Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE
Are you looking to scale your law firm? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, hosts Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux engage in a conversation with Dawn Smith, a managing partner at a law firm specializing in nursing home litigation. Dawn shares her unconventional journey to becoming a lawyer and some of the things she has learned.
Dawn provides some insights on her learnings when she scaled her law firm. One of these learnings was the importance of having defined written processes. Hiring new attorneys means different perspectives and ways of doing things. Without a defined process, it is easy for things to get out of hand and for attorneys to handle things their own way that don't align with the vision of the firm. Some simple processes that should be outlined are how demand letters are written and how mediation sessions are handled.
Since practicing law can have an emotional toll, Dawn speaks to the importance of supporting staff when handling tough cases. It is crucial to have open dialogue with those who are hearing horrific cases over and over. Building a culture of openness within a firm is key to making sure the mental health of staff is always prioritized and people are not negatively affected.
Take a listen!
Jim's Hack: Read the book “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership” which talks about taking radical responsibility and learning through curiosity.
Dawn’s Tip: Choose one area of law and niche down. Be a specialist because it makes a difference in the work you do.
Tyson's Tip: Use a resource that allows you to negotiate through tips and tricks.
Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here.
02:15 From bartender, to forming her own firm specializing in nursing home litigation
04:33 How the firm expanded its practice to multiple states
06:35 Importance of written processes
08:39 Handling emotional aspects of tough cases
10:04 Having a positive mindset, the importance of support networks, and the belief in hard work and achieving ambitious goals!
13:03 The firm's marketing approach and obtaining success stories from clients
14:55 Navigating the challenges of partnership in a law firm
Connect with Dawn:
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Join the Guild and secure your ticket to Scottsdale at the best possible price by visiting max law events.com. Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking, and Tyson Matrix, let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim Hacking and I'm Tyson Mutrix. What's up, Jimbo? Well, I'm very happy that we actually got delayed a couple minutes to record the episode because the lawn guys showed up and they were weed-wacking and lawn mowering and it would have been like the old days when we first started recording. It would have been loud as a racket. Our lawn guys are outside right now, too. And it also allowed me enough time to run home, drop off because we were down to one vehicle because we're still waiting on my truck to be delivered. I went and got my motorcycle so Amy could have the Jeep, so it worked out perfectly. So the slight 15-minute delay gave me enough time to do all that, so I actually appreciate it. I'm glad I could help. I'm glad I could help. But we do have a guest. You absolutely. Yeah, it was very, very great. And that is our guest. Our guest is Don Smith and I'll do a quick little bio, but we'll get into some more of the details in a moment. But Dawn Group in Tucson, Arizona, guided by a strong single mom in support of grandparents. She learned early on that hard work and ambitious goals were expected in her family. And she was always encouraged that she could achieve anything she believed. An eighth-grade visit to the U.S. Supreme Court ignited her passion for driving positive change through the law as she watched the lawyers' skillful and relenting arguments rise upward toward the nine justices. She realized then one person could make a lasting impact on many through a powerful argument in one case. I am going to stop there and just welcome you to the show, Don, because we'll get into more of this a little bit. Don, we'll go to the show. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. That's awesome. I would love to have been to the Supreme Court. I hope one day to get there. I am admitted, but I've never had a case there. I've never seen an argument. I bet that's great. But let's go back after you've made that decision, sort of undergrad, law school. What were you thinking? And then what have you been doing since law school, Don? Well, I mean, I wanted to be a lawyer really for a long time and kind of had a roundabout path to get there. I actually started college and didn't do great and needed to kind of find myself I think a little bit. So I was bartender and waited tables for a while, and then finally I was like, "Okay, I can't wait any longer." I went back to school, graduated, graduated law school, and then became licensed in California, worked for a plaintiff's firm in California for about 10 years, then moved back to Dallas, did some asbestos work, some pretty great experience there, handled about a docket of over 500 cases there, got some good verdicts, and then formed my firm with my partner Curtis Kleinsmith. And we've been together since about 2012. So now we decided to niche down and we're doing exclusively nursing home litigation nationwide. We're in 19 states, 