Dan Purtell: [00:00:00] For so long, you convince yourself that, you know, you’re, you can’t, that this wouldn’t happen without me. We can’t do, like, I need to be, I need to do, and really just need to, you know, get outta the way and trust your people.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I imagine it can be both ego deflating in the sense that, hey, they can do this without me, and maybe they did it better without me, but also incredible feeling liberating if you’re not around and all this stuff had you go on vacation, you come back and all these things have happened and you’re like, damn, that’s awesome.

Dan Purtell: Oh, it certainly frees you up right? To do the things that, you know, I’ve mentioned it before, like finding what your highest value add is. Right. I know that other people can do things much better than I can. And it’s like 90% of the professional space, there are certain things that I’m pretty darn good at, and now I get to focus on them so that ultimately, you know, reaps dividends for the firm on at that level.

So, you know, and we’re also blessed because, you know, we’ve had enough success to be able to bring on these people, right? If we were [00:01:00] strapped or if we were on a baseline, it’d be difficult to take that revenue and invest back in people. But for now, it’s the clear decision for us.

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. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a podcast where I get to interview law firm leaders and learn about their journeys and lessons learned along the way. So hopefully I can maybe avoid mistakes that I’d otherwise make and maybe accelerate my growth. And hopefully you, the audience member can do the same.

So [00:02:00] excited about today’s guest. We’ve got Dan Purtell of McEldrew Purtell, which is a personal injury firm based in Philadelphia. I recently met Dan and was immediately impressed with some of the stuff he’s got going on, and I, I said I gotta get him on and talk about what he’s doing and what he sees in the future of personal injury law.

Particularly, but also just law firms in general with some of the movement we’ve seen with outside ownership, et cetera, et cetera. So, Dan, welcome to the show. Why don’t you uh, tell us a little bit about your firm you know, how many folks you got where you’re located, where, where you’re, where you’re moving, and then we’ll dive in.

Dan Purtell: Well, well first of all, I want to thank you for the platform. I think it’s a, a very important space and, and you’re doing good work here and thank you for having me. I appreciate it. As you said I’m with  McEldrew Purtell, . We’re based outta Philadelphia. We do have a, a national practice depending on subject type, but we, we do catastrophic complex [00:03:00] cases.

You know, we’ve, we’ve had quite a bit of growth recently. I think we’re, we’re right at the 60 person mark overall with about 20 vo practicing across medical malpractice, nursing, trucking, commercial vehicle, toxic torque products, civil rights. I don’t wanna miss any ’cause somebody’s gonna get mad at me.

We do a, a cargo practice, which is primarily cargo, securement, collapse, forklift transition, that type of case. We have a, a civil rights wrongful conviction and, and excessive force case. Pretty much any catastrophic complex topic. We have a team of lawyers that, that has a background in that subtype.

Jonathan Hawkins: So would you call yourself a trial firm or more high volume or some sort of blend of that?

Dan Purtell: Certainly a trial firm. We prep every case from the beginning for trial lower volume side. You know, I, I, that’s kind of a relative question, right? High volumes, some volumes high for, some people have low for others. You know, I think we [00:04:00] have right in the area of 450 or 500 files right now. But with 20 lawyers, you can see the kind of file density we look for.

We don’t want people overworked. We want people to be able to work deep and to do the best work as fast as, as, as early, as early in the case as possible and really maximize value. So we try to maintain a, a really manageable file load for everybody. And that’s why we’re growing so much. ’cause we, we we’re fortunate enough to keep getting cases.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, it’s interesting, you know, I see, you know, particularly on the personal injury side, firms that grow really fast, they sort of fall into, you know, one of the buckets. You know, and this is just generalization, but it seems like the ones that are going really fast. Advertise and have a lot of volume of cases and they need a lot of lawyers.

But you’re growing fast, but you’re not doing that, or, or you’re doing very little of that. It’s more like you said, the, the, the deeper work, the bigger cases, the, the trial work.

Dan Purtell: Yeah, we don’t advertise per se. We work with a lot of people who, who are very good at advertising. who who have a, a wide [00:05:00] imprint on advertising. We’re fortunate enough that, that we’ve developed relationships with a lot of folks who do aggregate cases and when they think a case is good for us we’re, we’re here, we we’re largely referral based.

We do have, you know, I’d say probably 70 30, I’d love to kind of split that mix a little more, but we, we are heavily B2B or referral based law firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, we’re gonna dive into more of that, but, but I want to go back. We’re gonna go back. So, you know. The other thing that I’ve seen a lot with personal injury lawyers is many of them started on the defense side, then made the switch at some point. Very few go straight to plaintiff’s works work straight outta law school, although there are some where, where do you fall in that?

Dan Purtell: I’m a true believer I’ll, I’ll never do defense work a day in my life. I came straight, I came straight to the personal injury side. You know, I had a, a rocky start getting started. It’s not an easy, easy path, right? I wouldn’t recommend it necessarily. I actually think there are smarter ways to get to where I am than, than the path that I [00:06:00] chose.

But I, but I truly do believe that what we do is a calling. I never had any interest in doing any other type of law. This is where I, where I kind of found myself pretty quickly and. While I caution young lawyers on the same path, I think it’s very rewarding and doable. If you have the right mentality and you’re aligned in.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I asked because, you know, I went to law school wanting to be a plaintiff’s trial lawyer. And I tried my, the heck outta getting a job straight outta there. I mean, I, I was cold and back then, you know. You had the, the Hard bound Martindale books back then. So I’m hand, I’m sending letters to every personal injury firm I could find in the state of Georgia.

And nobody would hire me. Because the model is, you know, they, they liked you to go get a little training on defense side first, not too much. ’cause it is hard to break that mentality. But they, once you get a little bit. So yeah, I, I know how hard it was. It was, I didn’t do, I, I didn’t do it, so I know how hard it [00:07:00] is.

So kudos to you for, for sticking with it and, and finding that path. ‘Cause it’s not easy.

Dan Purtell: No, it’s not. I mean, I, to your point, I remember being in the law library and, and sending out 70 letters to every firm I could find, and not getting a single response. And, you know, I was fortunate enough to clerk with a, with a qua, with a high quality firm throughout law school, and I started there. My friends will joke.

