Kye Bachus has seen and done it all; building a law firm from the ground up to become one of Colorado’s largest personal injury law firms, checked. Become a nationally renowned personal injury lawyer specializing in wrongful death cases, checked. Amazon bestseller author checked. Experience the pain and agony of losing his own mother when she was struck and killed in by a distracted driver in a commercial vehicle, unfortunately, checked. The result of these life experiences? An incredible compassionate and committed attorney that is changing the way lawyers treat and handle the cases of wrongful death victims.
Kyle joins Liel and Grace for a profound conversation where he discusses how when the unthinkable happened to him and his family, even after 25 years of experience dealing with this type of circumstance, his life was turned upside down. And how now he has completely restructured the process in which his law firm handles wrongful death cases like the one he went through. From understanding the mindset and priorities of victims at every step of their painful journey to the role you and your team need to be ready to assume and the resources, you should be able to provide.
The conversation goes on to discuss the way Bachus Schanker reinvented their marketing strategy and message for one that puts the needs and priorities of victims first, to develop an Elite team of professionals dedicated to doing everything they can to help victims of wrongful death cases, and when Kyle says everything, he really means it.
Resources mentioned in our episode:
- Unthinkable: Real Answers For Families Confronting Catastrophic Injury or Death by J. Kyle Bachus
- The Elite Litigation Group at Bachus & Schanker
- Forbes List of 7 Books On Financial And Mental Wealth
Send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com
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Transcript
Liel: [00:00:00] Millions recovered for wrongful death victims. Best wrongful death lawyer. No fee unless we win guarantee. These are the headlines that victims of wrongful death accidents are likely to experience as a welcome message on the top of the Google search results page when they initiate the painful journey of dealing with their loss. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media and author of Beyond Se Habla Español How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market. And this is in our podcast where we think it’s time to humanize marketing for wrongful death victims. Welcome to In Camera Podcast private legal marketing conversations. Grace welcome come back. How are you today?
Grace: [00:01:06] Good. How are you Liel?
Liel: [00:01:08] Grace, I’m great. Very excited about today’s conversation. We have a special guest. And without further ado, I would love for you to introduce our guest to our show.
Grace: [00:01:17] Well, everybody, we do have very special guests today. We are honored to welcome attorney Kyle Backus. With more than 25 years of experience representing families in catastrophic injury and death cases, Kyle just released his bestselling book, Unthinkable, which provides a practical roadmap for navigating a path that no one chooses. Kyle is also the founding partner of Backus and Schenker, a Colorado injury law firm with 32 lawyers and a team of more than 100 staff that has recovered over $1 billion in settlements for accident victims and their families. Kyle, welcome to In-camera Podcast.
Liel: [00:01:52] Kyle, welcome to In-camera Podcast. Where does this podcast find you?
Kyle: [00:01:55] Well, I am sitting in Denver, Colorado, in our central office, so I want to thank you so much for the opportunity to be present and with you today.
Liel: [00:02:07] Kyle, these are real, real pleasure. And as we were just commenting a moment ago before we got online here, you’ve recently published a book and congratulations on it becoming a best seller. Obviously, it’s a very powerful, both a personal and a professional book that you that you created there. And so why don’t we start there? Why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you decided to write a book? Why did you wrote it and what’s been the journey so far?
