Homepage // Championing Justice: A Personal Injury Podcast // Episode 22: Lessons From Insurance Adjuster Turned Injury Attorney, John Griffith
Episode 22: Lessons From Insurance Adjuster Turned Injury Attorney, John Griffith
The following is a transcript of Episode 22 of Championing Justice. You can listen to the full episode here, or watch it on YouTube.
Darl:
Thanks for listening to the Championing Justice podcast. My name is Darl Champion. I’m the founder and owner of The Champion Firm. We are a personal injury law firm based in the metro area of Atlanta. Today we have John Griffith. He’s an attorney in Tennessee, in Franklin, Tennessee. It’s just outside of Nashville, is that right?
John:
The south, yes, sir.
Darl:
Excellent. Well, thanks for joining us. I was just up in Tennessee for my kids’ spring break. We went to Dollywood.
John:
That’s great.
Darl:
That was a nice experience. A lot of people ask me, they’re like, what is that whole Gatlinburg area like? I’m like, imagine Myrtle Beach in the mountains. That’s essentially what it’s like.
But I’m glad to have you on the show with us and to talk about your background working in the insurance industry and what led to you becoming a personal injury lawyer and owning your own law firm. So let’s start just telling us a little bit about yourself.
John:
Yeah, I was born in Middle Tennessee. I was raised on really a farm, about 1200 acre farm. My father was a lawyer, but also he loved to farm more than he loved to be a lawyer I think. And just a small town. Had a lot of really good people in my small town. I love it. It’s still home to me. It’s about 90 miles west of Nashville.
And then I went to school, wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do, and then I got out after I graduated. I tried to play football and got a little hurt, banged up, hurt doing that in college. And then when I got out, I un-lucked into a job with Progressive Insurance. And a friend of mine said, Hey, we’ve got an opening over here if you’d like to give it a shot. I didn’t have anything else better going at the time, so I did it.
I liked it at first and it was good training, but after a couple of years I realized I was just really hurting people. I was taking advantage of people and I just got tired of that. So I worked there for about eight years and then there were just some things that happened, some specific things that really created a desire to change and get out of that industry. So those had a tremendous effect on me.
And so I got out and I knew when I went to law school and when I applied to law school that I wanted to be a plaintiff lawyer. I knew it before all of that happened. I didn’t figure it out along the way. I went to law school with the intent of becoming a trial lawyer.
Darl:
That’s awesome. Now tell me a little bit about those experiences at Progressive, that kind of shaped your philosophy or your background or caused that need or the desire at least to get out there and fight for injured folks.
John:
Yeah, I got to be careful. I have a lot of friends who are in the insurance industry, and I was there for a number of years and I made a lot of good friends that were my coworkers. And just for me, it wasn’t the right job. And a lot of adjusters, I think I have a good rapport with a lot of the adjusters because I understand that I always say they’re between a rock and a rock.
The good adjusters have some empathy, but they can’t act on it because they’ve got certain authority they must act within with the insurance company. So I always say that they’re just in a tough position.
But I had a situation where, a lot of managers are really good people, but some aren’t. And so I had one who was pretty cutthroat, and we went into a lady’s house that had a claim that was worth every bit of our 250,000 limits, and we settled it for $15,000. And it involved a drunk driver. It involved her having a fractured hip. And we settled that case.
She invited us into our home and I walked out of there with a release and with my manager, and we were celebrating afterwards. We went out to Hooters and had some wings and beer after because he was so excited. He’s like, man, we saved the company so much money today. And I didn’t really feel like celebrating. And the next day that lady called me and she said, Mr. John, she said, it just so happened I got a bill and Medicare’s not paying it, and because it was an auto wreck and the bill’s a lot more than the $15,000 and I can I send that to you? And I said, ma’am, I’m sorry. We are not going to be responsible for paying that bill. And she hung up.
And then she called me later that day and she said, or the next day. And she said, John, I don’t know how you sleep at night. She said, I trusted you. I invited you into my house. I sat down with you. You talked to me and you said this was a fair deal and I know now that it’s not. And then she ended with, I don’t know how you sleep at night. Click. And that night I didn’t sleep. And I thought about it and I just thought, man, I just don’t feel like my soul’s in a very good place right now.
And so I went to a payphone, this is back in 1992, ’91 or ’92. And I went to a payphone because I didn’t want my phone call to be tracked from anything. And I called her and I said, you need to go see this lawyer in Canton, Georgia, and you need to tell him everything that happened and you need to tell him how much hydrocodone you were on at the time and get that reversed because that’s just not fair to you. But this conversation never happened. So she did, that lawyer did. And it wound up being very good for her in the end.
But that was the story that just at that point I just had the desire. It’s like, I got to get out of this business, man. It’s just, it’s hurting me and I can’t stand it.
Darl:
Yeah. Now was this in Tennessee where you were working as an adjuster?
John:
Nope. I was in Georgia. I was in North Georgia working a lot in North Georgia. And anyway, it was interesting time in my life, but it’s the only time I really lived out of the state of Tennessee. I’ve been in Tennessee my whole life. But yeah, I was actually based in Cartersville for a while and I was responsible for all of North Georgia territory.
Darl:
Yeah, very familiar with that area. Our main office is in Marietta, but we’ve got a satellite office in Woodstock, which is just right by Canton.
John:
Yeah, highway 20 ride, right?
Darl:
Yeah. Yeah.
John:
I lived in Cartersville, which has now grown like crazy.
Darl:
Yeah, the whole area has grown crazy.
So you go to law school, you decide I want to be a plaintiff’s lawyer. Did you become a plaintiff’s lawyer right after law school?