I mean, I bounced around a little bit my first couple years, had some ups, had some downs. Was actually initially let go by my, my mentor, Jim McEldrew, and then brought back to the firm. So, you know, there, there, there are some fits and starts in this path. But I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. I’ve learned so much.

When, when you kind of start at the bottom, you, you, you understand every, I, I’ve worked every job in the firm from marketing through intake, from signups to medical records, to discovery and pleadings. You know, I’ve done it all. I’ve done it all a lot. And I think that really helps when we’re, when we’re trying to build a system here.

So it’s like I said, it was a [00:08:00] rough road for a while, but I wouldn’t change it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so, so let’s dig in and talk a little bit. We’ll start with sort of, marketing. We’ve sort of touched on it a little bit, but you know, in the PI space, you know, we’ve talked about it, you know that you have some that. Do a lot of traditional advertising, billboard, tv, radio. Then you’ve got a lot of people that pursue on the, on the digital side.

Then you’ve got some that are you know, I call really low volume referral base, just trial firms. And you probably lean more towards that. How did you guys find, you know, what works for you and you don’t have to give away the secret sauce, but in terms of getting the cases to fuel this growth that you’ve had.

Dan Purtell: Sure. You know. We are, we’re traditionally where our background was in medical malpractice, kind of a grab bag of PI and really one of our bread and butter practices, which is our railroad, FELA practice. And so we kind of had a three-headed, three-headed team there. And none of which was marketed at all.

It was all client base and relationships. You know, over the [00:09:00] years we have really tried to lean into what I refer to as B2B marketing. So, you know, when I, my clients are twofold, of course, the individuals and their families that we represent, but it’s also the attorneys that I work with that, that do their own marketing, that have their own firm.

They have their own client base. They’re the ones that, that, that get, see the cases, see the volume of work. And when, you know, my job is really to communicate with them. Let them know what cases, you know, we think we have, we’re, we’re really positioned well to maximize and, you know, to back it up when we get a file.

So, what, over the years, what we’ve really done is kind of focused on our outreach, focused on our B2B marketing. I’m not gonna say that we don’t have some small sided SEO stuff that we do that attempting to get a, a case here and there, but really what we do is we work with other law firms. So that’s the, you know, you can’t get away from legal marketing these days whether good or bad, right?

The billboards, the TV commercials, we work with most of those people. They’re great at [00:10:00] what they do. They have it down to a science. They’re so good at what their marketing and their, and their tech space that it’s impressive. And we’re fortunate enough to work with them. Also, you know, we have hundreds of small firms that send us, you know, one to two cases a year.

So we, we really do run the gamut. And that’s what we pride ourselves on. You know, we, we have a full intake team now a, a great attorney in her own right, Carrie Capouellez leads our marketing, or excuse me, our, our in intake team. She’s got a staff of four or five. So we’re really there to get geared up fast and we, we have a, then we have a pre-lit team, another 10 people that their job’s to build the case.

So we, we really do try to live to what we. Put as, which is a firm that really gets at the file from first, you know, we don’t sit back, we don’t wait on the, we are there to attack the, if we’re gonna take, we’re gonna finally have the people and the systems and the teams to make that work.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’ll tell you, the firms that attack the [00:11:00] file usually get the, the bigger numbers, the bigger results from my uh, experience. So take, take me through sort of the evolution of the firm. You know, again, we recently met, so I’ve not seen the growth, but my sense is that you guys have grown a lot and that you’re looking to grow more.

And I’m just curious sort of the path that that’s taken.

Dan Purtell: You know, at the beginning, it, it was a, it was a small firm  Jim McEldrew my mentor, great friend. Former partner and boss he started everything. I mean, there was times where it was five of us, right? We were, we were a true small firm where everybody was on, on task for whatever needed, needed to happen that day.

There was just a, there was an all hands on deck mentality, and, and that served us well with the size and scope that we had. Over time we started getting more and more complex cases, larger cases. You asked earlier what was, you know, kind of one of the keys in our, in our trajectory and I would say it was starting to really define what it is that we did [00:12:00] take.

You know, it’s really hard if you’re a referral attorney to turn down a case. It’s kind of scary to start doing it, and I know other people in our space have talked about it and I think they’ve probably done a better job than I will, but I’m a big proponent of it. You really need to. Stick to the cases that you are really designed to take.

And you know, I think it’s, I think uh, Joe Freed, probably a lot of people know him. He said something along the lines that a case needs to be a priority for its attorney. So if, if we’re taking a case and it’s not a priority for our attorneys, then we’re taking the wrong case. So it’s, you know, the, the client deserves to have their case be a priority.

So if it’s, if it’s a case that doesn’t fit our space, we have to be able to say no. We started doing that and for counterintuitively, our, the cases that we did want started skyrocketing. We started getting more and more of the cases where we wanted them. So it, it worked. We’ve grown real fast. We were growing into COVID and I think we really learned that, you know, the remote workplace works, that the national [00:13:00] practice works, that we can do sophisticated teamwork.

And we started building out, we started adding attorneys, we started adding staff, we started adding professional operations teams and it’s just it’s been a wild ride to where we are now.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you mentioned there about turning down cases. And that’s, I get it, man. That’s scary stuff. That’s scary stuff ’cause especially when you have a referral based firm, you start turning away, you’re like, they’re not gonna call me next time. And so,

Dan Purtell: My business is gonna go to the next guy, or there any number of ways you can lose that account, lose that relationship, and it’s a scary proposition to get started.

Jonathan Hawkins: So how did you break through that mindset shift? ’cause you know, I have broken through a number of those in my journey. I think everybody does, and that’s a big one. So how did you break through it?

Dan Purtell: Honestly, I probably heard somebody on a podcast say something smart about doing it, and I stuck to it. I’ve been a big proponent of this space, the attorney education space, whether it be books or podcasts, and I don’t pretend to [00:14:00] be a masterful creator, right. Most of the things that I’ve done over time have been adoptions for other people.

And I, you know, it always kind of struck me as something like, why are we taking certain cases? And that the concept was always, you know, the small case leads to the big ones. And, but from my view on the front lines, the small case takes just as much time as the big ones. It takes just as much energy.

You can get just as much trouble, right? The trials are just as nerve wracking. So, you know, it is just as much work in my estimation or almost just as much work. And there’s really a, a, you just gotta start doing it and, and the first time doing, it’s tough. And then you start seeing it play out and, and you know, now I’m a huge proponent of it.