Kyle: [00:02:34] Yeah, thank you. Well, you know, I’ve been a personal injury lawyer for 30 years now, and I actually I graduated from the University of Florida Law School and went to work at a personal injury law firm the Monday after I graduated from law school. And although I, a few years later, moved out to Denver for a year to check it out, and that’s been since 1996. I’m still checking it out. You know, that’s what I’ve done for my entire life. And I’ve especially as I’ve become more seasoned and more experienced, I really spend the vast majority of my practice working on catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases. We’ve grown a law firm from the two of us. Darren Schenker and I started for $15,000, I think is what we had when we started it. We have more than 30 lawyers and more than 100 employees who work for us. Well, when you do this work in the back of your mind, you of course, you you see the kind of the randomness of tragedy that can happen. And you hope and pray, right, that you’re never on the other end of one of those calls. And unfortunately for me and my family, on April the 28th of 2020, just after COVID got started, we were on the other end of one of those calls when my my own mother was killed by a concrete mixer truck, actually was run over and killed in a crosswalk in Winter Park, Florida, while out on a COVID walk. And we got that news and it hit home in my life. And and so, you know, I had never written a book before, but what I experienced from the victims side of things, the real life. Living through being told, you know, that your family member has been erased off of the face of the earth due to, in my case, a commercial truck driver who wasn’t paying attention.
Kyle: [00:04:49] That changes you obviously forever as a family, as a person. And it’s changed me as a lawyer as well. And and I was I really thought I had it figured out. You know, I thought that I knew 28 years is a long time to do this practice, but my eyes were really open to an entirely different side from all aspects of my personal and professional life. And so I felt like, who is in a better position to help families kind of walk through all of the decisions that have to be made? Everything that goes on that the real answer is that families truly need beyond kind of the legal marketing that we all do, which I am happy to talk about as well, and, and what I saw as a victim versus a professional in that regard, too. But the book is a guide for families. And really, Forbes magazine, for instance, said it’s gotten a lot more attention than I thought. Put it on a list of one of the ten best reads for the summer of 2022. For people who are trying to get some some insight into practical realities of life. And so it really answers a lot of questions for people to help them. I guess not only those walking through it, but those who might want to see what changes they want might want to make in their family in terms of passwords and a bunch of other things that go along with kind of preparing in case something were to happen to them.
Liel: [00:06:16] Well, first of all, I’m so sorry about your loss. What a terrible thing. And you know, what you’re saying is so powerful because you’re not familiar with this type of events. You’ve you’ve been dealing with them, as you’ve said, for over 28 years. Yet all from the sudden, you’re in a position that it sounds like felt very new and made you very vulnerable, even though you probably knew a lot of the of the technicalities that were going to be part of navigating that journey. You all from the sudden faced a whole new block of things that come as a part of it that that you may not necessarily have been aware of. And so the question that arises here is. How did that change the way that you see your clients now? How did that help you? First of all, at a personal level and then be a better lawyer for people that are going through that. I’m sure that has must have played a role in defining you now.
Kyle: [00:07:28] Yeah, I mean, a big role. Look, all of this comes crashing down on a family when this news is told to a family. When I say all of this, you have the criminal really the criminal justice system, the civil justice system, probate law, constitutional law, victims rights. If somebody were to ask me, Kyle, if you go in and think about your entire life, when were you least in a position to make important decisions? Right. When is the it would be in the week or two after my mom was killed. I was in the worst position to be making any sort of important decision yet. There are a lot of important decisions that have to be made in that time frame on so many fronts. And I’m not just talking about the legal fronts. I’m talking about what do you do with the pets? What do you do with my mom’s cats who are waiting to be fed? And she, you know, was killed five blocks from her home and never made it in to feed them their online life. How do you secure that? You know, is there a will? Isn’t there a will? What do you do with the the car? Who’s going to pay the rent? Who gets the house, who? All of this stuff. What should you do about the police investigation? Do you need an autopsy or not? How do you you know who’s making those decisions, who’s in charge? So there’s all of this stuff.
Kyle: [00:08:48] And what happened to me was in my family, my brother and sister are both doctors. My parents were divorced when we were young. My parents still got along, but that was really up to the three of us. And who do you think got asked all the questions about what happens now after my mom was killed? Me. Right. And and so my sister, nobody’s you’re not sleeping. You’re just trying to make it through the first minute, then the first hour, then the first day. I mean, it’s it is incredibly difficult time in people’s lives and in my life. And so you’re not sleeping in. My sister said to me, she said, You know, Kyle, I’m up at night. And I was looking just like this guy who ran over mom, isn’t he going to go to jail for a long time? I mean, he killed mom. So she said, I’m looking and I’m looking online and all that pops up in Orlando when I’m looking. Is these attorney ads, right? Basically saying like, congratulation, your mom is killed, call me and I can get you some money. But none of the real answers that the families actually need. Right. And so if you just take data as an example, when my life settled back down, I looked back and I thought about that conversation with my sister, well, what is my advertising look like, you know, in wrongful death case? Because like many other law firms, you hire people to do that work for you and it’s to try to be seen.
