Steven Gursten: [00:00:00] So we have a acceptance rate, you know, cases we want basically just about 10%
Jonathan Hawkins: Hmm.
Steven Gursten: means that we are rejecting nine of every 10 cases. But guess what? That 10th case is a really, really good case. And, you know, if you are just selecting that 10th case every single time, can build an enormously profitable law firm. So, that’s what I’ve done and I kind of then apply that to these other areas of law. And you know, the point is what I did is not unique. And anyone listening to this podcast can do that and they should do that, and they should do it now before it becomes harder and more competitive and more expensive.
Jonathan Hawkins: You know, a couple things about that. I mean, the first thing I’ll say is, you know, most lawyers are just working their ass off. They’re busy and they’re tired and they’re just, they’re not thinking about it. And so part of it is, I think you gotta have some quiet time to think that’d be part of it.
But the other thing is, you gotta be looking, you gotta open your mind and look, you know, it’s the sort of thing it’s [00:01:00] almost like your subconscious does some work. You’re thinking about it, and then one day you’re watching the lions and you are like, I’m gonna do some searches. And then boom, it’s there.
Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We’ll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you’re in the right place.
Let’s dive in.
Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. This is a podcast where I get to interview founding attorneys and learn about their journeys and see what kind of cool and interesting things they’re up to nowadays. And today my guest is Steven Gursten. I had the pleasure of meeting him, I don’t know, a few weeks ago at a conference.
I gotta see him speak about a topic that I want to discuss today. It is really interesting. It’s [00:02:00] about disruption in the law. And so we’ll dive into that too. But the other cool thing about Steven is he’ll tell you he’s got five law firms, so, that’s really interesting as well. So welcome to the show, Steven.
Why don’t you tell us about yourself? And maybe, you know, you don’t have to give us all the law firms yet, but at least tell us, you know, sort of your main law firm.
Steven Gursten: Sounds good. First, thanks for having me and it’s a pleasure to be here. So my name is Steven Gursten. I’m an attorney in Michigan. My, how about we say this, my main law firm, my flagship is called Michigan Auto Law. 25 lawyers. We have two main locations one in metro Detroit and one in West Michigan in Grand Rapids.
So, you know, what I say to my friends around the country is I don’t want to take over the world. I just wanna own my state. So.
Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a good way to do it. So, so, you know, five law firms, man, you know, when we first met, I [00:03:00] remember you were sitting across, we were having a meal, I don’t know if it was lunch or breakfast, and you said five law firms. My ears even immediately went up and I was like, oh my God, what’s he talking about?
So. So, yeah, so tell us, you know, I guess maybe that we’ll start with sort of what are they and sort of how are they different?
Steven Gursten: Sure. So, you know, besides Michigan auto law I guess I am fueled by a combination of seeking opportunity, and profit and anxiety. So, both are great drivers. So about 2013, no, I take that back. It was 2014. I was very fortunate. I actually received the largest truck settlement in America that year. I was also a little bit flush and had some extra cash. What people forget now because it seems so like an alternate reality, but in 2014 you have to remember how. So many people were saying that autonomous vehicles were [00:04:00] coming, they were gonna put all the personal injury lawyers out of business.
They weren’t gonna be car accidents anymore. And I was thinking you know, along the lines of like Nasim Tale, how can I become anti-fragile? How can I, create some ballast? So if auto accidents go away and I become obsolete, and by the way, it would be wonderful if I become obsolete, it would be a better world. But I was thinking what are areas of law that could be resilient? And you know, one of those things is people are always gonna have jobs, at least for the foreseeable future, before our robot overlords take over. Right. And people are gonna get hurt on those jobs. That attracted me to workers’ comp.
In our seminar, I talked a little bit about how I did it. You know, the approaches I took, but long story short I identified workers’ comp as an area of tremendous opportunity. And I bought an existing workers’ comp law firm. I [00:05:00] don’t know very much at all about workers’ comp except how it relates to auto accidents.
But, I did know the search volume for workers’ comp lawyers in Michigan was off the charts. I know the competition when I looked online at the other law firms that were competing for work comp cases at that time I just I thought, you know what, in six months I’m gonna own this entire area law. And I created a website. I bought the work comp firm. They were work comp lawyers I already had been dealing with for years and years that I knew and trusted and I knew did a great job. And we’ve now grown to, I believe, 10 or 11 lawyers just in the work comp law firm. And we are the largest law firm in Michigan as well doing workers’ comp and it’s worked out really, really well. So that’s, that’s workers’ comp. I’m sorry.
Jonathan Hawkins: Oh yeah.
Steven Gursten: From there had referred a case to an electrocution case. And the attorney had settled it for many, many millions of dollars. [00:06:00] And that made me really curious. So my third law firm was a national law firm where I partnered with someone named Jeff Feldman, who I considered to be really the number one. He was clearly the most experienced electrocution lawyer in America. You know, I, borrow the saying from the Godfather, I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. I told him I would create a website. I’ll do all the marketing, I’ll pay all the case expenses, I’ll do all the management. I just need you to vet them.