And, and, but you know, it’s equally difficult trying to get the young, younger attorneys in the group to, to understand it and to, you know, ’cause they’re starting off that same path, trying to build those same networks. And it’s the same principle over and over again. It’s, it’s, there’s a fear of letting something go.

’cause you don’t know it’s gonna come back and you gotta have a little bit of faith at some level.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, such, such great [00:15:00] advice there that that mindset. The fear, the fear based, and I mean, I feel it. I feel it. I’m feeling it now in certain parts of my firm and it’s just, you know. You just have to keep the faith and, and jump. So that’s cool. So, so back to sort of the growth of your firm. You mentioned you started hiring, you know, you hired attorneys obviously, and you hired staff, but then you, you’ve hired some of these higher level, I call ’em, you know, C-suite or exec level type people. When did you start doing that?

Dan Purtell: That’s, we’ve really leaned into that, I’d say over the past two years. You know, started with the idea of it probably two to three years ago. We now have a head of operations, head of hr. Head of marketing we have a, you met him earlier ’cause I was having some difficulty with my system, our head of it, you know, so we really do have just talented people across the board, which, you know, in a traditional law firm, it was law firms and paralegals, and then you kind of figured out how to do the rest of it.

And so we’re really trying to turn the quote unquote the rest of it into a strength of [00:16:00] our firm and, and really lean into those spaces and get as good as we can there. And what we’re finding is that that translates directly to casework because if, if, you know, the lawyers don’t come, have to come off cases to, to fix the phone lines or to fix the computer or to worry about the printer or whatever it might be, they can really stay dialed into their cases.

They can work more with their experts, they can do better exhibits, they can take the better depositions. And so really trying to let people focus to their highest purpose and, and be great at their jobs, you know, it’s been working and it’s been, it’s been translated to our results.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s interesting you say that. I’ve, I’ve heard some other owners say that, you know, you think that hiring more producers, IE attorneys or paralegals will drive the revenue growth, and they certainly do. But he said sort of counterintuitively some of the biggest drivers of, of the firm was, were the hires of the non sort of revenue producers, sort of the, like you just said.

Probably for the reasons you just mentioned. [00:17:00] Number one, they’re focused on doing that job, not worried about the, the law firm stuff or the, the client work. And then vice versa, the lawyers aren’t distracted doing things that they don’t need to be doing. So, have you, have you been able to see it, you said you started maybe two years ago, and obviously you probably had lower level admin people, but as you started to hire hire the higher level, more experienced people, have you seen, hockey stick or any sort of reflection in the revenue growth.

Dan Purtell: You know, I, we, we have seen considerable, you know, bottom line growth, inventory growth over the past couple years. I, I think it’s really starting, I believe it or not, I think you mentioned hockey stick. I, I don’t really think that we’ve made that turn yet. I think we’re just getting there. I think we’ve definitely established, you know, a, a new, new normal, I guess you would say.

As far as, you know, our caseload, our size, our. You know, the size of our cases, the, the, the revenue. But a lot of the projects that we’re doing now, like really trying to structure the operations of our firm, [00:18:00] we’re building a new Salesforce file management system. We have an AI engineer who’s, who’s working with that process to design AI products across from end-to-end to try to optimize the, the operations and the key.

And you mentioned it earlier about, you know, future growth. You know, we’ve reached a place now where. I think we’re, we’re, we’re almost as big as people wise, as big as we want to be. Like in reality we’ll have to get a little bigger, I think. But, you know, our goal and our, our mandate now is to do more, do better with, with what we have, because I think one of our strengths is our relationships, is our culture.

And I worry about getting too big and kind of losing that. You know, I, I, I had the experience the other day when I walked in the office and I didn’t know somebody that worked for us. And that was kind of scary for me. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that was an awkward conversation and it made me think about it, like, it, you know, how how much bigger do we really wanna get?

Because I, I do think that, you know, to, to the point of being quick on files to the point of getting deep on work, like you need to really know and trust the people you’re [00:19:00] working with to have that level of, of expertise and have that level of coordination. So, you know, you get too big. I think you start to lose that.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I, I do wanna dig into some of the as stuff in a minute, but that’s interesting. So, you’re now to the point where people are getting hired and you’re, and you have nothing to do with it.

Dan Purtell: It’s a beautiful thing. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean that, I think that point of it is a testament to the, to the systems working and to people doing their jobs. You know, that that was one of the hardest things is just learning or not learning, coming to grips with letting go. Right? Because as a small firm, when we were smaller.

We, Jim and I, we did everything. You know, we had a, we had amazing help, right? We had amazing people that, that crew, most of which are still with us. You know, they were lifesavers, they would do anything under the sun on a given day. But, you know, the, the reality was, is that we had to be involved at every level, every step of the firm.

And, you know, changing that mentality, getting away from that mentality and letting other people just own things and own [00:20:00] portions of the process has really freed me up to do a lot of the other stuff to, to do the stuff that I think I’m pretty good at. And I think it’s, it’s freed up other people in the firm to, to maximize their talent.

So I think it really is, it, it, it pays dividends once you, once you’re able to let go and let other people own parts of the process.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I wanna dig into that. The letting go piece. ’cause I’m sort of going through I’m at one of those inflection points now, so I want to, I wanna get your advice. You know, how did you learn to let go? What, what, what advice do you have to me or to others out there to let, to begin to let go of the process?

Dan Purtell: I think if you ask some of the people on our team, they’ll say that I need to learn more. Right. I mean, it’s, I don’t think you’re ever really completed. I, but I know that you know, I, I’ve learned a lot by trial and error. Right. I’ve made big mistakes. You know, I, I, I think that we should be a couple years further on our timeline if I did a better job as a leader.

You know, I know that I’ve, I’ve messed up processes by being too involved. Like, I’ve seen that in real time, and I’ve seen that in, [00:21:00] in retrospect. And so it really comes down to finding good people, great people, and letting them do what they’re supposed to be doing. And, and, you know, I still do kind of probably come back in and, and mix around too much, and I’m trying to even stop that to really let the, the pros be, have ownership over the process.

But to your point, how do you do it? I think it’s just you need, there comes a point where you can’t do everything right. I mean. You can’t work 22 hours a day with kids with, you need. There is an opportunity cost to everything. And you know, you can’t be a great trial lawyer if you’re constantly worried about the, the minutiae of running a firm, right?