20 states actually, and just really trying to make a difference in this area of law. So Don, what is your role in the law firm because sometimes you'll have people that are managing partners, some people are doing with illegal work, where do you fit in all of that? So I'm managing partner and I do, but I do more of the legal work. So Curtis really handles the business side of it. That's really his passion, litigation is my passion. So that's how we kind of crossover and we did a bunch of personality testing within the last five years and found out that we both are very similar. I don't, I think he knew that we were similar. I was like, I'm not like you at all, but apparently I am. So trying to make sure we have those diverse roles really helps quite a bit. So I, I'm the one that's kind of out and about making sure that all of our associates are, are handling the dock is the way they should arguing motions across the country, trying the cases and he's making sure everything's working. All of the nuts and bolts are in place and we're moving the cases in the best way for our clients. That's awesome. It's good to have a partner. It's good to have someone to bounce things off of and to sort of fill in the things you don't like doing. My partner here, Tyson, he has a, he has a goal I think of having offices in lots of different states. And you talked with us about practicing in those various 20 states and how you've managed to pull that off. Yeah. I think really COVID was a game changer for that really allowed us to be more efficient when it comes to having a practice nationwide, but really when we were doing asbestos work together, we had cases all over the country and we were just sitting having, and we had two firms, Curtis and I had a firm together and we, we had a partner before. We had our firm together and then he had his practice that was devoted to only Texas cases. He handled nursing home abuse and he had a general PI practice and then we had kind of this mass towards practice together. So we were practicing in many different states with that mass towards asbestos practice and we were sitting at lunch one day and I just, I asked him, I said, you know, why don't we do nursing home abuse nationwide? I mean, why, how about that? And we just kind of both sat back and said, maybe we can do that. And initially, you know, I'm licensed in California and Texas. He's licensed in Texas. We had an associate working for us that was licensed in three states. And then we worked with local council. So we, a pro hoc vce, you know, file a motion to appear in each case as those cases came up. Now we have lawyers that are licensed in 16 of the states that we're practicing in and then we have local council on those other states that we don't. And I think making sure that you have processes in place and doing one area of practice makes it a lot easier to scale across the country because there's so many things that dovetail into those jurisdictions. Of course, there are nuances, there are differences, but the basics behind working up one of these cases are the same. So it's just a matter of having kind of that structure so that you can start in those states. So I want you to think back to when you first started this plan, what are some of the things that you wish you would have known back then that you know now that would have maybe helped the expansion? So I think when we first started, we didn't realize the importance of processes, actually written processes because, you know, you get lawyers that are strong personalities that want to do things their own way and that's good to a certain extent, but nobody's, you're not rowing the same direction. There aren't efficiencies, there aren't economies of scale. So initially we kind of started growing and I think we grew a little bit too quickly without having those written processes in place, you know, establishing a pre-litigation department and administration department, having litigation dockets segregated in a certain way, making sure that everybody knew how we wanted demand letters written, how we wanted mediations conducted, how we wanted briefs written. We didn't have all that. We just kind of went, "We're going to do a national practice," and we kind of jumped in there and then reeled it back a little bit and started those processes and "Traction's a great book." I'm sure y'all know "Traction" by Gina Wickman. I think that's an amazing book that really helps when it comes to thinking about the business component and how important those processes are and then getting the leadership team to buy into those processes, that was challenging initially too. So I would, if I was going to do it all over again, which, you know, hindsight's 2020, of course, sometimes you just have to start, figure out the best way as you go along and then you have to adapt when things aren't working and you have to lean into things when they are. Don, one of the things we've been talking about at our firm is, you know, we have a lot of asylum cases and a lot of our clients have been through a lot of trauma and then when our paralegals are working on those cases, they too have sort of at least hard emotions to process when handling these tough cases. I would imagine in nursing home litigation, you see some things and your team sees some things that are appalling and disgusting and sad and upsetting. How do you and your team handle the emotional part of a tough litigation area? I love that question