Hello everyone, it’s Chris Mullins with Lawyers Tell All, and today I am going to be interviewing Jon Groth, and I’m going to let Jon tell you a little bit about himself. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, I’m Jon Groth. I’m an attorney in Wisconsin. It is the fall in Wisconsin. So that’s why we have a flannel Fridays, pretty laid back here in, this time of season.
We are a Personal Injury Law Firm. We help people all across Wisconsin, in the state. I guess typical car crash, slips and falls, premises liability, things like that. We have a unique practice in that, three of our attorneys and some of our staff do vaccine injury claims. And that’s, I can say, I’m an international lawyer because we help people all across the world.
I’ve had clients who are in Siberia, Germany. And really anywhere in the United States. We currently have clients in Hawaii, California, east coast, west coast. If you get a vaccine, in any military base or in the continental U. S., then you can be part of this vaccine injury compensation program.
So yeah, that’s what we do. We have, a single event car crash type cases in Wisconsin and then our vaccine practice that’s nationwide. So how did the vaccine practice all take off? What happened? I didn’t know it existed until about five, four or five years ago. We were, well, we had a another law firm that came to us and they said that their partners were looking to retire and they had no associates that wanted to take over the firm. So we were approached to, to really take over and purchase that firm. And after doing the due diligence, we looked at their books and I’m like, what’s this line item, you know, this compensation, what’s this coming from?
It doesn’t make any sense. Like, oh, that’s our vaccine practice. I was like, oh, okay. Now I know that there is such a thing. And then we looked into that and figured out that it is really a interesting viable practice. It’s, very much along the lines of like a worker’s compensation practice where if you meet certain elements, you’re going to get compensation for your clients.
Yeah, we’ve been doing that for now about four years. And, we have, like I said, three attorneys and one staff person who, who handle claims in the vaccine injury compensation program. Wow. Okay. Now, how long have you been in practice? 24 years. I graduated law school in 2000. Okay. What made you want to be an attorney?
Boy, well, I went to college wanting to be a jazz musician. That didn’t work out very well. So I, decided that I should change. And I was never involved much in politics or never involved in anything like that. I was pretty shy as a high schooler. But then when I went to undergrad, my sister gave me some great advice to get involved in as many things as she can.
So I got involved in a bunch of different things. And I was, I went into college, playing jazz saxophone, and then I got involved in student government and got involved in different church programs at school. And then when I decided that being in a small room playing my saxophone for eight hours a day wasn’t for me.
I changed over to, well, to philosophy to like the deep thought kind of stuff. And then I went from that to political science and business and then. You realize that when you’re a political science major, there aren’t many options when you graduate, you can work in, you know, in Wisconsin, you can work in Madison, try to go to maybe DC and work there.
Otherwise you go to law school. So I went to law school and I was thinking about being like a criminal attorney, like a DA, and then I could put the two together, you know, and DAs in Wisconsin are elected. So I could run for office and be a lawyer. But then I hit up, Criminal law class that I decided I didn’t really like sounded like, well, you know, there are certain parts of the law that I would rather not have to handle, like divorce.
That just seems so taxing. Criminal Law, you know, certain aspects of Criminal Law with dealing with kids and such just seems, you know, God bless those people who can do it. That’s just not what I got into a general practice firm and drafted contracts and handled small claims evictions and all kinds of things.
And then because I was the young person in the firm, I did their litigation. And I handled a number of Personal Injury cases, and then after a couple years there, I got contacted by another firm and poached, taken by them, and I’ve been doing Personal Injury ever since. So, since about 2002, that’s all I’ve done is help people who are injured because of other people’s negligence.
And so the last sentence you just said, is that the reason you do it? Yeah. Yeah, it’s I like the strategy behind it. I really do enjoy looking at a case in the very beginning and trying to figure out what the strategy is, how we can maximize the benefit for a client. That’s, it really, it’s kind of fun, which then you’re really not working.
If you’re having fun helping people, it’s not really a job. It’s more just a fun day in the office and you get to help people who are, you know, going through some horrible things. Yeah, right. Okay. So the work life balance, how does that work for you? Like, you know, is it great right now? Was it challenging a while ago?
And when it was, what did you do to get out of it? You know, the challenges. Oh, gosh, boy, it was, it’s kind of up and down. It really depends on the day. I mean, this year is a different year for us simply because we’ve been trying to implement EOS, you know, the traction, you know, those books or fireproof, whichever, however you want to say it.
Yeah. So we hired, an HR director for the first time ever, you know, and as you go back, we’ve grown, exponentially over these past few years and now, that we’re, when we got to around 20 or so, we realized we needed to have a an HR person, and then we hired a number of overseas, you know, VAs.