You can’t, you can’t develop new business if you’re, if you’re worried about everything under the sun. So you kind of gotta let realize that you can’t do everything and it’s just impossible. So, and then find good people to do it for you and just hope you make the right choice on the people.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s interesting, some of the evolution that I’ve seen. I’m curious your take on it. [00:22:00] You know, you, you first you learn to delegate tasks, you know, and that that can be hard for some lawyers, but you delegate tasks but you still keep the mental head space ’cause you gotta manage the task. But then the more advanced delegation is you, you also delegate the management and the headspace part of it too.

And you just say you do it all. And that’s. That’s sort of, I think a big mindset shift for a lot of attorneys is letting that piece go.

Dan Purtell: Agreed. But that, for me personally, that’s been what it was required. Right. I mean, we have, I have phenomenal partners. You know, we have phenomenal executive leadership. And it really has freed up just massive bandwidth. To your point, to your, to your terminology, to be able to focus on other things, to be able to focus on.

The marketing on the development on fo build, systematizing focus groups on how to better prepare cases for trial stuff that I think I’m, I’m pretty, pretty good at as opposed to kind of spinning my wheels and trying to learn how to do [00:23:00] things that I’m candidly not very good at. You know, there’s lots of people, there’s, we have a lot of talented people and they, they’re, they’re really good at what they do.

And, you know, I think it came to us, it was almost a survival decision for me because. You know, I, I couldn’t keep working the way I’d worked for 10, 15 years and I had to figure out a way to be more effective while doing less. And thankfully we have the team that we have and they’ve, they’ve just been phenomenal.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, I talked to a lot of owners and they, you know. They wanted to move away from the legal work and just become sort of the, the CEO. And then there’s some that want to have people to do all that CEO type work so they can do the cases ’cause they just love trying cases. And then there’s others that maybe have some hybrid or maybe they want to spend time training and mentoring.

What is, what is your role now and what do you want it to be?

Dan Purtell: I think we’re. Reforming my, you know, short term role right now. Like I said, we’re, we’re doing some [00:24:00] pretty long-term development and, and r and d in our, in our system right now that we hope is the, is are, are some of the drivers that really help carry us forward. You know, we didn’t find a file management system that we really thought worked for us, so we’re building our own.

I also mentioned that we’re, we’re diving pretty deep into AI and I think. In the short term, my primary job is to make sure that, that we execute on that. So that’s the next year, year and a half, to make sure that we really do not just design it, but also implement it and adopt it. All of which is to hopefully get me back to doing cases.

But we’ll see. We, we have, we, we, you know, when I say we have phenomenal people, that of course means we have great trial lawyers. You know, we have eight, 10 men and women that I would put up against anybody. They can go try complex cases anywhere and they, I’m starting to get the feeling they don’t need me.

So, that’s a good thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: It’s sort of depressing too. But so, one thing that has struck me is, is that you really are investing. I mean, you’ve mentioned [00:25:00] a few of the things you’re doing that, that you really are investing in your firm. And back to the hockey stick analogy, a lot of times you gotta reinvest, create a new base or foundation.

Upon which you can sort of rocket ship off of. And so it’s been really impressive to see some of the investments that you’re making. So building your own practice management system, that is huge. That is a huge undertaking and not something I would think that you decided lightly to, to take on.

Take me through your, your thought process a little bit more on that.

Dan Purtell: No. It was, you know, we, we, we tried and, and, that’s probably one of my, you mentioned asked earlier about what, what, what I learned and I, I mentioned trial by failure. Right. You know, we’ve been trying to implement, properly implement a file management system, you know, since 2015. You know, we, we tried a couple, maybe we, we, we might’ve failed ’cause we were too impatient or too, too strapped to, to really put the time in to do it right.[00:26:00]

It’s, it’s a massive undertaking to, to one, design it, two adopt it, three, implement it. And it, and you know, when you don’t have time to really breathe in between, in between plays, it’s hard to do that. So, and you know, I, I personally, I said I, I think I’m, my mistakes probably put us a couple years behind.

You know, I, I can personally take responsibility for the last file management system, probably not working as well as it should. But what we found after all those trial and errors was that there really wasn’t, there’s, there’s a lot of great systems out there. I’m sure that they work really well for a lot of firms.

None of ’em really work really well for us. Right. With the way we have, with the, with the complex cases we, we work on, with the variety of cases we work on with the different jurisdictions. You know, with the, we, we, we get a lot of experts in early, we, we, you know, we like to do a lot of different things with graphics.

We like to do a lot of different things with video, with big data files. So we, we just wanted something that really was, was customized to how we practice. So, you know, they, we, we are of course starting with something that’s a little bit outta the box, but then [00:27:00] customizing it to us. And then building ai, different AI tools ingrained in that system, starting from marketing, working all the way through to resolution.

So hopefully to collapse down our process as much as possible and, and, and give our attorneys the, and, and staff every asset and every resource possible to, to do more, better work, you know, without doing more work.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so another thing that I’ve seen both personally on the inside of law firms and just from talking to a lot of lawyers is I’ll call it maybe sort of a, a short-termism. Thought process. Particularly when you have an older generation of lawyers sort of at the top, they’re at the tail end of their career and they’re like, no, we don’t wanna invest in the firm.

We want to just pull more money out of it. And so, but even when they don’t have that dynamic necessarily, a lot of lawyers just say, we’re gonna pull money out. We’re not gonna reinvest. For the future. And it sounds like you’re doing a lot of that. So again, sort of take me through, you know, your thought process there.

You know, how did you come to that decision [00:28:00] versus, Hey, I could put more money in my pocket versus, no, let’s invest it in the firm because it’s gonna help the firm grow. I’ve, you know, 10 years from now.

Dan Purtell: I mean, listen, we, we all need money. Money, you know, it’s, it’s why we work at, at some level, you know, doing this work has never really been about the money for me, and, and I think it’s frustrated certain people and over time it’s about the case. It’s about doing the case the best it can be. It’s about holding the other side accountable.

Right. And I, I don’t necessarily mean it. Of course, you, we measure that as a, as a system in money. I don’t really measure it on a case by case basis in money. So I, I, it’s never been really my driving factor, although it’s been a result. You know, we’re a young firm. I’m about to turn 46 in a couple days.