and it's so timely today. I mean, secondary trauma is real, right? I mean, it absolutely impacts people when you're hearing these stories and my daughter's home from college and she's interning for us and she started in the intake department today and she did her first intake and she's an empathetic person. She is a smart person but when I was talking to her about it, it's a horrific case, tons of really serious pressure wounds all the way down to the bone and she said she cried a couple of times. Our client cried a couple of times on the phone and I said, "Well, how did you feel about that?" She said, "You know, it was really hard, Mom." We actually have a social worker that we make available to our staff and also our clients. If they need to talk about anything, but I think just having that open dialogue with our staff and understanding that that is secondary trauma when they're listening to these things over and over again so that they can process it, it's really important because we do hear some horrific things and our clients are just going through some of the worst times in their lives and we have to really empathize with that, understand that, let them communicate about it and really be their ally and anchor through the process. I want to stay with mindset a little bit but shift it a little bit. In the bio, it's very positive. Your bio is very, very positive. You talk about hard work and everything and you also say something in the questionnaire and if listeners only learn one thing from your interview, what would you want it to be? You said, "Those who work hard and dream big can accomplish anything." I love it. I have the same mindset that you do but I can tell you there's a lot of people that don't. There's a lot of people that don't have that mindset so tell them how they're wrong because I agree with you but I want you to talk about that a little bit because I think it's great. It seems like it comes a lot from your family but where does it come from? I guess, how could you help change people's minds that don't quite have that mindset? I don't know if that's possible actually Tyson. I think that it's something that you either just have as your overall outlook. I think that there are certain people that are very positive and they're outlook about the world and then people that aren't and how do we get there? Certainly it's how we're raised and our morals and values that our family taught us but I don't know. I think that having a really good support network and being built up as you're growing up is so important. Those of us that have kids, it's so important to tell them all the good things they're doing of course, help them and tell them when they're doing something wrong. There are consequences but just having that belief in yourself that things are going to be hard. You're going to have challenges but it's just a day or a week or a month. It's going to change and it might not change for the better but it's going to change so that you can adapt. I think just going through certain traumas as you're growing up you either have to take them on and say okay that happened and look at how is this going to impact me for the good? How am I going to use this to learn and grow? It's all about really learning and growing I think because if we're not learning and growing then what are we here for? I mean I hope I'm getting better every day. I'm at a conference right now learning from a bunch of trial lawyers hoping I'm going to do a better job next time I try a case it's just you've got to keep learning and growing and it's just an integral belief and I don't know if I could change somebody's mind about that I think just by being positive hopefully that helps others around me. That's awesome I love the mindset and I think Tyson's right a lot of people don't necessarily follow that. Let's talk a little bit about marketing so Tyson and I did a hypothetical the other day where we decided we were going to make up a fake law from doing elder law and I brought up the issue for elder law do you market to the seniors themselves or do you market to their kids? So I wonder a nursing home litigation the same thing and then also can you is it hard for you to get success stories from your clients just because the cases are so exciting. Most of our cases are referrals the majority of our cases are referrals but our clients and our marketing all of our just our campaigns that we put out there really targeted to people that have parents or loved ones that are in nursing homes. People that are dealing with having to make those difficult choices about finding a nursing home and or picking an assisted living facility or a group home or whatever you're trying to find. So I think those that's the demographic that that we're talking to and then you know what Jim I forgot your second second part of your question success stories success stories Google reviews you know we're so important I think you know we get a lot of clients especially through the intake when we're bringing on the case and then also when we're closing out the case that have great things to say about you know their experience I don't think it's difficult but it's certainly not the injured party most of the time unfortunately that can give us that success story it's the surviving child most of the time that's really giving us that feedback. So I want to ask you something I don't know how you're going to answer it I'm very curious it might be a tricky