John:
Right out of law school. No question about it. Well, actually that’s not true. At first, I worked, while I was in law school, I had the good fortune in Tennessee to have a Supreme Court rule that allow third or fourth year law students to work under the tutelage of a public defender or a district attorney. So I worked for the district attorney in my hometown: Humphreys County, Waverly.
And so I was trying cases, and then I was driving to law school at the end of the day. I went to school at night. And so I would try a jury trial. It’s a criminal jury trial, a DUI trial, and then the assistant DA would call me, well, congratulations, you got a verdict. Or man, unfortunately the jury was hung or they found a defense verdict. And I’m like, man, it was just so cool driving into law school and all these guys hanging out outside before class. And they say, what’d you do today? I say, ah, not much. Just tried a jury trial. And they’re like, what? Whatcha talking?
Darl:
That’s awesome.
John:
That was great fun for me, man. I didn’t have that much pressure. I was still scared to death, but I didn’t have that much pressure because it really didn’t matter. I mean, it mattered if you won or lost, but the state’s not going to fire you if you lose a case.
Darl:
Yeah.
John:
Especially if you’re not even a certified lawyer yet.
Darl:
Yeah, I’m sure that was a great experience and probably solidified your desire to be a trial lawyer.
John:
And I realized that before I got my law degree, I realized that I could try case not well, but try case and just be myself. Trying a bunch of jury trials before I got my final law license and was admitted to the bar was a great, one of the best things that ever happened to me. I think a lot of people should do that. They should work for the DA’s office and just get to try cases on the state’s time. It’s a great opportunity for lawyers.
Darl:
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I’ll tell you, I went to law school with the desire of being a criminal defense lawyer and I thought maybe I would do that and maybe also practice some plaintiff’s personal injury law. I grew up in a kind of medium sized town in North Carolina.
There weren’t big law firms where I grew up. Most people were doing divorces, wills, criminal, they were doing everything. So I didn’t know that. I just didn’t know you could specialize in being a plaintiff’s lawyer. We had one or two lawyers that would show up on tv, but it’s not, still not that common in North Carolina, although it’s certainly getting there like it is in a lot of other states. So when did you start Griffith Law?
John:
Well, I started working after I got licensed for my father. And he was working in a small town in Waverley and doing a little bit of everything that you were talking about. Just a jack of all trades, master of none. And I really love personal injury. I was drawn to torts and remedies and civil procedure just in law school. I say I could, I have taken four classes in law school and been doing alright, everything I love.
But my dad had represented this man for years in criminal cases, done a will for him. And then his wife got killed in a car wreck and she went to Nashville. He went to Nashville and got a lawyer. And I was like, man, why would he have done this? Why would he be had done this when you’ve got the relationship with him? And he said, well, everybody wants a Nashville lawyer for their big cases.
After that I moved to Nashville and that was tough leaving my dad. But I started working for a large personal injury law firm. And then I had a law partner, a guy that I met in law school and we formed a law firm and it worked out really good for the first 10 years or so because he did workers’ comp and we did tons of workers’ comp and I did all the personal injuries, so we really didn’t have to advertise as much, which was nice.
But we would get all the workers’ comp through a factory and then all that, they would send their cases to us and then they would know somebody who got hurt in a personal injury wreck and we’d handle that. But in 2012, Tennessee had a change in the workers’ comp law. So my law partner’s business was officially legally, I mean just judicially removed.
And the pendulum was really easily too far, perhaps too far in the worker’s favor, but it swung way over into the employer’s favor, way too far. Pendulum never stops in the middle. And I was like, man, what are you going to do to replace that business? He’s like, I don’t know. I guess I’m going to do what you’re doing. And so I just said, well, anyway, it wasn’t working out that way. So we split up and I was in downtown Nashville at the time, so I moved, I’m in Franklin. My wife said, why don’t you just open an office in Franklin? You’re here. And I’m like, yeah, why don’t I? So I credit my wife with that, but it was the best decision because I’m closer to home. My wife comes by and sees me, brings the kids, and I’m home in 10 minutes. It’s fantastic.
And it’s been a great location for me and just Franklin’s booming, it’s growing. So I’ve always just said, I just want to own Franklin. If I can own Franklin, I’ll be happy. We’re expanding now and we’ve got two other offices, but we’re everything, it’s, it’s been a good move. And it’s just good people here. We’ve got a lot of conservative people here are just kind of like-minded. And a lot of lawyers will tell you that the traditional lawyer is that conservatives aren’t good jurors. And I am a big of the reptile fame. I think all people are rule followers, especially more maybe right-leaning people. They’re rule followers. And so if you focus on the conduct of the defendant and you’ve got system failures, they’re going, they’re going to give you just verdicts in those cases.
Darl:
And they do not like it when people don’t take responsibility.
John:
Exactly. And so I think as a lawyer, you know this Darl, but we have the power of good lawyering. The right lawyer makes a difference. We have the power of focusing the attention on the actions of the defendant, and it just, it’s not the way things were done when I first started trying cases. There was more maybe an appeal to sympathy towards the plaintiff. That’s gone. Our clients aren’t getting any sympathy, but I don’t want ’em to have sympathy for the defense at the same time.
So that’s what jurors don’t know, for example, that defendants in car wreck cases are fully insured in Tennessee, we can’t even discuss insurance. And so insurance is all over the courtroom, but nobody knows. Everybody just pretends it doesn’t exist. And I can’t dispute the rule, but we just try to act within it and we try to maximize ways to get that information out there. So that’s not unethically, but
Darl:
Sure. What are some tactics that you use to do that?