I don’t think there’s anybody that, that’s actively practicing in our firm that’s over 50. We’re, we’re here for the long haul. We’re trying to build that. I think, I think the industry is gonna change a ton in the next 3, [00:29:00] 5, 7, 10 years. And I think my main job is to make sure that we create a firm that’s ready to compete in that space so that everybody that’s, that’s contributed to that space has still has, you know, the career they want and the opportunities they want going forward.

So we’re really, I’m really committed to building that, that system that’s gonna compete and win going forward, which is gonna take a lot.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, happy birthday first of all. Uh,

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you’re getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So yeah, so let’s dive into that. So that’s the other thing that struck me when we started talking a number of weeks ago, is, your foresight and what you see coming down the pike in terms of the legal industry, but even more particular, the the personal injury practice areas.

So what do you see [00:30:00] coming? Take me through some of the, some of that.

Dan Purtell: You know, I, I don’t know how much of this is doomsday and I don’t know how much is, is just intuition or. Already obvious to a lot of people, but I think our space is a very attractive industry for a lot of, you know, investing interests. You’re already starting to see it with the deregulation out west in Arizona and Utah.

There’s, there’s, I know there’s deregulation platforms in, in multiple state legislatures across the country. I think there’s, inevitably that is going to proliferate. I, I, I, we, our practice is mainly in Pennsylvania. We have a very strong state bar. We’ve been able to, to, to hold off a lot of external interest and keep our civil justice system robust.

We’re, we’re committed to doing that, but I, I see it as a, as a kind of an inevitable nexus between money, pe and, and the, the turning law into a business. And I think that that unfortunately is the trend of the future. And, [00:31:00] you know, we’re trying, we’re leaning in, in, in all avenues to make sure that we’re ready for those challenges and that we are prepared to to, to meet ’em head on.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s coming. it’s largely, I mean, it’s, it’s here. I mean, it’s

Dan Purtell: I think for sure. It’s certainly already, already around. Right. I think you, you, let’s to use the hockey stick analogy again, right. I, I, it’s absolutely present. It. I don’t think it’s reached the, the bend and the stick yet. I think the fut, the, the massive, you know, we’re seeing the tip of the iceberg, right, to use it to, to use repeat bad analogies, but it’s, it’s, while it is certainly here, right there, there are massive PE interests already Funding, you know, case acquisition funding, marketing funding, aggregation.

I just think that’s just the beginning. Right. And if you, if we’re, if you’re not adopting tech, if you’re not really moving forward, if you’re not modernizing your financing systems, if you’re not modernizing your people, if you’re, if you’re really not trying to compete at all [00:32:00] levels, it’s gonna be a tough road in the future.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, there’s lots of changes coming. We’ve talked about sort of the big money. You’ve, you’ve mentioned AI a little bit, so let’s talk about that. So, you know, that’s another thing that is you mentioned do more, do better with what you have or with the people you have. And so what are you, what are you seeing?

What are you trying to do with ai? To basically leverage your, your current people and, and do more, do better.

Dan Purtell: Sure. I mean, to be clear and start out early, we are not practicing law with ai, right? The one thing that we have not yet authorized or adopted is research and briefing using ai. but I think it’s such a force multiplier that it can’t be denied and, and it’s gonna become such a huge part of our culture, let alone our business operations across multiple spaces.

It would be silly not to try to find ways to adopt it within the, within the legal space. It, you know, from being able to digest medical records, a project that used to maybe take a top line lawyer [00:33:00] two weeks. Or a litigation nurse, you know, highly, highly talented, highly trained, highly experienced professional, two, three weeks, you can get 90% of the way there in a couple hours while you’re doing something else, and then, you know, take the work and then you take your time.

To deep dive into the records, really understand where you need to be. So you’re, you’re, you’re two birds, one stone, and one 10th at a time. You know, and you start thinking about, you know, bandwidth on files. If, if you can handle 20 cases on your own 20 or 15, 20 complex cases on your own, what does AI give you?

What, what can you do now? Can you do 25? Can you do 30 just as well? Can you do 30 better? Right. With the same amount of time spent in the office. And that just makes for, you know, hap a, a better firm, happier lawyers, happier staff. Everybody’s, everybody’s rocking and rolling. So, you know, we’re really trying to, like I said, we, we’ve, we’ve actually hired an engineer to work with our team to develop different [00:34:00] AI products from start to finish.

And it’s just the, the possibilities are endless.

Jonathan Hawkins: I like that sort of the internal proprietary system that will help you and you know, I guess you can decide what you do with that later if you let other firms get access to it or not. But uh, definitely

Dan Purtell: why, you know, we, we touched on it earlier. We we’re, we’re very, we’re very focused on building the business of our firm right now, which means policies, procedures, it means job descriptions, it means pro work processes. It means. The, the file management system that means AI and putting them all together, we hope, will really give us an advantage that that, you know, produces superior results for our clients.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I was talking to somebody I dunno, the last day or two about AI and, and you know, on the case. Briefing side. It’s got a long way to go man. It just hallucinates too much. But on, on the other process spot, I mean, it’s just. Dead on man. Like the you know, like you said, looking at medical records, just boom, [00:35:00] and just think about like, you know, better than I do.

But getting ready for a very complex trial, there’s, there’s never enough time to get it all done, ever. I mean, there’s always something more you can do. And it would take two, three weeks, get ready for the big trial and lots of bodies. But now you can compress all that stuff and then you can do more.

You can just be better equipped to go try the case. Okay.

Dan Purtell: Think about it, if you started that compression two and a half years ago, right? If you start that compression with intake and you build out a robust research file with intake and a questionnaire that is, you know, will ultimately comply with your standard of care reports from the beginning and you can really start to to work as deep as possible at every point of the case.

I mean, you know, you’re talking about being ready to go by the time you file a complaint.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Dan Purtell: then your, then your depositions are fully armed with all your graphics. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re moving downhill fast at the defense that really doesn’t see what’s coming at ’em yet. So, and, and, you know, I’m, I’m not naive.

I’m sure they’re using AI too, and they’re, they’re gonna try to [00:36:00] figure out their ways to counter it. But, you know, I, think that we, we are able to produce a much better case, right? For our, for our clients, with our lawyers, with our people. Using this technology. So it’s, it’s something that we’re definitely leaning, leaning all the way into.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, the advantage that the personal injury lawyers have over the defense lawyers is you don’t bill by the hour. So, so you have an incentive to implement as much of that as you can versus some of these other folks, it’s, it is, that’s gonna be really interesting to see on the defense side how, I mean, their business model’s gonna have to change.