Kyle: [00:10:13] And you want the right keywords and you want. But are you really thinking about what somebody needs? I’ll tell you, when we looked at our own marketing, I was embarrassed and astonished because exactly what my sister was saying she was seeing is what somebody would see if they said typed in a Google search. My mom was killed by a truck in Colorado. You know, if I if somebody did that here, they would they would have seen our advertising, which was frankly off the mark with what people are looking for. The entirety of this changed my belief about the lawyer as the counselor and the role of a lawyer. If you really want to be providing the best service to clients and that starts from the marketing side of it. That through the intake side of it, through the entirety of the case. And I really am hoping that not only through this book, but through conversations like this, that lawyers will begin to think differently about their role. For catastrophically injured, seriously injured, catastrophically injured in wrongful death cases, because I think our role and probably our moral obligation in society is to do much more than we’re actually doing. And I’m happy to talk about some of that as well.
Grace: [00:11:40] So I do want to touch on that, actually. You know, this this podcast is meant for no BS legal marketing conversations that people should have but don’t. So you are on the perfect path for what we always talk about here and we talk about ethical marketing, what’s right and what’s wrong. You know, we do try to go deep. So with that being said, can you give us a couple of things that you made immediate changes to your marketing after experiencing the School of Hard Knocks that you did?
Kyle: [00:12:13] The first thing that I did is from a marketing perspective, is to to really step back and say, what are the actual needs? And, you know, what people need to know about when they have a loved one that’s killed. They want to have information about what the next step is that they’re facing, which might be, do I need an autopsy? For example, should I trust the police department to conduct the investigation? And with the police department, you know, I talk about it. It’s kind of the the and it’s not a bad thing. It’s just the truth. Right? It’s a lottery. It depends on where your parent was killed or your relative was killed. Right. What’s the location? What’s that? Police force is experience. Who’s on vacation, who’s not? We all know cops come, they do an investigation, they open the road. We all know as lawyers that evidence is fleeting, right? So people need to understand not how much money you can get for them after somebody’s killed. Because I promise you, there’s not a single person who has a relative killed, who the next thing that crosses their mind is, well, how much am I going to get paid for that? That’s not what they want at all. Accountability is something different. First, you know, what they want to know is why and how could this happen. And so by creating content that addresses those real concerns, which is, look, if this happened, don’t even think about whether you need to hire a lawyer right now.
Kyle: [00:13:44] Let’s talk about what the next step in the process is that you’re going to be facing. And ultimately, when they see the role of the criminal justice system, which is something that I try to cover here, is there’s a criminal justice system. There’s a civil justice system. A lot of people, including smart people, don’t understand that if you don’t intentionally kill somebody, if it’s just negligence, that our society doesn’t treat that as a serious crime. If you don’t, you don’t go to jail for ten years for negligently running a stoplight and killing somebody. But you’ve killed somebody. Just they’re just as dead as if you took a knife and stab them intentionally. But they’re not treated. And we as lawyers know the difference. I promise you, your clients don’t. They don’t know the difference. They don’t know where the criminal justice system starts and the civil justice system begins. And they don’t know how to get answers in either of those systems. But I can tell you the first system they’re going to face is the criminal justice system as a victim. So what are their rights as a victim? And the other thing people I think from my own experience, right, if you’re a fixer, you want to fix something, you know, give me a problem, we’ll work through it and I’ll try to help you fix it.