John:
Well, I’ll tell you something. I do. My very first trial that I had in Nashville, there was a great seasoned lawyer, and he’s still practicing days. His name’s Barry Howard and he’s a good friend of mine. I love him. We had this trial and the defendant had rear-ended the plaintiff. And so I prepared for trial. It was one of my first trials as a licensed lawyer. And I show up in court and I’m just going to hammer the defendant on not taking responsibility. I’m like, man, we’re going to wear him out. I can’t believe he reared us. Our client’s just sitting still at a red light and they blame us. How irresponsible is that? So they denied the liability for two years. Barry stands up in front of the jury, says, your Honor, we are here to admit liability.
We just don’t think that the plaintiff should be given a blank check. I was like, what? He can’t do that. I remember looking at the table and I’m looking at my feet. I’m like, I want to crawl under this table right now. I really focused most of my prep on that and not really on the plaintiff’s damages. I mean, I had my medical proof and all that, and I said, after I walked into that trial at a ripe young age, I said, that will never ever happen to me again. So now you know how it is, Darl. Most people don’t know this. And when you’re in a car wreck and you have to file a lawsuit because the insurance company’s been low balling, they won’t even offer the medical bills. You file the lawsuit and they’re lawyers, the insurance lawyers who appear to be independent, but they’re not.
The insurance lawyers deny liability and they say, no, we’re not at fault for this wreck. That’s not us. That’s not our fault. And so then I immediately send requests for admissions under rule 36, and I state it in clear bubble language as simple as can be, admit you’re a hundred percent at fault. Admit the plaintiff did nothing wrong, the second one. And they deny that, deny that. Then you take the deposition and they still might deny it without a valid reason. Well, the plaintiff, I think she might’ve stopped suddenly. Well, did you see her stop suddenly? Well, no. And you didn’t see her stop. You had your head down looking at your phone.
And then I do motions for summary judgment liability. That way the defendant can’t stand up and say that We can say, ladies and gentlemen, we sued them. They refuse to accept responsibility. The court found as a matter of law that they’re at fault. They’ve denied liability three times. And so we kind of get away with that with some of our judges and it’s the right thing to do. And that way it just takes away that that altruistic false attitude that they portray as like, oh, we are so sorry we did this. The plaintiff is just being so greedy. They want billions of dollars. We take all that crap away. So just really focus on that. I don’t know what the rules are in Georgia as far as those types of pleads, but…
Darl:
Yeah, we’re not allowed to mention insurance. Our uninsured motorist law is kind of interesting because we have to sue the tortfeasor. And so the insurance company though, they get served with a complaint that uninsured motorist carrier does, and then they have the option to either defend in their own name in which event their name is going to be all over the case, or they can defend in the name of the driver.
Now, normally, even if they answer in the name of the insurance company, they’ll switch it at the last minute unless it’s like an egregious misconduct case. So maybe a drunk driver or something, and they just don’t want to be associated and they want to get up and say, we’re just the insurance company. We’re not this person. So those put them in a tough position. But certainly I think everybody knows insurance is involved now.
And I mean, plus you go through it in voir dire with the questioning of the panel. I had a case in Cherokee County a year or two ago, and the judge was asking who on the panel had State Farm and a few people had made it into the courtroom. They were supposed to be screened out before even getting into the courtroom. A few people raised their hand and said, I have State Farm. And the judge said, you got to go down to courtroom three. That’s an Allstate case.
John:
Oh my God.
Darl:
And I was like, well, I guess the defense lawyer’s not going to say anything about that. But again, I think everybody kind of knows. But to your point though, we do deal a lot with the last minute admissions a fault, and they try and come to court and act like they’re sorry and have been sorry all along. We file motions in limine on that though too, that sort of prevent them from acting like they’ve accepted responsibility all along.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
Darl:
They may open the door.
John:
Most of the time when you send a request for admissions under rule 36, rule 37 has sanctions. And so most of the time they deny it and then you take the depositions to prove it and they deny it. And then they come to court saying that. I say, your Honor, under rule 37, they were supposed to admit this. What? Nothing changed. Oh, I always ask them in deposition, is there any additional investigation you’re going to do? Has all of your investigation into the facts of liability in this case been done? Or what do you plan on doing? I asked them if there was anything else and they said no. And so what has changed? Nothing.
It’s just a trial strategy. And because of that, they should not be allowed to, number one, admit any type of sorrow or responsibility. And it should be that the court has found, not that they’ve found, they’ve just had suddenly this altruistic attitude, the court had to intervene and find them at fault.
Darl:
Yeah. Well, and we certainly have some cases too where the defense attorney has admitted fault in the answer and you get the defendant in a deposition and they try and act like it wasn’t their fault, which is kind of an interesting scenario that comes up occasionally.
John:
I have the reverse of that. I have the defense admitting or denying fault in the answer, and then the defendant himself admitting fault.
Darl:
We’ll get those too. We’ll get those too.
John:
And then you show ’em the answer and they’re like, is this your answer to say, no, that’s not my answer. And defense lawyers object to like crazy. I’m like, man, that’s just, it’s in their blood. A defense lawyer cannot admit fault. Most of the time they just don’t do it.
Darl:
Well, the other thing that’s in their blood, and I cannot understand that if any defense lawyers are listening to this, I apologize for what I’m about to say, but they have the easiest job between us and them. I mean, they do the same shtick every freaking trial. I hear the same analogies, I hear the same stories, it is the same slideshow. And what blows my mind is they approach, they don’t take a tailor made approach to each case. Almost every case is the same thing.
If they don’t blatantly say it, the undertone is the plaintiff’s lying and they’re exaggerating. And I’ve had trials where that blows up in their face, and I’m sitting there and I’m like, how tone deaf can you be? And they still do it and it’s like they can’t help themselves. They’re going to do it regardless.