Tell me if you like ’em. I’m not gonna force you to take a case that you don’t love. If you love it, work it and we’ll split it 50 50. And that has been phenomenal. We have had many, many really, really big settlements as a result. And it’s been a fun adventure handling these cases all over the country. My fourth law firm was an idea I’d been holding onto for about six, seven years. [00:07:00] So, Michigan had basically had the worst premises liability law in the country. It was terrible. We had a open and obvious as an absolute bar to duty, so it just wiped out premises cases in Michigan. But I, I always thought I could apply the same rationale to workers’ comp, to premises. I had a whole website ready to go, and when the Michigan Supreme Court eventually got to overturning the premises law and brought it back to what most of the countries already like today. I launched it and today we now have the largest premises liability law firm in the state as well. and then my fifth law firm which I started seven months ago is in California where I partnered with a absolutely fantastic lawyer and it’s specialized in truck accidents in California, we are headquartered in Los Angeles, which has the benefit of also [00:08:00] being considered a judicial hellhole according to the US Chamber of Commerce. So it’s really nice because a a million dollar case here in Michigan turns out to be worth about $3 million out in LA. So there’s something to love besides just the sunshine out there. You know, I, I have a really great partner out there and you know, again, same thing with electrocution, same thing with the other websites where I am controlling the marketing, the management. And I’m not licensed in California, although I’ve been pro hacked in on a couple of big cases in the past. but he is handling those cases and it’s amazing as, as incredibly competitive and expensive as the California personal injury market is. We’ve already gotten a couple really good cases and we’ve only been live for seven months, which is crazy. We’re off to the races and having fun.
Jonathan Hawkins: I think that’s really cool. So there’s a lot to unpack there. And I’m not gonna [00:09:00] ask you what your sixth law firm is, ’cause I know you’ve already got some idea. I know you’re, you’re cooking.
Steven Gursten: actually, believe it or not, last night and this morning I really may have started work on my sixth law firm.
Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I won’t ask you to divulge that ’cause I know you’re still infancy stage here, but so yeah, so you got the five law firms. So question I asked you across the tables, why five and not just one. So take me through your thought process.
Steven Gursten: So I think for a couple reasons, right? So, so one it can work you’re a brand and that means that you have to be a brand. And that means you have to compete and spend millions and millions of dollars every year to establish yourself as a brand. And I always kind of looked at it differently, which is the money you don’t spend on marketing, you keep as profit. And why would I need to establish a brand if I don’t need to? So, so that was the first reason. The second was, [00:10:00] listen There’s no question in our world today, there’s lots and lots of consumers that are gonna drive by a billboard or see a cheesy TV commercial, and they’re just gonna pick up the phone and call, they’re gonna get their share, right?
There’s no question. But there is also no question a very large segment of our population that no matter what area of law it is, they will do their research. You know, these are the people that get on consumer reports that, you know, whether it’s buying a car or a toaster oven or what have you they’re gonna do their research and if they’re gonna research a car, they’re gonna research their lawyer. And if they’re looking for an auto accident lawyer or a truck accident lawyer, medical malpractice lawyer, they wanna find the best lawyer in that area that they can find. So if you’re not a giant brand, then. The thought is go deep, not wide, really own an area of law and establish yourself as the total subject matter expert. What’s kind of [00:11:00] cool about that is that it doesn’t just work for consumers, it also works for Google. So, you know, the analogy I give and this is a little bit of an oversimplification, but it helps bring the point across, right? So you had a giant pizza and it has 20 different slices on it and every slice has a different topping.
What do you call that? Pizza, what do you call it,
Jonathan Hawkins: And everything. Pizza.
Steven Gursten: I mean, and, and you might be an everything lawyer, if they look at your website and, you know, click on the practice areas and they see a dropdown
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Steven Gursten: different areas of law. The problem is, is that the consumer gets confused, but the search engines also get confused. And by the way, I wanna preface this. I’m not an SEO. I do find it fascinating. Obviously it’s been a huge part of my career, so I, I read a lot about it, but but the reality is for Google, for the search engines, same principles apply, right? So if you can have lot of amazing [00:12:00] content that is very thematically relevant, if you could have a link profile that is thematically relevant, you could establish yourself as the authority and establish, you know, eat expertness authority and trust in that area, not only are you going to be probably getting a number of those researcher type consumers, but you’re also making it much easier for the search engines to figure out who you are. what they are trying to do is return the best search results. So if you’ve got 200 pages of content on one area of law, and you’ve really established that you are the subject matter expert and you’re competing against 200 other law firms that only have one page their website for a practice area, probably gonna rank pretty high. Right? what’s fascinating is I’ve been reading a lot about AI and how AI is gonna change search, and everything I just said [00:13:00] becomes even more important in our AI future because what that means now is the search engines like ChatGPT and Gemini, what have you, that, that use ai, all the large language models, they wanna know who you are as an entity. So it’s who you are, Jonathan, as an entity, what area of law you specialize in the entity of Jonathan Hawkins. for me, for my law firms, it’s the same thing. this is why now, almost going back things like knowledge graph and again, establishing yourself as an authority everywhere on the web now becomes so much more important. And it’s so much easier to do when you break it up into niche websites than it is if you try to kind of be greedy and throw it all in on, on one website. and by the way, like it doesn’t really serve you, does it? I mean, like, I see these law firms and they’ve got, you know, aviation wrongful death on their website, [00:14:00] right? Like that doesn’t help you, you know, I mean, so, so decide the areas of law you want to be most known for. And to me, again, I feel it’s you’re better served by going deep, not wide.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I mean, I was gonna ask you about the ai, but you know, for the Google and the AI search for sure, but also sort of the old adage, I think, you know, if you market to everyone, you market to, no one. I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, and it helps sort of craft the message to the specific niche target you’re after.