Kyle: [00:14:56] What do people do when something is so bad that it can’t be fixed? So don’t tell me that you’re going to fix the problem because you’re not going to fix the problem if you’re like, money’s not going to fix the problem. My mom is still dead. Her grandkids still don’t get to see her. It’s not about that. But people do want to get some control over. To the extent the unfixable happens, they still want to have some control over what happens next. And so I think that helping people holistically through what actually happens next, what happens next is not suing somebody. What happens next is trying to figure out what happened to my loved one. Why did this happen? How did this happen? And those are questions I’m telling you. You sit there and you’re like, Oh, my God, are you kidding me? Like, I know my mom would push, walk and walk on. Like what? How did this happen? Why did this truck in broad daylight not see what occurred? So at the end of the day, the end of the tunnel, there’s a civil justice system that’s going to be the best path for some of these answers. But if you start with the end, as opposed to start with the start, you’re making a big mistake.
Grace: [00:16:11] It’s necessary. I completely understand what you’re saying. It is necessary to help them think through what is going on. Right. Because that’s the last thing that you’re thinking about, is what is. I mean, you’re thinking about what’s next, but not how to get there because you’re frozen, right? You’re going through it at the moment that it’s happening. So you did mention that the evidence is fleeting by nature.
Kyle: [00:16:35] Yeah.
Grace: [00:16:36] So you did give us a definition of a fleeting. Obviously, it’s you know, it’s it’s very hard to get a hold of. And if you’re in the moment and things that are happening right then and there. When that’s happening. And it’s something that you kind of have to think about, right? Because that is what’s going to be next. And like you said, it’s a lottery depending on where it’s located, what’s happening, if they have if they’ve experienced it before, even. Right. Or if it’s just some young person that literally just started at the academy, came out of the academy, you don’t know. So with that being said, is there anything that somebody could do? And you do have the benefit, obviously, of being an attorney, but you were still a victim of something that happened to you. So you can at least hopefully give something to people that are hearing and have been in the same position. What could you do that might be maybe not immediate, but hopefully within a day or two or even three when when you can sit and think for one moment, which is almost impossible, as we all know during that time, what can somebody do to help with that fleeting nature of evidence?
Kyle: [00:17:45] Well, you know, the the first thing that from a victim, the first thing that a victim can do is engage in conversation with the police department. Look, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in New York City are some rural town in Kansas, a death in a police department is a big deal and you’re entitled and they’re public servants. And so the first thing is encouraging people to engage in and communication with the police department and know who’s investigating and what they’re doing and introduce the family to the police department and, you know, and express concern and that you want to participate. And then you kind of get you can get a better feel for, oh, you know what? This cop has done this 150 times or this cop has done this three times, and then that’s that’s some knowledge that that can help you. And so I bet you won’t find a personal injury website in the country that suggests that you interact with with the police to learn a little bit more about it. Right. But that’s that’s a good start. And how many law firms are saying that that they will help their personal injury clients by starting those conversations with the police department to to understand what their course of the investigation is going to be. And then having people understand any one of us, we don’t have to be a lawyer. You could Google right now for a and I and I talk about this and give examples of searches in my book for four victims.
Kyle: [00:19:14] You can Google and you can find a professional engineer company that can go out and secure the evidence information for you, whether you have a lawyer or not. And it’s probably less expensive than you think. Probably. And it’s expensive, but you could probably for a couple of thousand dollars, have somebody go out there with a drone, a real professional engineer, the kind of people who train the police, secure evidence, look for it at the scene, not do anything with it other than capture it. Have a private investigator hired for probably $500. You could Google and find them to go out and look for video and knock on doors to see whether people have video cameras in their doorbells and do things or stores. You could do that on your own. Now, by giving that information, are people going to do it on their own? Maybe, but they can also do that through a law firm that’s willing to do that for them. Right. That but but you’re not you’re not selling them on. I’m going to get you money at the end of the case. You’re you’re actually helping them. And if we’re truly hope, most of us, if not all of us, are actually in the business to help people. Well, that’s what I mean by thinking about things a little bit differently. That’s the help that people need, is to get the knowledge whether they ever decide to bring a case or not, whether there’s insurance or not, but getting that and they can do it on their own or they can do it with you or they can do it in some combination of those two things.