John:
Yeah. I had a defense lawyer tell me, he said, he is from New York. He said, John, if a plaintiff’s lips moving, they’re lying. But to your point, I mean a good defense lawyer can make a great difference. And there are some good ones that I go against regularly that I have great respect for and that are actually friends of mine. But one of my favorite sayings is, I didn’t make this up, but it takes a craftsman to build a barn, but any jackass can knock it down. We have to build it, we have to prove it, and all they have to do, if I have a doctor’s deposition or plaintiff’s deposition and I’ve got 2,000 pages of medical records, I still don’t trust AI yet to go through those records, but I’ve got to go through every one of them because if, you know this Darl, one record can be taken out of context and can make your client like a liar.
Darl:
And that’s what they do.
John:
A quick example, this is fresh on mind from last week. I had this lawyer who was asking my client questions, said, have you had any neck pain? She’s got a neck injury in her wreck. Have you had any neck pain in the last six months? Nope, I haven’t had any. I’m like, that’s not my favorite answer to the best of my memory. No, I don’t recall any. But she said, no. And then he whips out. No, he says, well, did you see Dr. So-and-so and tell him that you had severe neck pain? And he says, well, according to this note you did. And I was like, where’s the note? He didn’t show me the note.
I find the note based on the date later minutes later, and it says, patient has severe tooth abscess with severe pain and jaw radiating to neck. And that’s an example of how they take stuff out of context. And so I said, in accordance with Rule 1 0 6, I want to interrupt here and state this. And he said, objection. No speaking objection. I said, no, you brought this out. I want to put this in context. You only gave half the story. You said the note had this. So I mean, that’s a judge call there. But…
Darl:
Well, I mean I had a mediation recently where the defense attorney was talking about all our client’s prior back pain, and there was a little bit, but it wasn’t a ton. But most of the prior stuff had to do with gastrointestinal stuff that was radiating to her back and a couple visits for kidney stones. That’s very different. And their job is to distract, to confuse and to quite frankly mislead the jury. And I think that’s where when they get caught doing it, that’s where these verdicts blow up in their face and they act like, oh my God, how did this happen? Because you were lying.
John:
In jury selection, I think every trial I have, context is always an issue, and I have some pictures that I took in New York, it’s a picture of a pond, and if you look at this picture, it looks like you’re in the beautiful countryside, but then you pull back and put in context, you’re in the biggest city, one of the biggest cities in the world, and just putting things in context is our job as plaintiff lawyers and not let them mislead the jury because that’s exactly what they do.
Darl:
I want to talk about your law firm and how you’ve built it and your approach in a second, but I want to come back to the whole insurance industry experience and your knowledge of it. Were you doing pre-suit? Were you a presuit adjuster or were you a litigation adjuster or did you work in both?
John:
I worked in both. I did pre-suit and I was a pretty good claims adjuster as far as handling lots of volume. Progressive taught me well. And then I went to another law firm, I mean another insurance company while I was in law school. And I had more experience than a lot of those guys who were newer and I’d had years of experience. So I got rewarded by being given more claims than anybody. I mean, you got punished for them.
Darl:
The reward for doing great work is more work.
John:
Yeah, that’s right. But I was on the litigation team, and so we would have the proverbial roundtable discussions and evaluational case, there would be the claims president of claims, there would be all the claims attorneys, four or eight of ’em depending on how many showed up. And then I was on that team. And then each, we would sit there and evaluate cases, and each claims manager along with adjuster would bring in and present the case that they were seeking authority on. And we’ve learned about reserve settings, those type things, learned about how insurance companies evaluate claims. Had a little bit of that with Progressive, where I’d work with their attorneys and legal counsel.
But what people need to know, what attorneys need to know, is when you’re preparing for mediation and this Darl, it’s nothing for you. But the amount of money that was decided to be offered at mediation was determined a month ago.
And so because of that, we get our mediation packages in and try to get ’em in very early to the, and usually I’ll send the mediation demand or packet. It’s usually just, I’ll send it sometimes to the defense lawyer like, Hey, this is what we’re asking for. I don’t put everything in there. I mean, I don’t put our subrogation in there, but I’ll put strengths and weaknesses. I mean, I’m going to hold back the things. Obviously I don’t want the insurance to say, but I’ll put weaknesses in there because the insurance lawyer, he’s already discovered them. He knows it. They know it. This is not, as someone once said…
Darl:
And I think too, when you acknowledge some of the weaknesses in your case, it gives you credibility.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
Darl:
The best defense lawyers to me, when I’m shooting straight with them and they’re acknowledging, yeah, this is a problem for us. We agree, but hey, have you thought about this on your case? I’m more likely to give them weight for what they’ve said about my case if they’re acknowledging the problems with their own, because it tells me that they’re looking at this, although they are advocates that they are looking at this objectively, but if they’re like, oh yeah, man, the fact that they were beer cans falling out of my client’s truck and all of a sudden not a problem. That’s no problem, no problem at all. But your guy had back pain 10 years earlier. It’s like, oh dude, come on.
Well, so I’ll tell you, and this is my view of how the personal injury industry is kind of set up now, and you tell me if I’m wrong now. I’ve been a plaintiff’s lawyer for about 15 years now, and before I started my firm about 10 or 11 years ago, I was at a very kind of boutique firm that focused mainly on litigation and catastrophic cases.
So I didn’t deal with a lot of the cases that I deal with now, which I do deal with a lot of routine auto cases. It seems to me that at some point, insurance companies made medical bills and the amount of medical bills the single most important metric for claim value at least.
John:
Yeah, I don’t disagree with that.
Darl:
And it seems to me that what that has led to is a cottage industry of lien treatment, medical funding, and certain attorneys, not all of them, because lien treatment and medical funding is valuable for a lot of clients, but there are some lawyers who I think abuse that whose sole goal is because they’re running volume, Hey, I just got to run this volume. Their sole goal is to let’s try and get these medical bills close to what the policy limits are. The insurance companies seem to play that game too because those are often the only claims they pay.