I mean, it’s just gonna have to.

Dan Purtell: Well, we’ll talk about some worthwhile tour reform. You can start re analyzing how, how defense billing methods really, really are an in injustice to civil justice. You know? ’cause you’ll see a lot of times, cases get. Drawn out cases get protracted just ’cause you, you can tell a defense attorney wants to bill a file and you’re right, we don’t have that conflict of interest.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, the other interesting piece, you, you’re, you’re not gonna deal with it. Well, maybe you do. I mean, you’ve got your clients and, and you make [00:37:00] recommendations and you tell ’em this, that and the other, and they come back to you and it’s clearly they’ve got questions that they’ve fed your recommendations in a ChatGPT, and they’ve got this list of questions.

Have you, have you encountered that yet where your client is questioning your strategy or your approach?

Dan Purtell: I, I haven’t had that specific experience yet, but I’ll take an engaged client any day of the week, right. With, with the cases we’re dealing with, with the level of tragedy and, and, injury that we deal with. I, I, it’s better to have involved clients involve families, right. So to the extent they would have the be proactive and go out and run something through chat GPT and bring it back to our office, we would welcome it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Dan Purtell: No, I haven’t seen it at least explicitly. Right. It very well might be going on behind the scenes and kind of brought to us, but it’s something that I would love it to have a client that was that, that engaged in that taking that level of interest in their own case.

Jonathan Hawkins: Have you gotten any clients yet that have said, Hey, I found you through ChatGPT?

Dan Purtell: Have it, but we hope to. Right. I think that’s a big space [00:38:00] of the future for sure. To that point, you know, we really are making a, an effort and a commitment to really dissecting our data and really understanding where cases are coming from, right? So to the extent we do do our own affirmative marketing, whether kind of behind the behind the scenes, we wanna know where stuff’s coming from.

Did it come from a former client? Did it come from a Google ad? Did it come from chat, GPT? So that’s something we endeavor to identify in every case just to make sure that we really know. Our sourcing is coming from and what our, what our revenue mix is.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I wanna switch back to sort of your leadership team and, and you’ve hired sort of this high level I, I’d call ’em non-lawyer leaders. And then you’ve sort of, your role has changed a little bit. How do you how do you manage that and, you know, how do you interact with the team? Do you have weekly meetings?

I’m curious about some of the, like the. Tactics you, you’ve used as part of that transition. You know, both of it is a mindset that you can let it go, but also there’s the piece where [00:39:00] you’re managing people. It’s a completely different skillset. So how have you sort of learned to do that?

Dan Purtell: Again, by, by trial and error and probably by breaking things on the fly and then figuring out how to put ’em back together and, and make a better, smoother system you know. I think I’d like to think I’m doing a better job of it now. I, I won’t pretend that I haven’t made mistakes in the past. Right.

It’s it’s a hard thing to learn on the fly, especially with the pressures of running a full caseload and run, taking over a law firm and, you know, being able to kind of separate and give space for what needs to happen in that multi-level management build out is, is tough. Right. And, now I think we, we are get, we are, it, it is exciting to see because I think the system is finally working right?

I, I, I can see it working. I can see it. Massive things are happening and I’m just finding out about it after the fact. Right. And, and that’s, while it’s scary, it’s also exactly what’s supposed to be happening. Because if I’m, if I’m intimately involved in every decision, then we’re, we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

And so to [00:40:00] learn how to do that, it took some acclimation. It, it really takes going back to finding the right people, right? You need, you need people that kind of understand, you know, understand the, the, the culture of the, the firm that they’re coming into, right? We are a, you know, a front, front foot.

Let’s get after it. Today’s the day. It’s not a corporate mentality. We’re not sitting around waiting to do stuff. We, we wanna, we really wanna attack the, the, the situation at, at all levels, whether it be hr, whether it be operations. So there is, there is kind of a different expectation in a, in a small plaintiff’s firm environment and finding the right people that can not just adapt to that, but really take that on has been, you know, I think we’ve done that.

I think that the people we have in their seats right now are, are fantastic and we’re really starting to see the early, early days of that come to fruition.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk about that. So finding the right people, or I’ll just call it hiring. What advice do you have maybe for those out there, [00:41:00] you know, how do you find the right people? How do you what, what’s your approach?

Dan Purtell: You know, in the, in the past couple iterations, my approach has simply been to, you know, for the most part, file the advice that has been given to me by our team. Which is a completely different mindset than we’ve had in the past. Right? Where admittedly, we’ve done some great hires, we’ve also. numerous occasions.

Right. And I, I feel pretty, I feel very confident. I’ll take the pretty out of it. I feel very confident in our, in our most recent set of iterations, of hirings. I think we’ve, we’ve done incredibly well that very well might be attributed to, to actually having a professional in-house HR professional who is just fantastic.

She’s done a great job kind of, you know, from, from crafting out the job descriptions to the responsibilities to, to doing the active recruiting. And then to really structuring the, the inter the, the interview process. You know, we’re, we’re really kind of dialing in and, and bullseye and some great candidates.

So again, it’s me getting outta the way. I think there’s a [00:42:00] lot, there’s a lot of the, and then be, and then of course, you know, being there to take the responsibility at the end. But with that comes with all of the effort and all of the professional experience that’s, that’s, that goes into. You know, putting two final candidates forward, right?

It’s pretty easy. Then you’re talking to two brilliant people and they, they, we, we sit down and we hash it out and, you know, we’ve been getting it right.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. That getting outta the way, that’s the hard part. I think

Dan Purtell: It really is.

Jonathan Hawkins: it’s, it’s hard. Yeah.

Dan Purtell: For so long, you convince yourself that, you know, you’re, that this wouldn’t happen without me. We can’t do, like, I need to be, I need to do, and really just need to, you know, get outta the way and trust your people.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I imagine it can be both ego deflating in the sense that, hey, they can do this without me, and maybe they did it better without me, but also incredible feeling liberating if you’re not around and all this stuff had you go on vacation, you come back and all these things have happened and you’re like, damn, that’s awesome.