Kyle: [00:20:34] But so, I mean, when you talk about fleeting evidence, in my mom’s case, you know, the police department was a small police department. We were not even told it was a concrete mixer truck. We were told she was hit by a car. Meanwhile, that commercial trucking company is out there on the scene investigating. The police department. Didn’t have a place to put the concrete mixer truck. They let the truck company take the truck with them back to their own lot with a promise that they would secure and download the data and deliver it to the police. Now, maybe that’s okay, but maybe not right, depending upon the circumstances. And so that’s tangible examples of of why people need help. And, and, and so we go through each step of what’s next. And that’s what the book kind of says is, here’s what you’re likely to confront. Well, what are your rights as a victims? I mean, how many lawyers who handle personal injury or wrongful death cases have read the victims rights statute in their state and know what the rights of victims are? Well, victims want to know what their rights are. Do they have a right to be heard? Do they have a right to input with the prosecutor? If the police don’t want to prosecute, can they go to the prosecutor directly? How do they do that? Right.
Kyle: [00:21:48] If so, these are all these things that came upon me, right? That and my practice is completely different with these segments of clients then than it ever was. Because I’m not just dealing with the slice, I’m starting with them on a journey. And I’m doing it all for them are putting them in the hands of people who can do that for them. You know, we do injuries of appearance in the criminal case so that we get knowledge. And so you don’t have to keep going back. You get notified of of the proceedings and go with them to make sure that the that the prosecutor actually provides the victim’s impact statement when it’s time to sentence. You know why? Because it matters to the family when the family is going. We know every lawyer who handles we know unless there’s an intentional conduct, a drunk driving or habitual traffic. Our clients are going to be disappointed by the criminal justice system because of the mens rea requirements. You must have intentional conduct in order to have a serious crime. Right. So they’re going to be disappointed. Let’s try to lessen that for them. Let’s work with them. And so if you providing input from a marketing perspective as to what services you’re providing. First of all, you need to be willing to provide the services and then you ought to be talking about the services you’re actually willing to provide.
Liel: [00:23:12] Kyle Obviously here you are dealing with a shift, right? And it’s a mindset that I think a lot of law firms still have about kind of like. Talking just or putting the focus on the price at the end of it all, if you may call it that way, which is the money, the compensation and everything else is just leave it to the expert will take care of it. You don’t have to worry about it. You’ll just get this big prize, which we’re promising a chunk of money, you know, for what you’ve gone through. And the level of awareness that I’m getting from you is that from a personal standpoint, you did not feel that that was what was going to get you through it, knowing that there was going to be a compensation at the end of it, or at least not immediately. That was not your first thought of coming to terms with this. And but the other part here seems to be that it’s just it’s not a match to the age in which we live, right where we are used to having answers and understanding things. We’re not blind. We’re not any more blindly going after promises that others make without asking questions beforehand. And so your approach here is, well, here is how things are done. And here is exactly the process that can be followed, whether you want to do them through professionals like us, whether you want to source them yourself. But this is the process. Here is how things work. And it sounds like a lot of that shift in mindset has come as a result of what you’ve gone through. And it’s been already, you know, two or three years since that. And so how, how you see now, you know, the impact of you having made this adjustment and being more open and focused on talking about the process and talking about the different aspects of things. How do you see the people that your law firm is helping now responding to this?