We’ve gotten to the point now with State Farm for example, we’re like, why are we even sending pre-suit demands? Because we will have a case clear liability, horrible wreck, ton of property damage, 30,000 in conservative medical bills. These aren’t inflated bills at all. These are very reasonable in customary bills. You get a $10,000 offer and you’re like, so what is going on in the insurance industry? Do you have any perspective on that?
John:
Well, I have a lot of concerns because I know in Georgia, you guys, they just passed a collateral source bill that I think is terrible and it’s been attempted here in Tennessee and it was taken up to our Supreme Court and I thought there was a chance we could lose it, but we hung on pretty strongly to it. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be changed legislatively. So I’m always worried about that. There have been cases where the bills and one of my clients and several of my clients’ cases were so inflated, I chose not to push those bills because I think I’m worried about being the goose that kills the golden egg. I think that what happened in Tennessee or Georgia could happen in Tennessee, and I don’t want that to happen, but I think some lawyers have such disregard for that. They think they have some entitled right to have an MRI, that’s worth $18,000, a standard MRI.
I just think that’s stupid and unreasonable. And I’ve actually had an independent doctor go back and lower values on things and that helped our credibility. Yeah, I don’t think those bills are reasonable. I think a third of that bill is reasonable, and that worked out really, really well for us. But as far as the insurance companies playing the game, I mean insurance companies hate us. I mean, you know how it is. There’s just nothing they like about us. The sad thing about an insurance adjuster is they don’t realize that the way the insurance company wants to treat guys like you and me and our clients and plaintiffs is the same way. They want to treat their own employees. These employees are just overhead to them. They don’t like wasting money on claims.
Darl:
I have a case right now where my clients car case are State Farm adjusters.
John:
Oh man.
Darl:
And it’s a State Farm UM policy, and they’re getting low balled like crazy.
John:
Oh man. No good deed goes unpunished, right?
Darl:
No, it’s crazy. And I mean, what I can’t figure out is the problem with insurance companies to me is they’ve commoditized claims handling. From my point of view, it’s all about metrics, data, what are the bills? What are this? And so if you’re on the plaintiff side and your goal, if you’re running a volume firm, a lot of these firms don’t want to try cases and don’t want to work ’em up for litigation. They just want to flip them as quickly as possible. So they’re trying to reverse engineer this, whatever algorithm is the insurance company’s using, which again, the crudest way to do it is just, Hey, let’s get a large bill. And so that’s my perspective at least on what’s gone on in Georgia a lot.
I do hear a lot of my defense lawyer friends complaining about, oh, well these bills are inflated. These bills are high. And I’ve been the first one to criticize that practice and say, yeah, it exists, but it’s a two way street. When you are trying to get claims settled and you’re the insurance company and you’ve indicated to people the only way to get the claim settled is to do this. And then you reward the law firms by paying their 25, $50,000 policy limits demands on those claims.
If everybody with a $25,000 policy limits case gets regardless of what happens, whether it’s hospital urgent care or whatever, and then they get an MRI, an epidural and some physical therapy and then maybe some other injection, but the bills are 18 to 20, those claims are getting paid all day long by State Farm and others if the limits are 25. But when we’ve got the clients treating conservatively and the bills are lower, we’re getting punished.
And I see this time and time again where our pre-suit offers are just insane on a lot of cases. And that’s why it’s like we just need to file suit on all these cases. And then normally, and I’ll say Progressive is one of ’em. Progressive’s one of these insurance companies that as soon as it goes to litigation, we’re getting a call from somebody and the demand’s going up pretty quickly or the offer’s going up pretty quickly, stay farm eventually.
John:
I think one of the biggest frustrations that I deal with are in-house counsel for insurance companies. Do y’all have that in Georgia?
Darl:
Yeah, yeah. State Farm, Progressive…
John:
I think it’s unethical. I don’t think their lawyers are unethical, but I think it’s just unethical to have the appearance of a lawyer. They have the law offices of Julie Schmo, whoever, and it looks like every other law firm that’s independent, but it’s not. These people are basically, well, they’re all on the dole of the insurance company. Everything is paid for by the insurance company. It’s a legal fiction that’s set up by an insurance company and nobody knows this and who really doesn’t know it or the people they’re defending.
And so who is a lawyer going to represent the person, I mean more zealously and take direction from the person who pays them or the client who’s just another insured that they’ve been forced to represent. I just think there’s an ethical problem with that. And the other problem is the insurance companies have a scorched earth policy. There’s no cost of defense that they have to consider. Another, if they had outside counsel and they say, well, yeah, this is a complicated case. There’s eight defendants, we are going to have to spend 20,000 on this. Let’s just go ahead and offer whatever Now that’d be better for plaintiffs of course, but it’s just a real way of doing business.
Darl:
Yeah, I’m with you. And I think a lot of these in-house staff counsel, captive counsel, whatever people call them, they almost universally view the adjusters as their clients now. They may say, oh, well yeah, I know who my client is. I don’t need you to tell me who my client is. It’s like, come on, you’re with that adjuster on every single claim and you know that adjuster. Well, you don’t know the insured. And I do think it leads to a lot of problems.
Tell me about Griffith Law. Tell me about your firm and how y’all are set up and how you’ve been so successful. I was on your website, y’all gotten some great results. It looks like y’all have a great group of people there.
John:
We started in 2016. It was just me and one other lawyer and one paralegal, and we’re over 30 employees now, but that can just be a large payroll if you’re not careful. But we’ve grown pretty significantly year over year, and I’ve just been very thankful. A couple of things have been important along the way. Number one, our core values of who we are, honesty and integrity, superior legal services, excellent client communication and team first attitude.