one to navigate but I don't know. So I've had I've had a former partner Jim's had former partners before we've seen many law firms have partners that have split up and I I think a lot of it comes down to money and ego and so it's it's something that's very very difficult to navigate navigate especially in the PI spaces and whenever you have significant amounts of money coming through sometimes you'll have a trial lawyer the trying cases and sometimes you'll have someone that's managing the firm and so that can make it very very difficult. How have you been able to navigate that because that's real it's it's a really tough thing in the PI space. So my partner I think you got to be friends first I really I think a lot of people come together and they're like you know this just makes sense you do this I do that let's just partner up and maybe you know them a little bit but I think that you really have to be friends with your partner first or at least be on a be start the relationship in a way that you know them quite a bit like you really need to I think know them pretty well before you decide you're going to get into this relationship with them because it's like a marriage it really is. I mean there are going to be good things that happen there's going to be bad things you're going to have to navigate all kinds of different challenges and if you don't have a person that you know is going to react a certain way that's at least predictable and that is a good person that you know is is going to be making good decisions for the firm then you just don't want to be partners with them and certainly there's conflicts that happen but I think as long as you have kind of that base understanding of who that other person is I mean Curtis and I have known each other for over 20 years I met him at a a function for a judge like a fundraising thing when I was still in undergrad and he offered me a job that he had no right to offer because he was working for somebody else and then he basically became my mentor wrote me a letter of recommendation to get into law school and then I kept in contact with him the whole time you know I talked to him probably quarterly the whole time I was in California practicing in California so when this opportunity came about to come together and he's kind of the business guy I think you have to have different skill sets too that's really important I think it'd be really difficult to go and be partners with somebody if you didn't have those those different skill sets so he's more of the business guy and more of the litigator so just it works with us but you definitely have to know that person before before you form a partnership with them I think in this at least in this area because what we do is so human you know it's just not it's not just pushing pencils or paper it's there's such a huge human aspect to what we do I don't know how you're going about creating content but as someone who's 53 and whose mom is getting older and who's had a parent in a nursing home I think if you are creating I'd love to hear even on this show what your advice is for picking a nursing home and what to look for what to what to be aware of but I think if you're creating content about that I think you could get a great email list because I think people would really want to hear I think you could talk about horror stories you've seen you know telltale signs of a shithole you know what what are the things done that you and and I wonder if anyone would ever let your parents stay right I mean one of the reasons I'm passionate about what we do is my grandmother lived with us she moved in with us after my dad passed away and she helped me and my husband raised our our two kids so she lived with us for 16 years but until she passed and now my husband's father is living with us so we have not had to put any of our loved ones in nursing homes but that's what you know I try to talk to our clients I mean sometimes you just have to sometimes they get to a point where you just have to because you need help you can't do it on your own so we try I mean great probably the best piece of advice that I could give anybody is if you do have to put your loved one in a nursing home or an assisted living facility get a camera in there there are certain laws that apply in different states but most of the time if you have a camera and you get consent to have it in there then you can have it in there and have it running all the time and there's some great really low cost options you know that that's the number one best thing that you can do there and there's so much information out there that's available I mean consumer voice is a great resource when it comes to finding a nursing home and asking questions there's a whole list of questions on a link and I can send it to you Jim happy to send that to you and we've actually done some content on that what we try to do is is answer questions that we would want to know if we were going to put our loved one in a nursing home so those staffing is the number one most important thing to make sure that your loved ones getting the care that they need you want to make sure that they you know there is a five star rating system with CMS Medicare you can just if you just Google five star rating Medicare the Medicare dot gov will come up five star rating you type in the name of the facility you type in your zip code it's going to give you star ratings for various aspects and one is staffing and that is