So I think that’s fascinating. I think it’s, it’s genius, really. And I’m gonna get into some of your thought process in a minute, but before we get there, so you’ve got these five different firms.
Steven Gursten: Can we stop the podcast now since you called me a, we could just end it.
Jonathan Hawkins: I’ll say it again. I’ll say it again. Yeah, we’ll quote that. We’ll, We’ll, yeah, we’ll lead with that everywhere. But, you know, you have the five different, how do you manage how do you keep ’em straight? How do you manage the five? That’s something that’s, you know, and maybe you’ve got a [00:15:00] system but you know, I’m thinking multiple payrolls, multiple operations, sy and all these things.
And then you know, it’s hard enough to run one firm, you know, add 2, 3, 4, all of a sudden you’re at five. You know, how do you manage it all?
Steven Gursten: So, this could take an hour, this could take 10 hours,
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Gursten: say is it is really helpful to develop a great team that you can rely upon. ’cause you can’t do it all yourself. It’s great to identify people that can compliment the areas that you’re weaker in or just that you don’t really like to do. So, I mean, for me, the worst thing in the world would be hr. You know, if one secretary’s mad at another secretary and it sucks an hour outta my life. That is my definition of hell.
Jonathan Hawkins: yeah.
Steven Gursten: I don’t deal with it. But I’m very fortunate. I have a great, COO. I have a great office manager. I have a great CMO. have some really great vendors that I. with really well that I’ve develop long-term, respectful [00:16:00] relationships with. I in having a really great management team. I have relied in the past on companies like, like Vista which is a consulting service for lawyers. even though I have a business background, you know, we don’t necessarily know what we don’t know. It is really helpful to create the systems that allow these law firms to function. So I am a big systems guy. And then last and most important I would say is I’ve had great partners, so you know, whether it’s my workers’ comp law firm where I already had, I. that I knew from dealing with them for years were the lawyers I considered the best were comp lawyers in Michigan already. They were already experts in the field. Same thing with my electrocution. You know, I had a, a lawyer that I considered the very best in the entire country. you know, it’s having really good partners that you can work with. And then I am a big [00:17:00] believer in systems. There are books like the Checklist Manifesto, and you know, the point of all these books is that you could be really, really bright, but when you’re getting clobbered by having 300 emails a day and you’ve got 20 phone calls, you can’t keep it all together.
You will forget things. And, you know, I really believe and this is kind of the point of the checklist manifesto. This is the point of books like E-Myth E Myth Revisited is the more you can create systems, the easier it becomes to manage these law firms very effectively and also efficiently. believe in art. So trial law is an art. So, you know, the point is you hire great lawyers. The parts that you can systematize as a way of spreading institutional knowledge and doing things at a very high level. But then you let your horses run and perform at the end. [00:18:00] Because the reality is there’s only a certain number of lawyers in this world that have the gift of taking a case that could be worth $1 million and turning that into $5 million. And my value proposition to my lawyers is really simple. I will pay you better than any law firm in Michigan. I’ve got crazy deals, but I also have almost no turnover. People don’t leave, and that’s because I create a law firm where the grass cannot be greener. Now the trade off is they have to be excellent and if they are excellent, they will produce more money here and make more money than they ever could anywhere else. But that also helps me. And you know, the reality is if you’re not pennywise and pound foolish, which is I think a real problem with a lot of law firm owners, you know, they underpay, they try to pay as little as they can. If you pay for excellence, but you demand excellence, you will make more money in the long [00:19:00] run. You’ll keep institutional knowledge and have a more a better culture and frankly just feels good, you know, to be that kind of of owner.
Jonathan Hawkins: Man, you just hit all the big points. I mean. if this is not one of your talks, it should be. And if it’s not a book, you need to write it, but it’s leadership team systems hire really good people take care of ’em so they never leave. I mean, that’s basically it. Right. And the other thing we haven’t talked about is you still try a lot of cases too, right?
I mean, you are not one of these CEO lawyers that doesn’t do anything. I mean, you’re out there trying, like real trials, I mean, multi-week trials, right?
Steven Gursten: Yeah. In fact I just finished a, a double death truck accident case in October. I still try cases, you know, and I still, I still love being a trial lawyer. I still love the practice of law. I’ve tried cases now in 14 states where I’ve been brought in by other lawyers, you know, who’ve heard me speak on trucking or [00:20:00] traumatic brain injury and asked me to co-counsel with them. I still love the law, but I also love the business of law and for me it’s fun and it’s also to create a world that’s more sustainable. So, you know, the whole weight of running a law firm isn’t just on my shoulders and I can have hopefully a more sustainable career.
Jonathan Hawkins: So you, you mentioned Vista and that’s, we met at a Vista conference and you gave this talk. It was something about the radical disruption coming to law or maybe that’s already here. And I thought it was fantastic. You know, you start out it’s one of those scare the shit out everybody at the beginning,
Steven Gursten: Yeah
Jonathan Hawkins: our, our life as we know it’s about to end. But then you know, so maybe let’s start with your. The premise and sort of what you see here or what’s coming, and then we can talk about sort of the solutions or maybe the ways to address it afterwards. So lay it out. What do you see happening to the practicing law [00:21:00] from your perspective?
