abolishment of healthcare liability claims, the abolishment of any type of healthcare liability claim at the federal level that receives federal funding. These are all realities that will soon come into play if we go to sleep at the switch. In Texas some of that’s already happened with respect to healthcare liability. That’s probably more than you want to hear, but these are the things that I’m tracking very closely in my practice.
Susan Barfield:
Yeah, absolutely. And I can tell you’re very passionate about it as well. Jon, how would you, Mike just mentioned something about this, but how is PI marketing evolving and what are you seeing as trends?
Jon Robinson:
Yeah. From a marketing standpoint, probably the two biggest things that I think are prevalent in the market right now are the evolution of media channels. There’s more and more channels that attorneys have access to things like over the top marketing on your streaming devices. The use of YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world, is extremely important right now. You mentioned social media, it’s been around for a while, but social media continues to evolve. Facebook’s algorithms, Instagram’s algorithms, new channels, like TikTok, anywhere where your potential claimants are, is where you need to be. And if that’s where they are, you have to figure out how to advertise. And then SEO and paid marketing search advertising is still very important, but also evolving. Over the past two months, we’ve seen, I think, five Google updates this summer, which it’s moving at a breakneck speed.
Jon Robinson:
And instead of trying to keep up with what is happening to try and fix things, what we’re seeing is SEO becoming more of a science where there’s a specific way that you’re supposed to do things. And Google is rewarding that, just focusing on the user. So it’s a lot that we could talk about there, but those are probably the biggest things. The new media channels, and then also the importance of your brand and your reputation. Everyone is on the internet right now, if you have a bad experience, that is somewhere on the internet. So making sure that your brand’s reputation, your reviews, are where they need to be. And the way that you do that is by making sure that your practice is actually providing great service to your clients.
Susan Barfield:
Sure. Yeah. That’s great. And what would you say some of the challenges that you’re seeing with digital marketing?
Jon Robinson:
So specifically with digital, probably that you’re no longer just buying media. It used to be when you want to advertise on TV, you want to advertise on radio, or billboards, you placed an order and the media gets placed. Now, you’re buying a service from a marketing agency and you really have to vet that agency very well. You have to make sure that they have a track record of providing results because you’re buying something that isn’t tangible, that you can’t necessarily track until the work has already been done. So really make sure that you have proper attribution. When you get a lead, do you know where that lead came from? A lot of firms just say, oh, it came from our website. Was that from organic SEO? Was it from the [inaudible 00:15:44]? Was it from Google ads? Was it from Facebook? Was it from Instagram? Was it from that mention that you had in the local news story. So tracking where inquiries are coming from and understanding your cost per client acquisition and what your most efficient channels are. Probably the biggest challenges right now in digital marketing.
Susan Barfield:
Yeah. That’s great feedback. And I know at Case Works, one of the things that we pride ourselves on is having a team, a large team actually, as soon as a client signs up, we want to get that client on the phone right away so that we are servicing those clients, setting expectation and just providing that outsource solution for law firms. So a lot of times they just don’t have the infrastructure in place to service all the leads that are coming in. Mike which areas of personal injury law do you expect to see significant growth in the coming years?
Mike Lyons:
Well, I mean, mass torte is always a fertile area. I mean, as of right now, there is no legislation that prevents the marketing for mass tortes, or prevents people from filing and seeking cases to set up MDLs and mass torte type dockets. So I expect that those trends are going to continue, which the flip side of the curtailment and trying to prevent people from again, having access to the courthouse is that there’s a valuable function that’s served by keeping bad products, dangerous drugs, dangerous healthcare products oftentimes seems to be the focus off the marketplace, or at least forcing these manufacturers and product designers to account for better, more acceptable designs and things that are less dangerous to the consumer and to the public. And so I use the analogy all the time about what has happened to the healthcare industry in the state of Texas, in the wake of House Bill 4 back in 2003, when they basically eliminated the civil torte system as a basis to police.
Mike Lyons:
And so you have things like, I use the example of Dr. Duntsch, that people who are killing people and maiming people and Texas medical board doesn’t do anything about it. So my hope is that good lawyers will continue to identify unsafe products and continue to market for the right claimants for those cases and change what is an unsafe situation. Now, I think the other trend, unfortunately, that we’re going to see at least in the state of Texas is there’s an overwhelming trend to try to curtail trucking litigation. As of September 1st, there is a new statute in the state of Texas, which will be terrible for residents and citizens of the state of Texas that prevents trucking companies from being essentially held responsible for drivers that are involved in serious accidents.