So now we’re up to this year, we hired eight. So we have eight VAs, and having all that, that’s really, made it more difficult to really work on the business and in the business when you have that many people and you don’t really know everybody. So that’s a difficult one. So, this year, the work life balance, I think, is getting better.
I think it’s always improving, but this year is getting better to simply because we’re trying to have those maybe C suite or directorships involved. So, you know, we have our EOS meeting every Monday and go over with the management team and they can go on their way and that’s my hope is that next year it’ll even get better.
You know, we have a annual meeting, in the beginning of every year that we kind of go through what our goal is going to be for that year. So right now we’re planning for that annual meeting to see what our goal is going to be for that 2025. Okay. And now the virtual folks. What departments are virtual?
Sure. So we have, four virtual. We have one manager and three team members who just help with requesting medical records and calling on balances because if well, this is a big complaint is I could be paying somebody here to pay him 20 bucks an hour, let’s say, to wait on the phone for somebody to pick up to say that our client owes that doctor six cents, you know, or 25.
I would rather have, you know, pay somebody in a VA, less to sit there and wait on hold for potentially hours. So, they’re doing medical records and calling on balances. And then we have other, virtual, staff who are in Mexico that are Spanish speaking. And that’s just a godsend having somebody who is native Spanish speaker who can help with our intake and help with our case managers.
So I don’t know, Ryan McKeen, you know, Ryan McKeen, he’s kind of made a name for himself with 100 million a day and that kind of stuff. But,he, he works with Brett Trembly and Get Staffed Up and they have this new case manager, you know, program. So we have a couple of their case managers who are helping us, with our, I guess, helping our paralegals with just the managing of cases.
And then I have, somebody who’s a VA who helps with my social media, implementation, you know, posting things and, working with our in-house videographer about getting all that social media up and working on our podcast and such too. Right. Okay. So, I work with Brett a lot for intake. Getting intake folks on board at various law firms.
So, the Mexico is that through, Get Staffed Up or is that. That’s correct. Yeah, that’s what Get Staffed Up. Yeah. And that’s where we really started. We got our first VA from Brett for Intake. But she’s been fantastic. So we’ve, she’s just, we flew her up to Wisconsin. And. Last year, and she met with the staff and then, you know, now she’s probably thankfully back into the warm weather.
But, she’ll come. Hopefully she’ll come back up for annual meeting again in January. But she’s got promoted and she’s been just a fantastic addition to the team. Is she Mexico? Yes. Okay. Great. That’s really good. Okay. So how many folks do you have an intake? So we have, boy, that’s a great question.
I’ll go through names, Madeline, Jackie, Lani, Madison. We have four right now who are full time intake. And then, I’ll say our receptionist is an intake. And so that will be five ish approximately. And then we had, we have, Law clerks from time to time who will assist with intake, but that’s if somebody’s on lunch or something like that, and then we have an after hours service that we use tool that is legal answer edge, right?
Is it Mike Harris, you know, Mike Harris’s company? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you do that after hours. Okay. So you have all your phones covered. Nothing’s falling through the cracks, right? Well, yeah. There is once in a while my, I don’t have all my hair in my head because I do pull my hair off from time to time because sometimes, something falls through the cracks.
Yes. But we’re trying to keep those cracks as small as possible. Yeah. So what about, what are the biggest lessons that you’ve learned that you could pass on to other attorneys that are watching this podcast, like over the years? Boy, answer the phone as soon as it rings. Do not let that phone ring more than a couple of times.
Number one. Number two. If somebody responds or if somebody goes on to your online and they, you know, like, like your website and they do an online contact, you have to call them almost immediately. It used to be like, within five minutes or however many minutes, I have a real life story that I was at my in laws, house, and this is years ago.
So I didn’t have much of a work life balance. I was always working. I think maybe one of my kids was, you know, taking a nap or something. So I just had my phone or my phone on my computer and I was working and somebody sent us a contact form and I. Called them and as I’m calling them, they are talking to me and then, somebody else called them as I’m talking to them and they said, oh, it was Brett.
I was like, oh, is it Brett from so and so firm? It’s like, yeah, it’s Brett from so and so firm. So I knew at that point that they had. Probably gone through the online and just call, call, call, call, call. Or they were just submitting a bunch of different, you know, cut and paste submissions to all these law firms who were calling you.