Steven Gursten: There are a couple big things that are coming. A couple big inflection points. The first to me is the introduction of safety technology that is going to dramatically reduce the number of auto accidents on our roads over the next 5 to 10 years. It’s already here today but is now going to be mandatory every vehicle sold in America by 2029 must have automatic emergency braking. The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety estimates, that’s going to reduce the number of car crashes by about 50%. Now remember, my law firm is called Michigan Auto Law this is what I do.
I actually think it could be more than 50% because I look at my own cases.
I mean, I would say maybe 80% are rear ends at red lights. People that are stopped on the freeway they get smashed from behind. [00:22:00] You know, people that get rented by someone who’s texting and, and driving. And what automatic emergency braking will do is it literally will prevent, literally will stop the vehicle from smashing into the car in front of them. I believe the mandatory requirement is something along the lines of nine miles an hour to something like 90 miles an hour. So it’s, it’s a very broad spectrum and it took effect. The rule took effect this year. So, you know, so it is coming I think one of my messages, ’cause there, there’s a lot of personal injury law firms at the Vista Conference is you need to prepare for this how are you going to adapt to a world where, you know, there’s only so many car crashes that take place in any given month. And then if you start to reduce that, what effect is that gonna have on your practice? And my real message is what steps can you take now can help make you more resilient and [00:23:00] anti-fragile to that enormous change? Right. So, you know, I, and I gave a couple different examples at the Vista Conference.
The second thing that’s coming, which is fascinating, but is another huge inflection point, is the advent of ABS alternative business structures non-lawyer ownership of law firms. And the astounding amount hedge fund and private equity money that is already pouring into injury. And it is, you know, and how will you be able to compete with just the millions and millions of dollars that are, that will be pouring in into case acquisition, but not just, it’s not just the dollars it’s also the sophistication. You know, it is, listen as you know, probably better than anybody with what you do and what you see. Lawyers are massively inefficient. We’re really bad [00:24:00] businessmen or women. There’s very few economies of scale. know, We are paying over the market for pretty much everything from Staples orders to TV commercials and everything in between. We overpay our staff, you know, like, like a private equity company would probably love me because, you know, I am very profitable and I overpay.
And they would look at my law firm and say, we can slash overhead costs and just, you know, reap profits. But that is how they’re going to look at these law firms. very similar to how they looked at dental offices, you know, in the 1990s and, you know, these small doctor’s offices in the early aughts, you know, where, you know, again, private equity swept in and bought out a lot of these, you know. One, two person doctors, you know, doctor offices. the same concept applies. You know, lawyers are really bad businessmen, or women. We don’t know how to do math very well. We and when you combine these MBAs and this torrent of money [00:25:00] and things like AI and the sophistication they’re going to have with just everything it is going to make the world incredibly difficult already getting very difficult, but even harder for your solo, your small, small office you’re, you know, the general practitioner to be able to compete. So, you know, it’s, it, I almost look at it like there’s been three periods where everything has changed, right? So you had the practice law before 1977, which was, you know, small firm versus small firm you know, workers’ comp firms would pay off the unions, what have you. There’d be, you know, but basically it was a more level playing field for the most part. Then you had Bates versus State Bar of Arizona in 1977 and the advent of TV advertising and that brought us up until basically let’s say 2024, where you have, normally in every big market in America, you now [00:26:00] have a couple 800 pound gorillas are the biggest spenders. You have Morgan and Morgan and you know, those firms that are coming in and spending huge, vast amounts of money. And now in 2025, we have this third inflection point the advent of, you know, what will our world look like you have. Hedge funds and private equity investing in law. and it’s a fascinating thing to speculate about. You know, and I talked a little bit about all the amazing conflicts of interest
Jonathan Hawkins: Oh yeah,
Steven Gursten: and how these things are gonna be sorted out or not sorted out, you know, over the next few years. the, you know, but I also, if you recall during the seminar I just shared a whole bunch of different headlines from a whole bunch of different articles that basically says you small office lawyer, about to get wiped out. And it is gonna get super competitive and even more expensive and even more [00:27:00] difficult to acquire cases. those are some very interesting headwinds that we
Jonathan Hawkins: yeah.
Steven Gursten: we are facing.
Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s. I don’t know personally, I don’t know if this has happened yet, but I envisioned the situation, I can’t remember if you mentioned it or not, but where you’ve got these gigantic insurance companies that have pools of money and they need to invest it somewhere. You know, they usually buy big real estate and all these things, but I could see them, I could see the insurance company basically being on both sides of the V and no one would really know it.
So it’s like they’re basically paying themselves in the circle, right?
They, They own the plaintiff’s. They own the fund that owns the plaintiff’s firm, but then they’re the, they’re also the one, you know, paying the whatever out. So they’re never gonna lose. Right.