Mike Lyons:
So it used to be the practice, certainly this firm and other firms, where I get let’s say I have a multi fatality 18 wheeler accident or a commercial truck accident, where we would want to sue the trucking company owner and hold them responsible for unsafe hiring practices, unsafe maintenance of the truck, unsafe supervision lack of training, all of those things, which are important to police the industry and keep people off the roads who are unsafe. What effectively the new legislation does among other things, is give companies that operate that way, some cover. And there are lots of nuances to the new law, but effectively the practice of suing trucking companies is going to be significantly curtailed. And I do believe that it’s going to drastically impact that area of practice and correspondingly, anybody that has a hand or a line in that pond.
Susan Barfield:
It sounds like a hot topic. And that was a question I was going to ask you is what do you see coming up as, as one of the next hot topics in personal injury law?
Mike Lyons:
Well, I hate to beat a dead horse, but for us, for trial lawyers like myself, what we just got done talking about, there was an immense amount of resources and time and concern over the implementation and passage of that statute. People testified before the state legislature in Austin. There was an effort to make a marketing effort to the citizens of the state of Texas so that they know here again, here are insurance companies and lobbyists that are going to get law makers in Austin to make sure that they have access to the courthouse, but that you don’t, because it benefits their bottom line.
Mike Lyons:
So, sadly, I believe that as long as Texas is comprised the way that it is politically, we’re going to see those trends continue. And I have seen bills that have been already proffered in Senate to calendaring for the next main legislative session, not the special session, that are designed again to target plaintiff’s personal injury lawyers in particular, and have the effect of limiting people’s access to the courthouse. It is a stock and trade right now, politically. And it is a big agenda item for our governor in Texas.
Susan Barfield:
You were talking about the trucking industry. Let’s shift a little bit, talk about, I’m interested to hear your view on ride sharing and vehicle accidents. As we know, those are hot topics in personal injury these days. What is your thoughts on those?
Mike Lyons:
I’m so glad that you asked about that. So, it’s interesting how there’s always this conversation about how science and medicine sometimes will lead. And then the law may lag behind to kind of adjust to whatever technology there is in medical science. And it’s a yin and yang, or an ebb and flow that’s always existed. And it’s actually fascinating. You can go all the way back to the beginning of the country and see examples of this. One of the best examples that I can think of is I had a professor one time talk about how they were putting leeches and bleeding people, which was during the revolutionary period and after that, was a practice that was used by physicians to cure people of all sorts of infections while people were writing the constitution. So there’s an example of sort of at the extreme degree, but back to your question, we had this thing blow up over the last decade, which is rideshare and you have all different types of permutations of that. Apps that allow you to ride with people.
Mike Lyons:
And then we’re right back to talking about some of the things we were talking about earlier, which is what limitations are going to be afforded on these companies, that profit from these arrangements and what can be done to make sure that they’re operating safely. I’ll tell you right here in Dallas, we had a rash of sexual assaults where people were getting into rideshare situations and being assaulted and the defense not surprisingly by these companies, and I’ve been involved in some of these cases is, well, this isn’t my employee. These are simply contractors. And these contractors, we don’t have control over them and we don’t have insurance for them. And therefore it’s not our problem. I will say that, in the wake of some terrible accidents where people have been killed or seriously injured. And in the wake of some of these sexual assaults, a number of these companies have evolved.
Mike Lyons:
Some new companies have sprung up where they actually employ the drivers and they actually train them and insure them and background check then, which is great. It’s another example of the evolution of safety for consumers. And then just take, for example, Uber. Uber now has their own insurance and, or has a program where they’re procuring insurance for their drivers. Whereas five years ago, this conversation would be much different. They would be relying upon the actual driver, the contractor to secure that insurance. And what it created was this interplay of all sorts of problems where maybe their insurance was canceled. Maybe they falsified their insurance, and then people like ourselves get into an Uber, simply relying on the fact that it’s a brand name that we recognize, only to find out that this guy is not employed by the company and he’s not insured.
Mike Lyons:
So these are things that are ongoing and in terms of the future of rideshare litigation, I think it’s ripe because it’s something that’s constantly changing and we’re encountering things that we haven’t even thought about. I mean I talked to a lawyer in Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago who had a rideshare case where an Uber driver picked up her husband, the client’s husband, they got into an altercation and the Uber driver ran over and killed her husband. And it’s on camera. What do you do with a case like that?