And luckily I was the first one to call him. But if I waited just a matter of seconds, I would have been the second. So I tell that story all the time. It’s like you can’t underestimate the importance of getting on the phone and making that phone call as soon as possible. Because, if you look at it, just as a matter of dollars and cents, if your average fee is, let’s say 8, 000 or 5, 000 or 10 or whatever amount it is, or 500 bucks, I don’t care what it is by making that, that phone call that soon, and it having a sense of urgency, you’ve made yourself some money. Yeah, exactly. So what do you say to the folks that say, well, I don’t have anybody helping after hours or anything like that because I don’t have enough work for my intake to do. Like if they don’t want to get a call, they don’t want to have an outside call center and they don’t want to have their own team do it because they don’t feel like there’s enough work for them to do.
What do you, what do you say to that? Boy, I, you know, I went right to the outside call center because I, so let me go way back when I first, started working for a Personal Injury Firm, I was the outside call center. So they gave me a cell phone and they said, you hear Jon at five o’clock and the old phone system to push a button and every single call would go to me.
Right. So I could tell you some crazy stories, you know, bar time here in Wisconsin, it’s, is two in the morning. So my phone would ring at two in the morning and I’d answer the phone. I’d get woken up and, you know, so and so law firm, how can I help you? And it’s like, okay, that’s, that was preposterous.
So I’ve been there, done that, but from time to time there would be calls that came in that were really good cases after hours. So I, I think it’s certainly worth it. I learned my lesson, 20 some years ago, working for that firm that by having a call center and sorry, eventually they did have a call center that would take the calls 1st and then if it was a qualified case, then they would forward it to me.
So, my personal life wasn’t totally gone. I did have some, some buffer there. I learned that it was certainly worth it. Well, well worth it to have a call center do that. And I had looked at, was it Ruby Receptionist and Lex Reception and all these other companies, and they weren’t very expensive, you know, they’re more like a pay to play, type, system.
So I think it’s worth it. Yeah. I still do recommend that. I mean, do the call center if you have to, but. At the end of the day, I think it’s better to have your own team, like your own 24 7 virtual team because they’re just working for you and they can stay focused on you and your firm and what your firm does and not like multiple law firms.
It’s yeah, they can really, they can give you more focusing just on your firm. And maybe they could all be overseas and you would just have to interview and make sure you have the right people and you train them. And there you go. Yeah, but how does that work? Are you then looking for? No, I have questions for you, Chris.
Sorry. And I opened this up. Are you looking for people, somebody in, Pakistan and somebody in the Philippines and somebody in Mexico? So you get all those different. Right? Yeah. Okay. So you can cover it. And so, I mean, people get accidents all the time. So have it 24 seven, have it be your own folks, not an outside call center.
And, that’s it. Yeah. So that’s going to be my goal for next year. Now you’re putting ideas in my mind here. Thank you, Chris. Yeah. Well, I don’t think it, I think the outside call centers are going to cost more money than having your own virtual team. And again, they’re trying to work with, I mean, it’s a good business.
But it’s a tough business and they’re working for so many different law firms and different scripts and but you can just take care of your own people the way you take care of your own people now and they just they’re just your own people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good idea. Yeah. So that’s, that’s the best way to go.
And then let me ask you this. How many attorneys do you have at your firm? We have seven attorneys. Now, when it comes to intake, are they doing the whole intake? Are they doing like a one call close and getting them signed up or somebody else doing that? What is the setup there? Is the attorney getting involved?
The goal is it’s a one call close. So when you’re on the phone, you text them the contract, we have our qualifiers, so you text them the contract, the retainer, they sign at that point and then get as much information as you can at that time. Sometimes if after the retainer assigned, they have to have a additional intake.
The goal is that we’ll send a 24 hour letter telling the client, you know, thank you for hiring our firm, a welcome packet, and then send letters of repo to different insurance companies, right away is the hope and then if intake has to do a follow up, they’ll finish the follow up and then it goes to our paralegals if there are questions that let’s say, you know, an attorney is needed to close the deal.
We have on our team’s channel, you know, the I’m trying to think what it’s called. It’s like triple exclamation points, potential new client kind of thing. So when you see that, that pops up, it’s like, okay, an attorney needs to get off their phone call and take that phone call because that’s an important, potential lead coming in, potential client.
Yeah, perfect. Tell me, tell me this. How do you folks, take care of mental health with your, let’s say, like, well, just your firm in general, but, you know, the attorneys and, and even intake because of all the kind of clients and stories and information they’re taking in and the traumatizing, you know, fatalities and everything.
How do you handle mental health? Support, you know, you’re the second person today who’s talked about that. We just had we’re going through our process for finding a new vendor for our health insurance and for our, wellness system. And the ones that we’re interviewing now have a, full-time.