I had a former firm where people were fighting and I really didn’t have control to get rid of ’em, and I hated to go to work some days I’m like, man, I would like to have the freedom to hire and fire who I want and to have the type of culture here that I really want to develop and cultivate. And to me, I hire culture over aptitude all the time.
I go out and I look for people. There’s one lady who works with us and she worked at a restaurant and a fast food place, and every time I went there, she was so friendly, she knew my name. Everybody else within that organization was coming to her as she was obviously a leader. And I was like, man, are you looking for a job outside of this? I would love to hire you. And she’s been a great employee for us, and I try to hire her great attitude. And so that goes with the attorneys.
Everything I’ve had, those culture killers, those gospels, those halfway hanger-ons, and man, they are poisoned in your law firm. And I always tell people when I hire ’em, we are here Monday through Friday more than you will see us more than you see your spouse or your significant other, and let’s at least like each other or pretend to each other, but be very respectful of one another. So that’s always been key.
As far as business organization, I’ve had just key people and learned to, I’ve tried to be very generous to my key people. I think based on other lawyers that I round table with and go to mastermind meetings with, I think I pay more than most everybody. I’m very thankful for them. I’d rather have a smaller piece of a bigger pie. And so I reward loyalty and it’s hard to keep training people over and over again. So when I got somebody that’s really good, I really want to keep them here, I want them to be happy here. I mean, you can’t make everybody happy, but it’s just our general attitude and demeanor and our core values.
I mean, we have a very Christ-centered firm, and that’s not for everybody. I don’t push my religion on everybody, but I try to live my faith and I try to treat others the way that I want to be treated and the way that I think everybody should be treated. So that rubs some people wrong. I don’t care. Go start your own firm. That’s your prerogative and you have the right to do that. But it’s really been good for us and I have some wonderful, beautiful souls working here, and I’m just very thankful for every one of them.
Darl:
Well, excellent. Well, what’s been some of the keys to your success in getting cases? Because that’s a big challenge for personal injury lawyers especially. I don’t know how the market is up in the Nashville area, but Atlanta is just booming with advertising lawyers everywhere.
John:
Oh, yeah.
Darl:
It’s harder and harder for small guys like us to get cases. We still do and we’ve been successful, but it’s competitive out there.
John:
It’s extremely competitive and it’s amazing the money we spend on marketing, and there are efforts that we do. So number one, I think you have to have an attitude within your firm, your whole firm of marketing. So I just naturally love people. I hope that that’s always an authentic trait that I have. But when somebody’s calling, I always say new clients are the lifeblood of our firm. Without them, we are either growing or you’re dying. You’re never staying the same. You’re one of the two.
So I still meet with a lot of potential clients. I had a hard time at first delegating that to other lawyers, but I spend a lot of time training my lawyers on our way of doing things the Griffith Law way. And once I feel like they’re sufficiently knowledgeable, excellently taught, then I’ll let them do that. And people don’t have a problem meeting with my lawyers.
I used to think everybody wanted to see the man on the wall, but that’s not true. And I can’t see everybody. I’m like this vessel, I can only carry so many ice cubes at the end of the day. So I’m trying to do that. One thing that’s helped us businesswise though. Darl, I’ll tell you, I always felt like there’s always issues in business, there’s always issues.
And I always felt like I was the man at the dam and there’s a leak here. I’m plugging it here, plugging there, and I’m using my toes. And then we get those plugged, and then there’s another one then that’s the old one spouts up again. And the thing that’s helped us get around it or work with that is EOS. Have you ever heard of that?
Darl:
I have. I’ve read part of the book Traction. So familiar with that.
John:
I went in and hired an implementer three years ago, and I’ve got a great executive team, leadership team, and I’ve given them lots of autonomy, lots of power to make decisions. I don’t want to make every decision.
Darl:
I’ll tell you, it’s hard. And what people don’t realize is the decision fatigue that goes along with that.
John:
And it’s not just us as lawyers, Darl. I mean that’s a complicated part with just spending time making legal decisions, but just any business owner. As your business grows, you have the same problems as a guy who owns a hardware store or a coffee shop. We have the same issues that there and EOS helps differentiate and specialize in certain things and gives different people authority to handle those issues. And it’s just a coordinated way to do it. I highly recommend it. We have grown probably 30% to 35% year over year, and I attribute most of that to EOS. I really do. Because John’s not in here pulling his hair out with 50 things that I’ve got to do everything.
And so finding that balance, because your leadership team does take on a lot more responsibility, so they need to be compensated for that. It’s hard figuring this all out. But with EOS, it’s made it so much easier. And my only other advice would be hire a facilitator to do that. They’re expensive, but I think they’re way worth it because I don’t trust the fact that I would my procrastination, I’d put it off and like, ah, it’s not that important. Now every day this clock is ticking, man. The sands and the hourglass are running.
Darl:
Now when you say a facilitator, is that somebody that helps you kind of get it off the ground or they stay with you on an ongoing basis or both?
John:
It’s an EOS facilitator. So we have our guy, David King, he’s fantastic. I just love him. But we meet at the two day annual meeting where we do two days of just you’ve got to block everything else out and it’s always at a terrible time. There’s never a good time, but you plan early in advance. And then every quarter, we just had ours two days ago, you have your quarterly meeting and you set goals at the annual, and then you just monitor your goals and you set rocks or big goals and you just follow those.
And for example, I’ve got 30 employees and every employee’s got two or three goals a quarter or at least one. Well, and there are things that are designed to advance your company forward and make you better, make you a better marketer marketing person. And if every quarter you’re getting 120 to 180 to 200 things done, that advances the company. It works. I’m just telling you it works. It takes a lot of work and I didn’t think that I could ever get it done.