Steven Gursten: Well, and think about the amazing conflict here, right? So, so let’s say State Farm, you know, you can’t watch a football game without seeing 20 State Farm commercials. It drives me nuts. But, imagine your next football game is gonna be you can save 20% on your insurance if you enroll in State [00:28:00] Farm Legal. And meanwhile, state Farm uses Xactimate, is their claims software. they use to process personal injury claims for their claims adjusters. The whole point of Xactimate and Colossus, which is used by about 80 different insurance companies in the industry today, meant to gradually suppress value of cases by tracking very carefully median, average settlements in that geographic region, then slowly ratcheting them down. How does State Farm also offer to represent you if you’ve been injured in a claim when they also have a, an entire business, you know, that’s based on paying as little as possible on those claims. So it is fascinating. You know, Google right now an ownership interest in Rocket Lawyer. What happens when Google gets into legal and says, you know, and starts altering the search results? [00:29:00] In search or in Gemini and pushing towards Rocket Lawyer and suppressing other results. The potential for conflicts of interest are massive. Just massive. They’re all over the place.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah
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Jonathan Hawkins: so there’s the other thing that everybody’s talking about nowadays that could be. Seen as a threat or maybe a, you know, a bright light, at least in some of the functions that a plaintiff’s lawyer does. And that’s ai. You know, I can tell you from, I was at a conference the last couple days and it was really hourly type lawyers and that, and, you know, AI is just gonna wipe out, you know, the folks that bill by the hour that huge tranches of that practice are just gonna go away with ai.
Now on the flip side for a PI lawyer, I mean, there’s huge pieces of what you do [00:30:00] that perhaps it might help you be more efficient. So, I don’t know. What are your thoughts on the AI part?
Steven Gursten: Yeah, so if you remember, I talked about AI a little bit as well. So AI is going to slash overhead and costs in things like things like demand packages and medical records and medical chronologies, and helping us prepare for depositions. It the advantages are amazing. You’re right, if you are a lawyer that is doing, let’s say contracts, wills, trusts, divorce, you know, basic, anything that can be done algorithmically or a large language model with ai, I do think you’re gonna get wiped out. And the irony about personal injury is even though most lawyers haven’t been in a courtroom in 20 years. But that’s also I think, our saving grace, right? Because AI can’t try a case, they can’t appear in court. You know, there’s what something some [00:31:00] several hundred thousand English speaking lawyers from India and you know, now from places like Columbia and, and other areas they are not licensed in Michigan or Georgia to appear in court.
So almost going back to our roots trying cases, appearing in court, you know, being a litigator, that is still going to be overall pretty resistant to the huge changes that we’re gonna see with ai. as a law firm owner, you know, listen, it’s a better world today. And I mean this sincerely, as you know, I have a daughter. The world’s changed like, you know, two generations ago, really talented women tended to go into things like teaching nursing. They became paralegals and legal secretaries. Now they go to law school. And you know, the reality is it’s really, really hard to find a great paralegal these days. and honestly, a great legal secretary is like worth their weight and gold, you know, you just can’t find them anymore. [00:32:00] And AI is really going to help us with a lot of the things that, for example, paralegals used to do that AI can now do much more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, it is. The future is gonna be a lot different. So, you know, the second part of your talk, you sort of gave you know, sort of a framework or sort of advice on how to at least think differently. I mean, didn’t get, give specific stuff, but this maybe circles back to when you started looking at your workers’ comp firm.
You know, it’s thinking outside the box. What can we do? How do we diversify our, you know, revenue streams or verticals, whatever. So what, what’s your advice as you see the landscape? You know, how should a lawyer out there be thinking you know, how do I adjust my strategy, whatever, to sort of adapt in this new world?
Steven Gursten: Yeah, so, you know, the saying that the Chinese fortune cookie proverb something like, you know, the best time to plant a tree is yesterday, the second best time to plant a [00:33:00] tree is today. and the point of my talk was, if these disrupted changes are coming, you’re much better served doing it now today, trying to do it five years from now when everybody else is scrambling as well. so I talked about how I identified opportunity because the key is, it’s not unique to me. You know, you were very gracious earlier when you said it was genius, but the reality is it’s just looking for opportunity and being able to handle risk which by the way is something lawyers are notoriously bad at doing.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Steven Gursten: But you are right. I mean, that’s why we became lawyers to begin with. But there’s so many massive opportunities out there. So I might be the only personal injury lawyer in America that, that was an econ major in college, but, you know, but you know what makes a good business? And it’s, two things.
It’s number one, it’s meeting an existing demand, and the higher that demand are, the more money you’re gonna make. And the second thing is [00:34:00] scarcity. And the mistake that I, I believe most lawyers make is we allow ourselves to become commodities. We are replaceable, we are indistinguishable from several hundred or several thousand other lawyers that are competing for the same cases and essentially saying the same thing, So the idea is a, if you’re, if it’s too late and you’re already in one of those areas, it’s the challenge is how can you stand out? How can you make yourself remarkable? How can you make yourself different from everybody else? So you are still the go-to lawyer in that area and I have many thoughts on that. to your question the second thing where there’s tremendous opportunity still today is there are so many areas of law that have a amazing opportunity, very high demand and scarcity. So the example that I gave in our seminar was my workers’ comp law firm. And, you know, I knew back in 2014 that I [00:35:00] wanted to diversify, but I didn’t really know where or how, and I talked about how I did it.
So I was watching a football game one Sunday afternoon I’m watching the Lions lose because in 2014 the lions were doing a lot of losing.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Steven Gursten: and I started, you know, just putting in different areas of law into MAs, which was the tool I was using at the time. I just wanted to see like what was the volume of, you know, for people who are using those keywords. How high was the search volume for different areas of law? And with workers’ comp, even though there were a ton of work comp law firms out there there weren’t very many very good websites. And the reality is, you know, comp has been on, you know, fallen on hard times in most states for a very long time. of the lawyers who do comp are kind of old. They don’t really understand digital marketing. They have really ugly websites. They have no backlink profiles, really crappy [00:36:00] content. And I remember looking at the search volume and then looking at the competition when it came up. I literally said to myself like, I will own this area of law in six months. And it turned out I ended up owning it in three months, you know, and we’ve never, you know, we’ve always been number one in Google since, and, you know, even though comp is terrible as a general rule, you know, the reality is there’s still some amazing good cases out there.