Yoga, meditation, all that kind of aspect, which I think is something that we’re really seriously looking into because, other than that, there’s nothing much that we do, you know, we do have, events that we go to, to blow off steam and we’ll, you know, we play golf, we do those kinds of things, but that’s not really that just more team bonding and, you know, creating a little bit of a culture, you know, just getting to know each other personally.
But when it comes to the mental health of how to you know, extract yourself away from all the bad stories you hear all day. I am up for any advice you can give us on how to help people with that. I mean, I have a history, you know, my wife and I have an agreement that when I come home, I’m not talking about work, because there’s, I mean, I’d rather talk about how my sons didn’t swim practice that day.
Or, you know, let’s go walk the dogs and throw a ball around with them, as opposed to talking about whatever horrible pictures I saw. So, that’s a fantastic question. Yeah, I think, I think that, what you’ve mentioned so far, like with the insurance, that’s great. And I, I also have found with a lot of clients, they have a portion of the insurance where you can go, you can get therapy.
It’s part of the program, but the team doesn’t know it. So it’s like whatever your insurance plan has, if you have that kind of support system, make sure that everybody knows it and maybe have a system where you encourage them to use it. And, you could have like lunch and learns where you have outside professionals come in on a regular basis to talk about all kinds of things, but you could just have like a you know, a series on mental health and stress and the signs of depression and, and burnout and professionals helping to you know, talk about different scenarios and how to handle it in the moment when you’re in the middle of the moment and then what to do after that moment is done and what not to do. So and you can do a lot of different role playing. So any of that is, is not difficult to do.
It’s just putting a date on the calendar. You can even have, you know, mental health days. You know, with a firm, don’t get mad now, but I was gonna say, the firm shuts down, right, for everybody, but I think that just doing something, what you’re looking into, and some of the things that I said, maybe I’ll give you other ideas, but it is something that, that should be top of mind for everybody at the law firm and talk to them on a regular basis.
Yeah, and I think that’s a fantastic idea when it comes to the, you know, the burnout. If you’re talking to people who are really in bad situations. And what we say, you know, something we say pretty often here is that, you know, we don’t have difficult clients. We have clients in difficult situations. So you’re listening to people who may be, you know, yelling, but they’re yelling because they’re so worried about their daughter or, somebody else who is really near and dear to them who was injured and they’re taking it out on you, the attorney or the team member, but it’s not because you’re doing something wrong.
Just because they’re so upset over what has recently happened to them. Mm-hmm . So then how do you deal with that? You know? Exactly, exactly. That’s a fantastic point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, another way to look at it is everything that you’re, you want your team to do for your clients and your prospective clients with empathy and listening and active listening and all of that.
You just wanna make sure that you’re doing the same to the team and for the team. Yeah. And, one of the things that. I talk about a lot is law firms are not really in the legal business as much as they’re in the relationships and healing business. Yeah. So the more attention you give to your team, the stronger, the stronger they’ll be.
Yeah. I think that that’s a great idea. Yeah. The, I’m trying to think of the, you know, the people who have talked about burnout most, I think it is intake and paralegals who have talked about how this is taxing and you need to take a day off. And, you know, we here have, unlimited PTO, but we implemented that this year.
So, it’s something that we are, are very free with our time off because we understand that, you know, some things happen and it’s, we’re not going to keep it captive. And we don’t want you to worry about, well, am I going to have time at the end of the year? If I take off for, you know, a good event, you know, let’s say I’m going on vacation or I’m, you know, some people in the, we had a couple of people who got married this year, so they shouldn’t be worried about having to take off later on because of some good event later on or earlier on.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Attorneys to, I mean, I found over the years with the attorneys I work with, they just don’t like to talk about it. But, the mental health is definitely definitely there for them to what else would you like everybody to know? Boy, I don’t know that this is to recover all the vaccine stuff.
We talked about the vaccines. The, you know, we have just an unusual practice when it comes to helping people nationwide internationally with with vaccines. I just will say in general, I’m a big fan. You know, I told you off the air, you know, you’ve been watching, you and and your expertise for years.
So hopefully some of the things that I’ve done and some of the successes I have, I will, it, it’s very probable that it comes directly from things that I’ve learned from you. I know for a while you had videos on Pilma, that I have, saved our, for right or for wrong. Maybe I’m in wrong on this, but I saved them to our system and have everybody, are forced to watch them because it’s very, very helpful.
So, yeah, you’ve been a great help. A great addition to our team, even though you didn’t know it. That’s great. No, keep doing the videos. That’s great. All right. Well, I really appreciate your time. I’ve enjoyed sitting here with you. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thanks, Jon. So long, everybody.
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