Dan Miner (00:05):
Welcome to the latest edition of The Leverage Report. I’m Dan Miner, CEO of Case Works, and I’m joined by Cason Carter, CEO, and founder of Broughton Partners. Today’s discussion is not going to be the typical conversation around case acquisition. Today we’re gonna talk about some of the strategies that Broughton employs to ensure success not only at the intake steps, but also at the end of the process. Cason, thanks for joining me today.
Cason Carter (00:28):
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Dan Miner (00:29):
So Cason, tell me a little bit about Broughton, kind of what you do and then also your experience.
Cason Carter (00:35):
Absolutely. So at Broughton when we started, we said we were gonna be different. It seemed like there was a lot of people in the space offering marketing at no performance marketing, that you really didn’t know the outcome. And we skinned our knees along the way and you know, we’re very unscalable and unprofitable for three years trying to make sure we got to that mark. And that Mark is providing something that a firm knows is gonna be worthy of ordering medical records is really the first step. And we really work hard to make sure that when we send something over, a firm knows that yes, they should talk to ’em, but B, they can order medical records at the same time and that’s crucial.
Dan Miner (01:10):
And so, we just published a white paper recently on fallout rates. Talk through a number of the, the reasons that Fallout can occur. And you and I were catching up in New York at an event and talk through some of the fallout challenges, but also some of the things that you’ve done in your organization to reduce the risk of fallout. Can you talk about some of those initiatives that you’ve been working on?
Cason Carter (01:29):
Absolutely. I think the first initial spot for falloff is gonna be handoff, and that’s handoff to the firm handling it. In those situations, what you’re looking for is how do I make sure that claimant has the number of the firm reaching out to them in their phone? And that takes coordination between us and the firm handling the retainer. We look for things like, can we use one number that is the outbound number for that firm? Can we get that claimant to save that phone number in their phone? And if they cannot save it at the time of intake, can we get that number in their phone as many times as possible through contact cards, through text messages, emails. That’s much more likely for that firm to not show up as spam, but to show up as just an outbound number. We also really work hard with the law firms on getting their numbers white listed with the big three. We also work hard on getting them branded caller display. And so branded caller display nowadays is essential. And you hear a lot of firms say, our firm name’s gonna show up. It doesn’t work that way with the big three cell phone carriers nowadays. And you have to work hard to make sure you’re not showing up as spam whether you’re a legitimate business or not.
Dan Miner (02:29):
And so to summarize there, making sure that you’re not a number that shows up as spam on the other side is going to improve your ability to contact the client down the road. But also as you’re, you’re going through that intake process and so it sounds as though you’re, you’re capturing every touch point that you have voicemail text that kind of authenticates that phone number and makes it a viable number for the carriers. Is that
Cason Carter (02:52):
Right? Much more likely. And what we see is that when handling firms cannot get ahold of the claimant, if they ask us for help within seven days, 95% of the time we get them hot transferred back in. And that number is actually a little bit higher than that. Our VP of claimant journey told me recently. But we are very successful at getting those numbers transferred back in because we’ve had over a minute and a half phone call with that claimant. So the chances of showing up as spam are very unlikely. And so that just goes to show you right there how bad this bam blocking problem is nowadays and how important it is to whitelist your numbers and get branded call display. So your firm name shows up right on the phone.
Dan Miner (03:28):
Great. Let’s switch gears to medical records. We often face the challenge of trying to decipher facility information and determining which provider did someone go to. It sounds like you’ve deployed some innovations in that space as well. You talk a little bit about what you’re doing to make sure you have the right facility.
Cason Carter (03:44):
Yes. So one, we work with our nurse to determine if they had that injury, what facility should they have treated at. It helps to be able to call that facility by name oncologist or a specific doctor type helps O-B-G-Y-N mm-hmm. But then we also don’t rely on what the claimant tells us as far as address, phone number, location go. We actually have a lookup to treatment facilities to verify that that is a treatment facility. And that helps us to make sure we understand that they are given us a facility that is located where they say they treated and we’re not relying on them to spell it out for us. We’re using a verified treatment facility database. And then the same thing on doctor. And that really is one of the biggest things we’ve rolled out in the last year is we have access to a doctor database of all the doctors in the nation.
(04:27)
And so someone cannot lie who their doctor is and give you a different location than what they’re located. You need the location and the doctor’s name to be verified. That information then pulls into our system and now we’re starting to do checks on how close are the treatment facility and the doctor, how close are they located? And so there’s a lot of things there. Getting medical records and making sure claiming is taken care of really comes down to how well you take that treatment facility information in. And that really starts with making sure you have APIs and you can fact check a little bit to make sure they are providing you a valid treatment facility or doctor in the city or town they’re located in.