So we have a acceptance rate, you know, cases we want basically just about 10%
Jonathan Hawkins: Hmm.
Steven Gursten: means that we are rejecting nine of every 10 cases. But guess what? That 10th case is a really, really good case. And, you know, if you are just selecting that 10th case every single time, can build an enormously profitable law firm. So, that’s what I’ve done and I kind of then apply that to these other areas of law. And you know, the point is what I [00:37:00] did is not unique. And anyone listening to this podcast can do that and they should do that, and they should do it now before it becomes harder and more competitive and more expensive.
Jonathan Hawkins: You know, a couple things about that. I mean, the first thing I’ll say is, you know, most lawyers are just working their ass off. They’re busy and they’re tired and they’re just, they’re not thinking about it. And so part of it is, I think you gotta have some quiet time to think that’d be part of it.
But the other thing is, you gotta be looking, you gotta open your mind and look, you know, it’s the sort of thing it’s almost like your subconscious does some work. You’re thinking about it, and then one day you’re watching the lions and you are like, I’m gonna do some searches. And then boom, it’s there.
And then you’re like, all right, I got it. And, you know, most lawyers, at least that I talked to, they’re just sort of caught in the cycle. They’re on the treadmill and they’re not stepping back, looking at the scene and looking at, you know, the. Potential train wreck that’s ahead and they’re like, wait a second, how’d I get off this train?
And so, you know, I thought that was really, you know, your brain works that way and you’ve done it now a couple times and it’s probably, you can’t stop. I mean, you [00:38:00] just bitched your sixth one’s on the way.
Steven Gursten: This might literally be
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Steven Gursten: It’s, you know, but what I’ve tried to do, you know, I mean, my first 15 years I wanted to be the best trial lawyer in Michigan, and my goal was to have a great career where people referred me cases. And you know, what I realized is I got closer into that world. don’t get me wrong, I still love it. I still try cases, but there’s a reason why there aren’t very many older trial lawyers. And the reason is it does take its pound of flesh. is hard. there’s normally a personal cost. if you really get to know these lawyers, and I, many of them are my friends, but you know, a lot of them are divorced.
A lot of them have had multiple marriages. A lot of them have estranged relationships with their kids. A lot of them pay a personal price in terms of their health. you know, there’s a lot of stress. [00:39:00] And what I realized was. to create a future was not dependent on others, that where I had control of my own destiny where it could be sustainable and I can take a lot of the pressure off myself try the cases I want to try. that I have to try every hot grounder that gets referred to me by another lawyer. And it was just very important to me also just, you know, to have a great marriage to have a great relationship with my kids when they were young. You know, that became very important to me as well. And these other law firms.
It sounds risky when you first hear about it, but it’s actually, there’s far less risk doing it my way than doing it the way everybody else does it. And I feel like it’s given me a lot of freedom as well to be able to pursue. it’s family interests, hobbies, ’cause [00:40:00] all the way to the world isn’t just on my shoulders anymore. You know, I’ve mastered the, you know, the thing that most lawyers can’t, which is I now have multiple revenue streams and I have checks coming in every day that can open while I’m sitting there on a, you know, by a pool one day.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Steven Gursten: it’s, I mean, it’s kind of the dream. You don’t always have to keep working harder and harder and more hours and more hours to create and generate these multiple revenue streams. It takes a lot of pressure off you.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. And you’re as you say, anti-fragile. And it’s got me thinking. I’ll tell you, I’ve got some ideas, but we’ll talk about that later. But so I wanna, I wanna shift gears a little bit. So you sort of mentioned this, but you know, we met, you were speaking at this conference and, you know, I went on your website and I mean, you’ve got, I mean, you speak all the time, all over the place.
Which I wanna just sort of dive into, you know. Some lawyers, you know, rely on referrals and sort of how do we get referrals? How do we, you know, you can go to lunch, you can take them to [00:41:00] dinner, all these sorts of things. But speaking is, is a pretty powerful way to do it as well. And I wanna sort of get your take on it.
So the first thing is, you know, early in your career, was this something that you just said, all right, this is my strategy. I’m gonna go speak everywhere. Or did it just sort of happen on accident?