Mike Lyons:
So as long as we’re going to have human beings operating machines for the benefit of other people, there are going to be situations and scenarios where people get hurt and it’s up to the law and to the citizens to make sure that people have a right to keep them in check, make sure that they operate safely and have redress if something bad happens. I expect that to continue and the proliferation of rideshare right now it means that the more prevalent that it is in our society and our community, the more important it is that we continue to evolve that. And I expect that the litigation surrounding those types of cases is only going to make the law more clear.
Susan Barfield:
You’re such a great storyteller. I was thinking as we’ve gone through some of these questions, but as should any litigating attorney be great at telling stories. And I could ask you a lot more questions, but I’ll end on this last question, the barriers to owning your own personal injury practice. They’ve been lowered over the time with the help of technology, but as competition increases, how can personal injury lawyers stand out in crowded market?
Mike Lyons:
That’s a really great question. And I’ll tell you that as somebody who I’ve had my own firms since 2008, that’s also evolving. And as soon as I go to sleep and think, “Oh man, I’ve got a great website and I’ve got a great marketing plan.” I have to go back to the drawing board and make sure that we’re current with what other people are doing. And I think it’s incumbent to make sure you hire the right professionals for that. Somebody who can kind of look at it with a different lens than perhaps a lay person, lawyer who maybe knows enough to be dangerous. But I mean, shoot, it’s Chinese algebra to me, if we start talking about algorithms and how all this stuff works, I just need somebody to point and shoot. But so I think you nailed it really in your question, which is one way to really stand out is to be committed to an innovative electronic marketing plan that is centered on the right mixture of different tools that you can use to try to find the right cases and what will make sure people find you more importantly.
Mike Lyons:
So I think that’s one way and it used to be that the person that yells the loudest and has the biggest flashiest sign or whatever billboard, I hate to say that. I’ve never marketed that way, but I know some people do. That was the way you had to do it. And you had to have enough money to do that. And now really you can be very selective and be very innovative in your approach and get a lot of bang for the buck if you choose the right people and those people are out there. So that’s one suggestion. The other one’s more of a practical suggestion. And that is, I was always trained as a lawyer, be careful about getting into big fights with the person on the other side of the table from you, because that person will send you a case.
Mike Lyons:
And so my network of lawyers includes a lot of people who have been opposing counsel. I got a case sent to me by a guy that I had a hotly contested case against. And he sent me, referred me a case recently, which is the ultimate pat on the back, in my opinion, it means that somebody trusts your skills and trust your integrity. So I think that’s one thing is to make sure you branch out and include people that you may be thinking are your adversaries. And then the last thing I’ll tell you, which I think is perhaps the most important, practicing in this area, I don’t care if you’re a paralegal or you’re a lawyer, or you’re a person that works hand in hand as a professional with plaintiff’s lawyers and paralegals. It’s a fraternity.
Mike Lyons:
If you truly believe in what it is that we’re trying to do, and I am a true believer, I’ve drank the Kool-Aid and I love what I do. It gives me a great energy to think about the lives that we have affected in a positive way, but it’s a fraternity. And so there are lots of groups of people that have banded together. I don’t care if it’s Dallas Trial Lawyers Association, Texas Trial Lawyers Association at the state level, the American Association of Justice. There are all of these interest groups that are banded together with good plaintiff’s lawyers.
Mike Lyons:
You will find out great strategies for your cases. You’ll find out what works and what doesn’t work. And perhaps more topical for this discussion, you’re going to find great vendors. People just like Case Works, people that do great work that have worked with other lawyers. You’re going to find the right people that can help you with your marketing quagmires, who works, who doesn’t. And because of that sort of community and fraternity that exists there’s strength in those numbers. And so you may feel like, “Hey, I’m a little guy trying to get my foot in the market.” But there are lots of resources that are available for firms of all sizes and all resources. You’ve just got to make sure you align with the right people to know who to select.
Susan Barfield:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Finding the right partnerships is key and that was great. Thank you both so much for taking time to connect with me. These were great questions and great feedback talking about the future of personal injury. Jon, thank you so much. And wanted to just find out if anyone listening is interested, Mike, to reach out to you directly, how can they get ahold of you?
Mike Lyons:
Sure, you can call my office at (214) 665-6900, or you can try me by email that’s mlyons@lyons-simmons.com.
Susan Barfield:
Fantastic. And if anyone, Jon wants to reach directly out to you to talk about marketing and SEO, how can they get ahold of you?
Jon Robinson:
I’m all over social media myself. So you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can connect with CAMG at www.camginc.com.
Susan Barfield:
Fantastic. Well, thank you both.