number one I mean you should put your loved one in any nursing home if it doesn't have a four or five and staffing that's that is really what makes the difference is having enough people and nursing homes are making a choice they're they're choosing to either have adequate staff or you know make more money and that's the sad truth truth of it yeah I don't know how you do it our good buddy David Terry does nursing home negligence cases and I just I hear just terrible stories out of nursing home so more kudos to you I if I have one a nursing home case in one of the states you call your way so it's a it's a tough one to do absolutely alright we are gonna wrap things up though Don it's been it's been great hearing your story and a lot of things about what you do before I get to all of that though if people want to reach out to you and get in touch the best way to reach out to us is just just email me you can email me at Don DAWN at fighting elder abuse dot com that's our URL we also have we care we care at fighting elder abuse dot com so you can reach out to us either way happy to help happy to that we really it takes an army to do to make a big change and the more lawyers that have enough knowledge to do this area of practice I would just really encourage you to do it because there are a lot of cases and and so many lawyers only take you know a small number of cases and it takes an army so the more people that are fighting against us the better I love it I love the URL and I also love the the we care because our our cares team email is we care at MF injury dot com so I do like the we care part of it's good perfect alright so let's get to our tips and hacks of the week for everyone that is listening to this if you don't mind giving us a five star review we would greatly appreciate it helps us spread the love that's all I'm gonna do today Jimmy what is your hack of the week on thanks much for joining us you're definitely one of the good ones in your fight in the good fight I really appreciate you taking time to come on with us today so for my hack of the week Don mentioned the book traction and I think traction is an amazing book I love it and I have I'm reading one now that I think when it comes to leadership might be as transformational long term for our firm as traction was it's called the 15 commitments of conscious leadership and I'm really really enjoying it it's fantastic it's a fantastic book I don't know how I stumbled upon it the first two are taking radical responsibility and learning through curiosity so all all 15 are great and and I think I needed a little kick in the pants because for each chapter they talk about being above the line or below the line and when I say need to kick in the pants it's sort of like you're either doing this correctly or you're not and sometimes I guess sort of squishy so to have the you're either taking responsibility or you're not you're either learning through curiosity or you're not so it's it's an interesting book it's it's it's it's a different kind of a book it's it's a book by people that have consulted with businesses which is like traction but they they don't pull any punches and I've really really enjoyed it yeah let's say it's a book from 2015 I can't believe I haven't heard of it either it's got 1,580 ratings and it's 4.6 out of 5 very good and it's 4.2 on Goodreads who you can get it for $9 on Kindle or $15.30 paper there you go and I've got an audiobook credit so I can use it but all right Don what is your tip or haggily I would say that if you're practicing in an area of law just consider choosing one that you love I think that a lot of lawyers are scared to niche down I know you guys have and I think that that makes a really big difference and it's a scary proposition to think well maybe there aren't going to be enough cases but but choose something that you're passionate about be a specialist I think I think it really it makes a difference I know it's made a difference for our firm so I would really encourage people to consider that I love it that's good stuff perfect mine is going to be drastically different from what I normally do but I'm I just get done negotiating a purchase of a truck and it that's something that affects us as business owners sometimes we buy them in the name of the business but I use this resource resource called Carage.com I watched their videos at first and then I subscribed to their thing it was like $50 a month and then I could you can cancel it whenever you buy the buy the vehicle but it allowed me to negotiate so well I've never I didn't go to the dealership one time and I got the the truck I got is 16,000 below MSRP got a wonderful deal on the truck and just it was awesome and it was because of Carage.com so if anyone is in the in the market for a vehicle I highly recommend it they have you give you a lot of tips I also have to thank Steven Lefkoff because he gave me some good advice too but a lot of the credit goes to Carage.com so for anyone interested check it out it's remotely related to practicing law in some way it does affect us but Don it's good seeing you thank you so much for coming on really appreciate you sharing your story thanks for having me I really enjoyed it you guys are doing great work keep it up I'd love to listen so have a great rest of your week thank you for staying contact with your host and to access more content go to maximumlawyer.com have a great week and catch you next time (upbeat music)