Dan Purtell: Oh, it certainly frees you up right? To do the things [00:43:00] that, you know, I’ve mentioned it before, like finding what your highest value add is. Right. I know that other people can do things much better than I can. And it’s like 90% of the professional space, there are certain things that I’m pretty darn good at, and now I get to focus on them so that ultimately, you know, reaps dividends for the firm on at that level.

So, you know, and we’re also blessed because, you know, we’ve, we’ve had enough success to be able to bring on these people, right? If we were strapped or if we were on a baseline, it’d be difficult to take that revenue and invest back in people. But for now, it’s, it’s the clear decision for us.

Jonathan Hawkins: So we sort of touched on it a little bit, but. In terms of like what your role is now, do you do any legal work at all? Is it

Dan Purtell: think that depends who you ask, right? no, I joke. I, I don’t have any primary responsibility for files now. You know, that, that really you’re talking about. Is it hard to let go? That was probably the hardest thing. You know, I, I grew up as a trial lawyer. This is what I came to this firm [00:44:00] to do. It’s what I went to law school to do.

It’s what, you know, it’s why I am here. I love doing it. I love holding the other side accountable for hurting my people. Right. I think I’m pretty good at it. I, and, and I don’t, but, but I don’t have the bandwidth to stay that involved in a file right now. But again, thankfully we have phenomenal people, right?

I do have what, what we refer to as our catastrophic injury team, which has two, two other lawyers on it. So they have primary responsibility for the file that that team draws from, from practices across the firm. So we have cases of all different case types. The goal being is that our truly biggest cases, they have four or five lawyers working on ’em all the time, all the time.

They never stop, they never stall. They’re always working forward. So while I don’t have primary responsibility, I kind of manage that team still. And you know, I look forward to the day of being able to get back to, to doing files on a, on a more dedicated basis. But we’ll see. We’ll see if I get there.

Jonathan Hawkins: So another question I have again, we’ve talked about a lot [00:45:00] of these investments that you’re making and you also mentioned you, you feel like you’re, you know, maybe a couple years, a few years behind of where you, where you would like to be. How do you balance? And I fall into this trap where I’m like, I see where I want to go.

I and I wanna go as fast as I can, but. Sometimes you can go too fast and you know the wheels are gonna come off the car, the car if you go too fast. How do you balance that? Sort of, trying to go into extra gear to get there faster versus, hold on. We gotta make sure the foundation’s solid before we go.

Dan Purtell: I think from experience, right? I mean, I can look back and see certain, I mean at least a couple specific examples of where my get fest at all costs mentality, you know, didn’t work for us, right. And that’s when I say, you know, in jest we’re two years behind where we should be, you know, the, the process.

There’s no real textbook for what we’re doing. For what you’re doing for what I’m doing. Right. You get to see what a lot of what works for other people. Adopt what works for you. You know, maybe if you’re really brilliant, you create something. [00:46:00] I don’t think I’m there. I think I’m, I’m, I’m pretty good at seeing smart things that other smart people have done and adopting what works for us.

’cause I do think I know our business very well. And, you know, having a more deliberative process, which is something we’ve put in place now. You know, we have our, our, our weekly exec meetings, we have our quarterly. Leadership meetings. We have our go, our annual global planning meetings. So we’re, we’re really not, we’re not deciding stuff for today anymore.

Right. We’re, we’re deciding stuff ahead of time. And I think, you know, that a combination of a lot of the stuff that we’ve already talked about, you know, the people, the, the little bit of, we have some breathing room because of our success, you know, the, the being instituting a lot of the systems over the past few years.

That’s all kind of coalescing together and really helping us to, to be forward thinking as opposed to reactionary. So I think that’s a lot. It gets a lot easier when you’re planning ahead as opposed to trying to make decisions on the fly. I think [00:47:00] a lot of my mistakes that I look back on were ones that I was making in real time, you know, probably more too much by myself than I should have.

Right. I should have been reli and, and now we’ve built to this point where that’s not a problem anymore and we’re getting. More and more confidence in our decisions and it’s being borne out in our results. So I think we’re to the, we’re finally starting to see the systems work.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I like that. I like that. The proactive versus reactive. So, you know, it sounds, you know, you’ve been at this for a while. It started from sort of, I’ll call it the, the small firm. You’re growing into a big firm, probably beyond that. As you sit here today and you look back, are the, you know, are there any lessons that you can point to either, maybe some things you’re like, man, I wish I had not done that, or maybe I wish I had done that sooner.

Is there anything you can point to?

Dan Purtell: You know, it’s been a real theme today, right? The delegation or letting go combined with having the right people. I couldn’t be more convinced of both of those at this point. [00:48:00] Right. I mean, it’s hard early because you don’t necessarily, you don’t have the ability to do it yet, even if you want to. So there comes that time where you kind of make the decision to your point, do I want a few extra dollars in my pocket or do I wanna start building something? And I think that is the, my answer to that question was, let’s build something because I really do wanna build the best catastrophic complex injury firm that I can provide the absolute best results to our clients that we can.

And you know, with that, the byproduct, we’ll make some money, but, you know, really truly building a great system, a great team that does our job at the highest possible level what I’m shooting for.

And you know, I, I, so I probably would’ve started that a little earlier, right? Started really trying to delegate earlier, trying to build. legal skilled teams earlier. I think that the, the earlier you can do that, the more you’re gonna see results.

Jonathan Hawkins: So another question, sort of look back as you reflect on, [00:49:00] where you are and where you’ve been. You know what, what’s the best thing about entrepreneurship or running your law firm? And then maybe what’s the worst thing?

Dan Purtell: For sure. The best thing for me right now is the, is the flexibility, right? I have a young family. I’m really blessed that, you know, with all the headaches and the, the inability to keep a normal schedule and the constant stuff coming up right, I can do it with, with relative control from where I wanna do it, when I wanna do it right.

I’m not, I’m not working 120 hour weeks anymore. I’m able to work, I’m able to see my kids off to school. I’m able to, to large part, be there when they get home. And, and I find that more, more important than anything right now in this time for me. So, and, and, you know, being able to really build towards a vision, I think is something that I’m enjoying right now.

You know, I’m looking five, seven years down the road and, and trying to build with that in mind, and that’s getting, I’m, that’s becoming fun for me so that I’m, I’m enjoying both of those factors, of course, [00:50:00] above getting great results for our clients.