Kyle: [00:25:12] Yeah, well, I mean, you make it’s a great question. Here’s the deal. It changed everything about our our process. Now, we’re a large enough firm that I was able to create a special group within our firm and we’ve the name we named it the elite litigation group internally. And what we did is we took every case that’s a catastrophic injury or a wrongful death case, and we placed it with this specialty group. Because obviously, if somebody is complaining of a whiplash injury and and they’ve got a bulging disc in their neck, I mean, those are important cases. But you don’t get the dream team for a traffic ticket, you know. And so we also have to look at our business models in that way. You know, it’s a different experience for somebody who’s catastrophically injured or had somebody killed. And so but yet we weren’t we were kind of treating them the same way. And so what we’ve changed is we’ve created this group and that’s all they do. That’s all we do. And I lead that group is only the catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases. And we we describe it as this holistic practice. You know, you need help planning your funeral. We’ll help plan the funeral. We’ll help you get the victims compensation benefits that you’re entitled to in Colorado, victims of crime, if you meet the definition and expressly in the statute and most that I’ve seen, careless driving resulting in serious bodily injury or death, is included in the definition of a victim of a crime. In most states, you get up to $30,000 to cover travel expenses, funeral expenses to miss time from work, babysitter care, etc. So we help people get we do anything and everything.
Kyle: [00:27:02] That they’re facing. And there’s been nothing more rewarding in my practice than seeing the difference that we’re making in in these families. And as lawyers, here’s another thing that we face with the wrongful death cases. Not everybody is hit by a commercial truck. Most people are killed by somebody who has minimal insurance or no insurance. And so. We we have to are we going to help those families and what are we going to spend in terms of time and effort? Well, we’ve made a decision. Yeah, we’re going to do the same thing for those families. We’re going to find out. We’re going to make sure that they’re taking care of in all other respects. And then we’ve got to confront the realities of the limits that they’re going to be able to collect in a wrongful death case where somebody only has $25,000, you know, is not spending any time in jail. And the criminal justice system, the family is getting $25,000 or $50,000 and their relative is dead. You know, that’s horrible. But we’re committed to helping all families of wrongful death in all aspects of their case holistically. I’ll make a referral to a probate lawyer if need be. I may not have all of the answers myself, or it may not be our specific, specific area of specialty. If they need some collateral legal assistance. But we’re quarterbacking the entire process and it’s been the most rewarding time of my my entire career, frankly, because of it. It’s meaningful and it’s personal to me now, obviously, as well. But it’s meaningful and it’s meaningful work. And you see in the families the difference that we’re making in their lives.
Liel: [00:28:50] Yeah, obviously doing things for a purpose is not just gratifying for you, of course, but at the same time, you know, it definitely has a a completely different impact in the lives that you get to touch. You know, one thing, Kyle, and just going back a little bit to how how much awareness and how much focus you’re putting in in understanding and really hand-holding victims as they’re navigating through this nightmare. You know, I think the term empathy in the legal space became very, very, very used and very talked about over the past five years. Right. Everybody everybody knows about it and everybody says they’re implementing it. But what we’ve talked here about in the podcast is that it feels like they implement it in a systematic way, right, by asking a set of questions and making some rehearsed acknowledgements to the story or the incident that has happened to the person that they were on the phone or such. They call that empathy. And, and it’s it’s not really genuine and it’s very brief and it’s like, well, I’m sorry that you’ve gone through this. Now let’s get back to business. And so how obviously in your case and hearing you talk about this, you can it comes from the heart and it’s very genuine. But how do you inspire the rest of your team or others who have not gone through the same hardships that you’ve been through to do that as well and to really care and to not fall under that systemic empathy?
Kyle: [00:30:29] I mean, fantastic question. And I think, number one, it starts with the people, right. And what I mean by that is I think I’ve been very surprised. Number one, we’re a bit, like I said, a little bit of a larger law firm. But after my mom was killed, people who would reach out to me internally at the firm who, you know, my for instance, the guy who runs our intake department, his sister was killed in the ValuJet jet crash over Miami. That was from Miami to Denver years ago. I had no idea that his sister had been killed. But after my mom was killed, he shares this with me. And I point that out, because you may not know the life experiences of those working and you might not know why they were actually driven to come work at your law firm to try to help people. And so I think you start by looking at the people and and and second to that is it makes the job that I’m talking about a much better job for those working it. And so we’re attracting people who work, who have worked as victims advocates in the criminal process, who the same people who are driven to go work for Mothers Against Drunk Driving because somebody in their family was killed. You’d be surprised that those people want to come. You know, not everybody wants to work at a funeral home, but some people work at a funeral home and are drawn there. Not everybody wants to work with the elderly or are people in a hospice setting, but some people do. There are some people out there who actually want to spend their day.