And nothing’s perfect, but we had less issues this time than we’ve ever had. That means that we’re getting ready to have a bunch. There’s always an ebb and a flow, but everything’s working. I really trust my team. They’re good people and we’re expanding our leadership team. That’s one thing we discussed, bringing more people in because growing. So anyway, I just don’t mean to get off on that.
Darl:
Yeah, that’s great. That’s always, I mean, I think as a law firm owner, I mean the challenge for me has always been I started my firm 11 years ago. It was just me and then a paralegal and then just kind of grew from that. But it’s always, I used to be really anxious about adding people because the thought of adding fixed overhead when you’ve got a contingency fee-based practice is very stressful. And there’s always this question and debate that I have and other colleagues of mine have that are in a similar position.
What’s the sweet spot where you’re hitting the right stride from a profitability standpoint, or are you going to get diminishing returns by adding more people? And I don’t think I had to diminishing returns by adding more people. If anything. I mean, I think it’s certainly benefited us not only on a profit level and a revenue level, but I think as I’ve gotten more experienced as an attorney and getting a little more gray in my hair, the things that I’m more interested in are different than I was 10 years ago.
10 years ago I was fine doing everything. I enjoyed that. But now I’ve got a 7-year-old son, I got a 12-year-old daughter, they’ve got stuff going on. I want to be present for them. And if you build a firm that can run without you having to make every single decision, that could actually make your life better. So I always tell people, having more employees can actually be less stressful because you’re not the one having to do everything.
John:
I had this false, just I don’t know what was wrong with me when I was in my thirties and early forties. I would say I took pride in the fact that I could outwork anybody. And then I lost my first family through divorce and man pain is a big teacher sometimes, and that really hurt being away from my kids. That was terrible.
And so now those things are not, I mean, I still work hard, but I don’t work hard for as long unless I’ve got a trial. Trial is everything’s off the table. I had a me mile trial a couple of months ago and man, I was working 16 hours a day. I wish I could do it for less than that or I was working 18 hours a day.
Darl:
Well, here’s what I tell people too though. If you’re working hard on something you’re passionate about too, it’s a med mal case that you’re really passionate about and care about. You believe in the client or a car wreck case where you really believe in the client and they’re getting taken advantage of, that helps a lot. Versus if you’re just grinding away on a case and you don’t really like the client or you don’t want to be working on it. Being at the office on a Saturday or Sunday sucks in that scenario.
But when you’re fighting for something you believe in and to be there, there’s times I’ve been in the office on a Sunday and yeah, I mean it’s great to be with my family, but when I’m working on something I’m really passionate about, I’m all in and it feels great. And you got to have that balance though. You can’t do it every day.
John:
I love trials, but I tell I have a meeting with my family before every one. Like daddy’s got trial, I’m going to be gone. You know what it’s like. I said, but we’re going to celebrate next Saturday a week from now and win lose or draw. You would think that I won a billion dollar judgment no matter what happened, because I’m happy to be back with my family. I’ve learned not to come back and if you didn’t have a perfect result or something, it is great when we win, but if you don’t always happen that way and when you don’t, it’s like, man, don’t get near John.
I don’t want anybody ever doing that to me. I’m like, no, man. I’m blessed. I’m extremely blessed that we did okay. It could have been better, but we did better than what the insurance companies offered, but it wasn’t spectacular or it was great.
Darl:
That’s a great, great mentality to have.
John:
I’ll tell you one other thing that’s helped us Darl too is just from attorney management or law firm management is when we switched to FileVine. Now we had a bunch of data that we could monitor, and Kirby has done a fantastic job monitoring data, and I don’t want to be one of those just a numbers guy.
But the two things that, I get calls from Morgan & Morgan clients all the time who want to fire them and hire us, is they don’t hear from their lawyers or their case takes forever. Those are the two main criticisms and complaints that people give about their lawyers, any personal injury lawyer. And so we can have direct control over our communication. So that’s one of our core values that we live and breathe by is excellent client communication. So that’s something that better I should not hear about.
But secondly, shelf life of the cases or how long it takes. We have really focused on that and we found the gaps in our procedural litigation procedure timeline and when we’ve really worked hard to decrease those gaps and we’re making significant strides in that. For example, the time between party depositions and medical proof was over a year. Now we’re getting that down to about six or seven months. And sometimes there’s valid reasons why you can’t do that. The client’s not at MMI, we filed suit really early, but really focusing on that, it makes you more profitable and the clients are happier, but a lawyer.
Darl:
Well, here’s the other thing that I tell people all the time too. We’re not a churn and burden firm. It sounds like our firms are very similar.
We do want to keep our foot on the gas though, because if you’ve got a bunch of cases languishing, that affects your ability to take on new cases because you start looking at the case numbers that John’s got 50 cases or how many ever, and that’s kind of the max that you want ’em to have, but a lot of ’em are just kind of sitting there. If John had gotten those cases resolved, he’d have some bandwidth to take on some more stuff and then maybe you don’t have to hire somebody else to come in and do this. And it’s the same thing and it has a huge trickle down effect.
And I always preach to people that in our business, one bottleneck can lead to another bottleneck can lead to another bottleneck. You take a few extra weeks to request the medical records. You take a few extra weeks to follow up. When you don’t get that initial response, you then get the records and then don’t really follow up and review them to make sure that they actually send everything. And then you want to have that before you do this deposition, and then you don’t request that deposition. And the next thing you know, you’ve taken what should have maybe only been a one month process and made it potentially a three or four month process.
John:
Yeah, so that’s perfect. That’s exactly right. And one thing, for example, we’ve got our discovery response timeline down very low. We’ve shrunk it by over a third because think about this, we go against the same insurance companies, the same defense lawyers. It’s a car wreck case.