Jonathan Hawkins: So maybe you have touched on this, but. What is division? What, where, where do you want to be in seven years? Is it, I know you’re, you’re located in Philly now and you practice across the country. Are, are you thinking different offices or what, what are you thinking?

Dan Purtell: You know, different offices, not necessarily right. I mean, we’ve learned through COVID through, through the subsequent kind of build out that we can practice pretty much remotely from, from anywhere. We currently have cases in probably 25 states, so we’re pretty comfortable. I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re a Philadelphia firm.

I don’t wanna, we’re not, we’re probably not gonna change from that. We might open up a couple satellites here and there, but what I want and what I’m, what we’re looking for is to, to really maintain our culture. To really maintain our commitment to our clients and, and doing just the best work possible while figuring out a way to do it.

Maximizing technology at the highest level that we can, we can manage. So we’re, I think that there is [00:51:00] going to be a, a market wide, you know, when I say market, I mean industry. Our legal profession on the plaintiff side is going to be really subjective to some significant changes. And, and we wanna be ready to compete in that space and, and, you know, maintain our role with our clients and maintain our careers for our team.

With, with that kind of, I think it’s, it’s gonna be some aggregation. I think there’s gonna be some real financial controls that are, that are brought into the, the industry and whatever competition looks like. If it, if it means actually, you know, growing to, to address competition or whether it means to, to be the most, most attractive partner out there.

You know, we don’t know what that’s gonna take on yet, but my job is to make sure we’re ready for whatever comes.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I gotta be nimble for sure. So lemme ask this. If, if you, you know, you, you’re spending a lot of time, you got a light energy focused on your firm. You, you’re also spending time with your family. Putting those two things aside, if you weren’t doing any of that, what would you be doing?

Dan Purtell: Oh man. You [00:52:00] know, try probably trying cases again. No joke. Fly fishing. Coaching kids sports. I joke sometimes in the past, you know, if I wasn’t independently wealthy or professional athlete, I, I’d love being a trial lawyer. And I mean that, you know, this is something that I enjoy doing. I really do. I think that’s why I’ve been able to do it the way I’ve done it, is that it’s meaningful to me.

I, I, I really do care about what it is that we do. I think what we do is incredibly important and I I’m really proud to be part of it.

Jonathan Hawkins: So what are your sports teams? What, what’s your sport? What’s your teams, all the Philly teams or uh,

Dan Purtell: Philly teams,

Jonathan Hawkins: baseball,

Dan Purtell: big

Jonathan Hawkins: football.

Dan Purtell: baseball, football primarily. I’m a college football team, college football guy, Penn State. Obviously big Phillies fan birds doing well, so I’m, I’m pretty predictable when it comes to sports.

Jonathan Hawkins: you, you think this is a year for Penn State?

Dan Purtell: Oh, man, I, I

Jonathan Hawkins: It’s a loaded question, man. Sorry to ask.

Dan Purtell: the wrong in two.

Jonathan Hawkins: [00:53:00] Yeah. You got, you know, got a good coach, man, but he just, he just can’t quite get over the hump, man. He is almost there.

Dan Purtell: Seemingly, I think this is, if you’re asking me, I’m, yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: Awesome. That’ll be, that’ll be fun. Okay, last, last question. So I’m an attorney out there, a younger attorney, maybe I’ve started a firm or thinking about starting a firm. Any piece of advice or any, you know, anything you’d give them? As they embark on this journey.

Dan Purtell: if I look back at what I, I was thinking about this in advance of your today and, and you know, if I look back on what I went through to how I got here, it really is taking the time to do the grind. To really understand the nuances of what your business is to from, you know, from every, every possible corner and roll.

Like, you can’t, you can’t be a chef until you know how to make sausage. You can’t, you can’t run a firm until you know how to request medical records, right? [00:54:00] You really do need to kind of toil in the details of become an expert at, at your craft before you can. Of move forward. I, and I, I really do. I think that I’m, I think I’ve been pretty good at helping to, to see what systems we need build with systems, because I understand what it takes to do all of those different roles at a volume.

Right. And I understand how hard it is to get medical records. I understand how hard it can be to get a client on the phone to get ’em signed up. Right. I understand how hard it is to get authorizations in and out. Right. The, just the things that most attorneys take for granted. I’ve spent years doing, and I think that that really has benefited us as a whole.

And I, if you’re starting out, you, you gotta do the work first.

Jonathan Hawkins: I think that is incredible advice. It reminds me of a story, a friend of mine, his brother was an owner and you know, regional man, whatever, of a pretty big pet food chain. And he started the bottom, he was one of the [00:55:00] guys in the suit with the sign on the street. Right. Do And he would go in and tell people to do it and they’d start complaining.

He is like, look. I did that too. You’re gonna go do it. So it’s sort of like I’ve done everything I ask you to do. I’ve done before. So I think that’s. Really good advice, number one. You know, you know how everything works together, but also you can say, Hey, I’ve been there. You just gotta do it. So, great advice.

So, so Dan, this has been real fun, man. Thanks for coming on. For anybody out there who wants to find you, maybe refer you a case or, you know, maybe see if you’re hiring or, or whatever. What’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Dan Purtell: to think we’re always hiring talent. We, we’d always look, we’d take referrals as the highest compliment. Anybody that’s interested can contact me directly. My email’s just dan@mceldrewpurtell.com. And my cell phone, personal cell phone is (215) 527-6489. Call, text is probably better ’cause it’s you know, I can, I can answer regardless of what I’m [00:56:00] doing and we can set up a time to call.

And I, I’d love to hear from anybody.

Jonathan Hawkins: Brave man giving your cell phone out. Love it.

Dan Purtell: Well, You know, it’s out there, so might as well keep it going.

Jonathan Hawkins: well Dan, thanks again man. Thanks for coming on. This has been, been helpful and, and like, I really mean it. I think it’s cool some of the stuff you’re doing. I know there are some people out there doing it, but it’s I’d say fairly not common some of the things you’re doing. So, it’s gonna be fun to watch where you are in 5, 7, 10 years from now.

Dan Purtell: I am excited too, and I, again, I really do mean it. I appreciate the, the platform you’re creating here. I think. The more we can learn and collaborate across our space in this sector, the better off we’ll all be.

Jonathan Hawkins: Awesome. Appreciate it.

Dan Purtell: Yes, sir. Appreciate your time.

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 [00:57:00] 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.