Steven Gursten: Well, both, you have to put yourself out there, right? And you can’t say no when you’re invited. So remember early in my career my world was very different. I was we, my law firm was four lawyers. You know, now it’s 25, so, you know, most of my cases, all, in fact, almost all my cases at that time came from other lawyers as referrals. So I was very driven to put myself out there for referrals. I was very fortunate because I became a lawyer in 1995 and 1995. For the listeners who do personal injury was when Allstate came out with its MIST, Minimal Impact Soft Tissue Program. [00:42:00] And for the first time in an, an entire generation, they were making lawyers go to trial low vehicle damage, soft tissue cases. So I’m a baby lawyer in 1995, and all of a sudden there were all these cases to try. And all these opportunities to get great trial experience an entire generational lawyers that you know, Warren Buffet has a saying, which is when the tide goes out, you could see who’s swimming naked. And everybody was swimming naked because no one had been in, you know, no one had had a jury trial in like 20 years. So, I was trying cases left and right. And my theory even back then was the worst, my greatest fear was being lumped into an indistinguishable mass of other lawyers. How can I make myself stand out? How can I be different? How can I be remarkable? And trial was the easiest, fastest way to do that because there’s not many lawyers that go to trial. So I started trying cases left and [00:43:00] right, and I was very fortunate. very, Very early on I started getting million dollar verdicts and, that led to more referrals. And you know, philosophy at that time was, I have no ego. You know, like if I lose, you know, it probably a case I should have lost, right? But if I went on a hero and it leads to more referrals, and I think in my, my second year I got that million dollar verdict on a soft tissue case with Allstate on a $10,000 offer. And then the following year I received an Oakland County, Michigan, which is a very conservative Republican, I Mitt Romney type county. Four and a half million dollar verdict on a mild TBI, the person had worked for eight months after the crash. And guess what happened? You know, even though there were lots of lawyers, people were coming out of the woodwork to refer me these cases. And then you know, a year or two after that, I got my first multimillion dollar trucking verdict, and all of a sudden I became the [00:44:00] trucking lawyer. I realized at that point that being a trucking lawyer is a lot more profitable than being a soft tissue lawyer.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Steven Gursten: know, I really did a deep dive on trucking and I was one of the original lawyers that really started specializing in trucking, speaking all over the country on trucking traumatic brain injury as well, trial as well. and that really led to me being one of a very small handful of lawyers in Michigan that became the go-to source for lawyers that, that had a hot grounder where they couldn’t settle it and they needed to try the case. And the more national speaking I did, the more I kind of became the Michigan guy. And where I think our world has really changed is now we have listeners I’ll give you a great example. So, today is May 8th. And for any listeners of yours that. back and look on the Maryland trial lawyer listserv last night on May 7th. A lawyer puts on there. I have [00:45:00] a big auto accident case in Detroit, Michigan.
Can someone recommend a lawyer? And I had three lawyers out there that all put my name out there, now means not only did that lawyer see my name, and he referred me the case this morning, but several thousand other Maryland lawyers also saw my name. And you become the Michigan guy and that is a hell of a lot more effective than taking someone to launch or
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Steven Gursten: So if you can become the Georgia guy, the Michigan guy and I spent, you know, I will always accept a phone call from an out-of-state lawyer and even if I can’t help them, they’re calling me and asking for divorce lawyer or something like that. I will spend the time to help ’em because I want to be known as the go-to lawyer in Michigan. And that is also warped my practice. I mean, I will tell you, I have 25 lawyers. I could let everybody go tomorrow at Michigan Auto Law. My, my main law firm, if I just hung a shingle, I get two to three phone calls a [00:46:00] week from some lawyer somewhere in the United States that has heard me speak or gotten my name from someone. I would never have to worry about anything. And I would have a great life. And that is what speaking can do for you. And it’s a hell of a lot better, I feel like, than my ugly mug on a billboard or, you know, a bus wrap,
Jonathan Hawkins: A lot cheaper. Uh, Yeah. You know, it’s, it is interesting, you know, I’m with you a hundred percent. You know, I think you know, I started early in my career it was going to lunches and coffees and dinners, you know? But there’s only so much time in the day. You only have three meals. I mean, and you gotta do some work too.
It’s, It’s hard to scale that. I enjoy it still. I mean, I enjoy the human contact. But, you know, when you speak, there’s the scalability aspect, but then also, I guess sort of the expertise aspect and then. If you actually can speak well, then there’s sort of a demonstration aspect. You know, I don’t know what, let me hear your thoughts.
So you get invited to speak, not you, but a person gets invited to speak and then, [00:47:00] you know, they don’t prepare and they’re just reading from notes and it’s, you know, just a terrible presentation. That might be, I don’t know, you tell me. Is it worse than not speaking at all, or uh, at least you’ve gotten up there.
Steven Gursten: You become very forgettable very quickly.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Steven Gursten: also, I think, earn a little bit of people’s iron and anger, right? Because they spend a lot of money to go somewhere. And here you speak and know you’re not taking it seriously. So, you know. I listen, my, my tips for what it’s worth is someone that’s given or 500 seminar talks over the years is, take it very seriously. You know, be very substantive, give away a lot of valuable information, but also be entertaining. you know, try not to speak from notes, try not to read off, you know, read your PowerPoint slides. try to maintain really good eye contact with the audience. The reality is just like everything, the more you do it, the easier it gets. [00:48:00] And the more entertaining and the more substantive you are, the more it does then lead to invitations to speak. And know, so for example, the state trial lawyer directors, the executive directors of all 50 states, have their own listserv. And they are always looking for really highly rated speakers that they can invite to speak at their state’s trial lawyer seminars.
And if you get on that list where people are putting you out there, you know, the invitations are just gonna keep coming in and coming in. And people that hear you speak in the audience are gonna keep inviting you to speak at other conferences as well. So it just, it, everything builds on itself, but you have to deliver. And you have to treat it like you should. That this is a mark of respect and you should take it really seriously.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I’m with you. You know, I’m borrowing the term from somebody else, but [00:49:00] edutainment, you know, you definitely wanna educate, but you gotta entertain. You gotta entertained. At least keep ’em, you know, somewhat, you know, you don’t have to tell jokes, but you know, at least keep ’em engaged. But yeah, so I’ve taken some notes here that that’s really good.