Kyle: [00:32:08] There’s some people who clearly don’t. And I can tell you, I had people who we first put on our crew when we created this, who came and resigned and said, I need to move to a different department or left the firm, because they said, I just can’t deal with all the death every day. I can’t. I just can’t. I’ve got two little kids at home and I can’t go home thinking about this every day. And I understand that. But there are other people who are driven to toward that, who who want to help those families. And so it’s been it’s been much easier, I think, than I imagined to find people who who they they thoroughly enjoy it. Now, you’ve got to be careful. You can’t as we know, you can’t spend your entire day at practice on the telephone with a family crying with them. But there’s a place in the time for that and for them to for us to be able to take action to help them and to then turn back around and show them, hey, here’s what we’ve done to help you and give them a sense of control on a path that nobody can walk that path with them. We can walk next to them. They’re going to have to walk that, whether it’s finding a good grief counselor for them, encouraging them to get grief counseling, setting that up, and then that part’s done. And then you do the next part in the next part of the next part. So it’s action oriented. It’s not babysitting, it’s action oriented. But but I think you’d be surprised at how attractive that job is to the right person.
Liel: [00:33:35] Absolutely.
Grace: [00:33:36] So it sounds like taking action is key. Right. As the firm as you having experienced this and everything. So a as it sounds, we have come to towards the end of this podcast. So with that being said and we’re talking about actions.
Kyle: [00:33:52] Yes.
Kyle: [00:33:53] What are three actionable takeaways that you feel can help our audience?
Kyle: [00:33:58] Number one, when you’re dealing with families who are involved in a catastrophic loss or especially a death case, don’t don’t try to gloss over their reality. I can tell you that people will say to me, oh, I’m so sorry that your mom passed away. My mom didn’t pass away. My mom was killed. And that might sound harsh, but I’m telling you, when you’re dealing with families who are going through it, if you come to them and you start talking to them that way, you’re not addressing their experience. And so it’s not nobody has to remind them that their mom or daughter was killed. You don’t have to remind them. It’s not going to trigger something by saying that that’s what happened. And so I’d say. Be real. Number one, right. Number two, I would just say be holistic. We think of lawyers. Lawyers, and you say lawyer and counselor at law. Don’t be afraid. Despite maybe a rut or habit you’ve gotten into to pull out that counselor hat and serve a bigger, broader purpose for people. And number three would be if you just looked at it financially. I would say that that the changes that we’ve made in the way that we’re doing business, the result is, is a more robust financial picture with this group of clients and more referrals. And, and and so. Do good. And I think if we if we just do good, you know, and ask yourself, what does that mean? What would it really mean to do the right thing for this family? And that’s what I tell our staff is, you know, you can always pick out just do the do the right thing, what’s too little, what’s too much? I don’t know. Do the right thing. What would you need or want? Do it. And I think if you follow that advice, you’ll be providing a great service and spreading that message as a legacy to my mom is important to me. And I appreciate very much the opportunity to talk with you guys.
Liel: [00:36:04] Kyle, thank you so much for coming here, sharing so much about your experience both personally and professionally. Of course, we’ll have a link to the book Unthinkable, which is available in Amazon. So already being awarded a best selling status. So congratulations on that. It’s a wonderful read. And again, thanks for for coming and joining us for these conversations. And hopefully we’ll get to have you sometime in the future because there’s much more to talk and learn from you.
Kyle: [00:36:31] Would love to come back. Thank you.