Dan Miner (05:02):
Yeah, and and from our perspective, when we’re working up cases, an invalid facility just creates noise. It creates a challenge in the process. We call it the chase, but we then have to go back to the claimant, you know, confirm that that’s indeed where they didn’t, it did go for treatment or that’s indeed where they, they did receive a procedure. That’s another step in the process because we may have gotten a rejection or a certificate of no records, one of the pain points that law firms then face is getting that person back on the line. It sounds like from our earlier topic you’re able to do that. And so talk a little bit about, you know, your stickiness with the firms. I mean this is, this is something that you want to be successful as well, and so you’ll pitch in and support the firms who want to ultimately get these cases to the end.
Cason Carter (05:41):
The most important thing for us is that the firms that refer the cases to the handling firms that we work with see success. And so we help our handling firms and provide them resources to make sure together in a partnership, we show the referral firm success. And so the last thing we want is a spam likely number to scare off the plaintiff because people tie that to delegitimate businesses. These law firms are not delegitimate, but the way these cell phone carriers are blocking it looks like they are. And so we provide that resource to our litigating firms. We ask that they do it within seven days. And that’s really important for us because if they do it within seven days, the likelihood of that claimant signing up somewhere else because they haven’t heard from that firm, even though the firm was trying to reach them is much, much lower. But it’s very important to get them on the phone with that handling firm and for them to have a minute and a half phone call. So that number is not gonna show up as spam likely again.
Dan Miner (06:30):
And then, then last is data. Uh, everybody talks about data, we talk about data on The Leverage Report, but data metrics, dashboards, you know that that’s a hot topic, but how do you use data to inform your own processes and protocols and at the same time also make sure that everyone in this partnership is seeing the value that being provided by all parties, whether it’s the retaining firm, the the handling firm or, or potentially yourselves?
Cason Carter (06:54):
That’s a great question. Sometimes you can have data for data’s sake, I like to say data’s for decisions. If we can’t make decisions off of it, why are we using it? And I know that people much smarter than me know how to use data to machine learn. But when I’m talking about analytics that we’re using internally that are not some model that we’re trying to build for something new, we are looking to make actionable decisions. And those actionable decisions need to be made here about whether we tweak ad copy or hey, do we need to find the fall off place for claimants in the pipeline? Do we need to provide information to the litigating firm around informational questions potentially that could lead them to other questions that could make the criteria better. And then for our litigating firms, we like to provide that information. Here is age groups in which people are diagnosed.
(07:39)
Here are the types of injuries that are coming in again across this tour and here are the knockouts we’re seeing across this tour. And sometimes those knockout questions are very important for the litigating firm to see as well because maybe we’re missing something. And so as a team we look at that information, we try to give them actionable data so that they can act with us and say, okay, let’s tighten here, let’s loosen here. But making sure we’re always on the same page about criteria is so important. And so we track every little step in the process for not only us to make decisions, but for them. Great. Yeah, I think the most important thing is data’s for decisions not only for us but for the litigating firm as well. If you’re not making decisions off of that data, it’s not important. So figure out how to make decisions off of it and go from
Dan Miner (08:18):
There. Perfect. And then last we’ll talk a little bit about some of the pain points in the industry. And so let me tee you up for that. Industry faces several different challenges, pain points, conversion. We, as I had mentioned, had had the white paper on fallout. But what are some of the things that you see? And then then what are your recommendations for firms that are, are looking to invest in in mass work cases?
Cason Carter (08:39):
Alignment. I think alignment across the marketer, whether you’re using a marketer that is not converting across the intake department, if you’re pairing that on whether it’s yours or whether it’s outsourced. And then ultimately with what firm the cases are being delivered to. So many times we hear about firms getting much cheaper prices, and when you look at the criteria, you know why. And then when you talk about the firms they’re sending it to, you know they’re not accepting that criteria. And so alignment across that whole process is so crucial. I think if a litigating firm doesn’t think it’s compensable, why are you signing it? It doesn’t mean that you don’t have that data available if something changes, but do not get in the habit of signing things that aren’t compensable because it makes it really hard to know what to optimize to.
Dan Miner (09:18):
Great. And so last Cason, how would interested parties from our audience get connected with Broughton Partners to either learn about some of the things you’re doing or potentially set up a campaign?
Cason Carter (09:28):
Absolutely. So visit us@broughtonpartners.com and submit your information. Also, we’re always at conferences. We have a sales team that’s incredible and you can find them at all of your major conferences and a lot of the smaller circuit conferences. And so see us at conferences, visit our website. We look forward to working with you.
Dan Miner (09:43):
Great. Well thanks Cason for your time. Some very interesting tidbits here that many of our listeners can apply to their own law firms. Or if you’re interested in again, case acquisition through Broughton Partners, visit broughton partners.com. Thanks so much.
Susan Barfield (09:57):
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