But I’m with you as well. You know, I mean, you could almost treat it like it’s, you know, you’re not gonna go in front of it. You shouldn’t at least. Go do a closing argument in front of the jury not prepared for that. It’s not gonna end well. I mean, maybe you get lucky but yeah. So, we’ve been going at it for a while.
We haven’t even talked about, you know, sort of how you got started and all that, so maybe we’ll have to come on again for that. But another thing you’ve, done and this is maybe speaking as part of this, but you’re involved with a lot of national groups. So you know, you primarily practice in Michigan, but again you’re very involved in some of these national lawyer groups and other groups like that.
So, what’s your thought process behind that? Maybe advice to other lawyers, you know, get out of [00:50:00] your local jurisdiction and maybe go national versus just staying local.
Steven Gursten: Yeah, so I, that is exactly my advice. So I realized fortunately very, very young, very early in my career, that when I speak in Michigan, being from Michigan, everybody calls me, but they’re not referring me their cases for the most part. They just want free help. they just want my work product, they want my, my trucking rugs, you know, they want to know if I can give them a copy of my closing argument that I got on, you know, my last big verdict, what have you. Everyone’s kind of mooching and, you know, listen I’m all for helping your brothers and sisters in know, your local bar, but it’s not making your life that much better.
If you go national, like I said, then you become the Michigan guy that, you know, in your case the Georgia guy you know, there’s a lot of great lawyers out there, a lot of extremely successful lawyers out there. They don’t wanna try Case in Michigan. wanna refer you the case and get the referral fee. So, [00:51:00] I just, I looked at it and I said, you know, if I do the Michigan thing, it is a thankless job for a whole bunch of reasons. And if I go national first it’s more intellectually interesting. You meet a lot of different lawyers, you get a, I think. As a general rule there they’re at a little bit of a higher level, I think than a lot of the people from your state that speak at these seminars. you learn more interesting ways and more cutting edge ways that things are being done. you create these amazing relationships where, you know, like I said last night when someone’s looking for a lawyer in Michigan, on the Maryland Listserv, you’ve got multiple people that are putting your name out there. So, and it goes also fundamentally to what we were talking about earlier, which is decide what you want to be and don’t be a jack of all trades but decide what area of law you want to be and be the develop mastery. You know, I’ve, I’m very fortunate. I’ve been the past president now of the trucking lawyers, the traumatic brain injury lawyers the distracted driving [00:52:00] litigation group. been the president of the Bella Society and, you know, a few others. But that has created a network of trusted friends and great lawyers. And it has also made me a much better lawyer as well. And you know, by the way it’s funny but have lawyers in Michigan all the time calling me saying, I’ve got a lawyer, you know, I need a lawyer in such and such city and state. Who do you recommend? Because you also develop a network of really great, trusted friends all over the country and, you know, I, I mean, I literally know everybody everywhere. I mean, you know, as a general rule, like, you know, on, on the speaker circuit ’cause you become friends with them over time and it’s just a very very rewarding way to also build your practice.
Jonathan Hawkins: Great point. I mean, it definitely benefits you building the practice, all that. But it’s the friendships and the relationships. I mean, that’s really what being human’s all about. And the more you got it, the better. So, okay, last question. This may be a little complicated, but I like to ask as [00:53:00] you look forward for the next 5, 10, 15 years, you know, what’s the vision for your firm?
But you’ve got multiple firms, so I, you know, you decide how you wanna answer it. So what, you know, what, what does the future look like for you?
Steven Gursten: You know, this’ll be my, my worst answer of the day, I think I really don’t when people have written in stone, you know, five, 10 year ‘ cause too many things can change. you know, let’s go back to, you know, 2014. I thought by 2019 I’d be outta business. I’d be obsolete as a car accident lawyer. You know, even General Motors was saying that they were gonna manufacture cars by the year 2019 that didn’t have steering wheels and brakes.
Jonathan Hawkins: Wow.
Steven Gursten: So think about that. You know, and you know, there were people like, you know, Sergey Brin and, and you know, Elon Musk that were guaranteeing you that everything would be level five, fully autonomous, you know, so, so who knows what our future is really going to be. To me, [00:54:00] it is so much more important to be agile, to be able to look for opportunity and also work on yourself, right? To have the emotional stability, to be able to handle things like risk and uncertainty, which most people can’t do. And that requires a lot of work. But I. Those are the things that, that I think you need to do, which is always be looking for opportunity looking for things that excite you, that get your juices going whether it’s a great case or a great challenge or a new business opportunity. but don’t write it in stone because, you know, three years ago nobody was talking about AI and look at our world today.
So things are moving too quickly.
Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Steven, this has been awesome. I mean, you dropped some really good nuggets and I appreciate that and I’m looking forward to learning what the six law firm’s gonna be. So make sure you, you tell me once it’s up and running, let me know. But for anybody out there that wants to get in touch with you, maybe they’ve got a big trucking case I wanna bring you in on, or maybe they got a, a [00:55:00] Michigan, a big Michigan case.
What’s the best way to find you?
Steven Gursten: Best way is through my website, which is Michigan auto law.com. Michigan auto law.com. So, Jonathan, thank you so much for having me. It was really a pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, this has been fine. Thank you.
OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We’ll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.