Liel: [00:36:33] Thank you very much. Grace. What a powerful conversation.
Grace: [00:36:48] You wants to see it from both a victim’s and lawyer standpoint, right. I mean, like you said, specifically to wrongful death. How? Yeah. The chances of that happening are pretty. I would hope so.
Liel: [00:37:00] I would hope that’s one thing. But of course, Grace here in this podcast that we are mainly focused on the marketing side of things, kind of like a big wake up call about how oftentimes marketing is done around wrongful death cases. Right. I mean, he’s absolutely right. He’s absolutely right. I mean, it’s promoted in a way as almost, you know, here’s your lottery ticket. It’s terrible. And so I think if you were to ask me a side of those three fantastic takeaways that Kyle gave us is go back to humanizing your marketing. Right? Stop putting dollar values into everything that you’re doing. And remember that you’re dealing with human beings. You’re dealing with people who are dealing with emotions. And they don’t have they’re not they’re not. Right. We always, always somehow we bring up here the Maslow pyramid here. They’re not thinking of money at that point. They’re at a different level. They’re in a different stage. They’ve been actually pulled pretty much down. They’re in a level of instability and security. And so you need to level to that and create a message that actually helps them meet them right there where they are. You know, Grace, one of the examples that I’m giving lately a lot about it is just the terminology that we use to refer to what the law firm does.
Liel: [00:38:20] You know, oftentimes you hear drop the legal jargon, drop the legal jargon. And yet, you know, you go to the websites of law firms and there is this section on the side that it’s called practice areas. And when you think about it, practice areas is legal jargon. A normal person doesn’t necessarily know what a practice area is. You would think that they will reason it out and understand what it means. But rather than calling practice areas or practice areas, you may want to consider talking about the problems you solve. Situations we handle, cases we can help. You put simple words that people will use. Practice areas is a sterile, very clinical term to talk about the problems that people are having. Right. And so probably not the biggest deal of them all. It’s fine. It’s not a terrible thing to use the practice areas term, but you need to, you know, sometimes just ask yourself those type of questions. Is that the right term? Do people know what that is? Is that the way that I would explain to a ten year old what you do and how do you help people? You tell them about the practice areas that you handle anyhow. Grace, what are your thoughts?
Grace: [00:39:40] I have one takeaway that I think encompasses everything and it’s me personally live. I live by it. You know, when I when we talk about humanizing, marketing, humanizing things and, you know, showing true empathy, it’s it’s kind of to his third point, which is do the right thing. Mine is do unto others as you’d like, done unto yourself the golden rule of life. Because you don’t do that in your marketing. You do that in your every day. You do that when you’re dealing with clients both as a marketer or as an attorney. You are a counselor like Kyle said, right? Be a counselor of law. You are there to help people. So to your point, 100% practice areas, that’s the common language. We all use the term practice areas. But does anybody know what it means? I don’t really think so. You know, what can I help you with? Isn’t that what you say when I mean, think of Target, right? I used to work at Target for a couple of years. What can I help you with? That was my question to people not, oh, we have hard lines, we’ve got soft lines. That’s terminology to use in retail. Same practice areas is terminology, terminology we use and legal. So I totally agree with you.
Liel: [00:40:48] Yeah. And I use that as an example to to make the point that not because that’s become the norm, not because the norm has been to talk about wrongful death cases in in a dollar amount. Context only it means that it’s the best way of doing it. So that’s kind of like where I was going with that and yeah. Grace I think you are bringing it home with a great message here. You know, treat others the same way that you’d like to be treated. And with that, we’re going to say until next time, because we have a busy end of the year season and we are going to have a lot to talk about.
Grace: [00:41:31] That’s right. Right.
Liel: [00:41:32] All right. Well, Grace, all the best. Thank you very much. And until next one.
Grace: [00:41:38] And the next one. Thank you, Leal. Bye.
Liel: [00:41:45] If you like our show, make sure you subscribe. Tell your coworkers, leave us a review and send us your questions at: ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.
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