Darl:
You know exactly what they’re going to ask you.
John:
We’ve already got it. So we give it to our clients at the time of intake. If we know that, say, Hey, these are some questions you’re going to have to have. Go ahead and get it to us. We’ve got several examples of where the defense lawyer sends us discovery and we send it back in less than five minutes, fully answered, and they’re like, man, but you know what I’d say, don’t stop there and say, Hey, here’s your discovery responses. I would like to go ahead and depose the defendant. Here are dates four to six weeks out, please provide the earliest opportunity. Well, gosh, I can’t do it that week. I’m like, okay. When they respond no, give them six to eight weeks out from that date, and then you give ’em eight to 10 weeks.
And then after the third or fourth week of not doing that, I’m like, okay, is it something we want to push? Do we want to, I don’t try to be a jerk by any means. What goes around comes around, but I’m always pushing the next step. Whatever the stage is in litigation, you’ve got to be working that stage and thinking about the next stage. You’ve got to be pushing the next stage.
Darl:
Yeah.
John:
Like, mediation. One of the biggest problems we found was mediation. You go to mediation and everybody acts like, oh, well that’s the day the case is going to settle. What if it doesn’t? So there’s nothing to compel a defense attorney to settle more than having a doctor’s deposition set right after the mediation, like two weeks post. Because if you wait until after the mediation, they say, okay, tomorrow we’re going to reset this, and then you’re four to six months out, it’s going to just take forever. So go ahead…
Darl:
We do that all the time, John. We do that. And it’s even worse when they want to do an early mediation, right? Well, let’s hold off on this. Well, I’ll hold off and not do something maybe until the mediation itself, but we’re going to go and have this on the books so that these depositions are set for right after that mediation set in. Because if we don’t settle, I don’t want to be sitting around waiting another three or four months for the dates.
John:
Well, you and I are in the minority brother. Most people don’t do that. And that’s an excellent practice, and I think every attorney should be that.
Darl:
The other thing that’s driven me nuts is, look, I get that you want to have full and complete discovery responses, and it depends on the witness and the type of case. But so many times I’ve had associates working with me and they’ll say, well, I’m still waiting on documents. They got to respond to my 6.4 letter. And I’m like, look, even if you think you need those documents, go ahead and set it. Set the deposition for a date by which you think you’ll already have the documents.
But in a lot of these cases, like a car wreck case or other ones, I just go ahead and just full speed ahead, do the deposition. I then use the deposition to find out all this stuff they didn’t give me. Oh yeah, I gave a statement to my boss at the scene. Oh yeah, I took a drug test after.
I love baseball. And there’s saying in baseball: Good things happen when you put the ball in play. When you do things in your litigation cases, good things happen and things start moving and they start realizing stuff when you’re just kind of sitting there shuffling some papers around. Nothing’s happening. Yeah. Or you’re not working your case. That’s the worst.
Well, one more question before we go, John. I love asking lawyers this question. What predictions do you have, it could be one or it could be multiple predictions for the future of the personal injury industry? Could be something marketing related, firm structure. Consolidation of firms could be anything firm related or claims handling related.
John:
I think the insurance adjuster is going to be largely replaced by AI.
Darl:
Interesting.
John:
I think the ability to output on the plaintiff’s side is going to be reduced largely by AI. I have a very good lawyer at my firm, Josh Cantrell, and he’s written a book on AI for lawyers, and I got a website for that. And it’s amazing. Some of the things I was working with this morning. I’ve got a complicated construction case. I’m like, give me some good ideas, blah, blah, blah for this case. And it comes up with things that are just very good, concise, very well written. But I don’t think as far as plaintiff lawyers or defense lawyers, there’s going to be any change. I think we have good job security.
Darl:
Oh, for sure.
John:
Because I think what we do, what good lawyers do is a very good skill. I mean, the right lawyer, this can make a humongous difference in your case and the ability to go to trial and being a good trial lawyer. I worry about the younger lawyers because they’re not getting as much trial experience for many reasons. We went to trial all the time. I would try four or five civil jury trials a year. Now I’m trying maybe two a year, and that’s pushing it. And I’ve got a list. I would pan the camera over, but I got a list between now and February of next year. I’ve got probably 14 cases set for trial right now. Some of those are going to go, and so anyway, my prediction is just that I think the claims adjuster is going to be almost fully automated in the future. So I don’t know what that means.
Darl:
I feel like we’re dealing with a brick wall right now. So it may actually be better to deal with.
John:
Well, they don’t have much autonomy. I mean, everything they’ve done is given from above. All they could do is they’re really document processors and they got to get permission from somebody else. So I mean, I just think that’s maybe not anytime soon, but the next five to seven years, I think there’s going to be some significant changes in the way these interest companies do businesses. So that begs the question, what does that mean for us? I mean, for settling cases, I don’t know. I don’t know.
Darl:
I think it means more lawsuits. And I think that for me, the value in a lot of our cases isn’t the medical bills. It’s the pain and suffering. And insurance companies are, they don’t do a great job of that even in litigation, but they’re better at it in litigation than they are pre-suit, because you could say anything in a demand letter, the insurance company doesn’t care. They’re plugging in those data points, numbers, those numbers, and it’s spitting out a number and that’s it.
John:
Yeah. I get to where my demands are extremely short and sweet. Nobody really reads those, I don’t think that much. But anyway…
Darl:
Well, thanks for joining us. John, if people want to look you up, what’s the best place for them to find you?
John:
GriffithInjuryLaw.com. Franklin, Tennessee. We’re just having a good time and just trying to help and love on people and make their lives better under bad circumstances, just like you.
Darl:
Awesome. Thanks for joining us, John. We appreciate your time.
John:
Thank you, Darl. Appreciate it.