Discover 4 ways to add Millions to your PI Cases! In this episode, I sat down with Steve Gursten of Michigan Auto Law, who has built a reputation for turning overlooked details into multimillion-dollar results. He shares how trying big and settling small changes the entire settlement dynamic, why reframing injuries can shift a jury’s perspective, and how future risks and sleep impairments add enormous value to a case. Listening to Steve, I saw exactly how a trial lawyer’s mindset can transform outcomes for clients and multiply the value of cases many attorneys would settle way too small.

Key Topics

01:39 – Hear Steve’s journey from young lawyer to running multiple top law firms

03:07 – Discover why trial work made him stand out when others avoided the courtroom

04:39 – Learn how a million-dollar verdict early in his career changed everything

06:44 – Find out why results and reputation attract endless referrals

08:01 – See how Steve grew from one Michigan firm into five specialized practices

08:39 – Understand the role fitness and discipline play in sustaining a high-pressure career

10:39 – Explore how zone 2 cardio training helps manage stress for trial lawyers

13:16 – Way #1: Try big and settle small—chunk injuries up for trial, itemize down for settlement

15:09 – Learn how juries see the compound effect of multiple injuries while insurers don’t

18:39 – Hear why picking your 10 best cases each year can triple or quadruple settlement value

25:38 – Way #2: Reframe mild TBI as chronic pain syndrome so juries connect more easily

28:52 – Way #3: Talk about the future—show how today’s injuries lead to tomorrow’s risks

33:00 – Way #4: Leverage impaired sleep and fatigue as economic damages juries understand

36:59 – Learn how tools like Oura Ring and Whoop provide objective evidence of sleep loss

39:14 – Hear why fatigue is a quantitative injury that juries intuitively grasp

41:04 – Discover Steve’s favorite productivity app and why it beats his old system

42:13 – Get his top business book picks, from Good to Great to The E-Myth and Seth Godin’s work

48:27 – Find out the best way to connect with Steve and Michigan Auto Law

Resources Mentioned

Books

• Outlive by Peter Attia - https://a.co/d/55cj7SM
• Good to Great by Jim Collins - https://a.co/d/55cj7SM
• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber - https://a.co/d/55cj7SM

Technology

• Notion – https://www.notion.com
• Fathom AI Notetaker – https://fathom.video
• Whoop – https://www.whoop.com
• Oura Ring – https://ouraring.com

Podcasts/Blogs

• Seth Godin Daily Blog – https://seths.blog 
• Tim Sawyer - Legal Keys - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-keys-unlocking-time-revenue-and-results/id1791762308 

About our Guest:

Steven Gursten is one of Michigan’s most respected trial attorneys, consistently ranked among the Top 50 out of more than 65,000 lawyers by Super Lawyers and recognized as a Michigan Lawyer of the Year. He serves as President of the AAJ Distracted Driving Litigation Group and the Belli Society, and has also led the AAJ Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, the AAJ Truck Accident Litigation Group, and the Motor Vehicle Trial Lawyers Association. His expertise has earned him national recognition, including two JD Supra Readers’ Choice Awards for his writing on Michigan’s auto No-Fault and insurance litigation.

Steve is also a nationally sought-after speaker and educator, known for his presentations on trial advocacy, traumatic brain injury, truck accident litigation, and maximizing auto accident settlements. His track record includes record-setting results such as the largest auto and truck accident settlement in Michigan history, along with multiple years of top reported verdicts and settlements as documented by Michigan Lawyers Weekly and Verdict Reporter.

https://www.michiganautolaw.com 

About Jay Berkowitz:

Jay Berkowitz is a best-selling author and popular keynote speaker. Mr. Berkowitz managed marketing departments at: Coca-Cola, Sprint and McDonald's Restaurants, and he is the Founder and CEO of Ten Golden Rules,  a digital marketing agency specialized in working with attorneys.

Mr. Berkowitz is the author of Advanced Internet Marketing for Law Firms, The Ten Golden Rules of Online Marketing and 10 Free Internet Marketing Strategies that went to #1 on Amazon.  He is the host of the Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Webinar and Podcast. He has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal, The Business Journals and FOX Business TV.

Mr. Berkowitz was selected for membership as a TITAN for Elite Digital Marketing Agencies, he is the recipient of a SOFIE Award for Most Effective use of Emerging Media, and a Special BERNAY’s Award.

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What's the first way you can add millions to your

cases?

Sure, so think of it as as gerson's Rule number

one, right? Which is try big and settle small. And the idea is

you want to chunk up for trial and itemize down for settlement.

And the reason I say that is we have to appreciate most

insurance companies out there about, I think, 86 or 89

insurance companies as of today, use some form of Colossus claim

software. State Farm uses Xactimate, which is similar The

point being that most adjusters out there really don't have a

lot of discretion or freedom when it comes to how much money

they could offer someone for a settlement, and really they're

stuck within the ranges of what their claim software tells them

to offer. Now there are a couple things you can do as a

plaintiff's lawyer to use that to the highest advantage you can

for your client, right? So, for example, the easiest is be known

to try cases. I had a bad faith case with farmers on an excess

verdict a couple years ago. One of the things we learned from

the bad faith litigation after the trial was an adjuster can

offer up to four times more just based on the reputation of the

lawyer. Are they a lawyer that's known to take cases to trial or

not? That's insane. So if you've never tried a case for 20 years,

and I try cases frequently, I can make four times as much just

on the same case.

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good

evening. Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet

marketing for law firms podcast. We've got a great guest today.

I'm really excited. You could probably see my smile if you're

watching on YouTube, because Steve Gersten has become a buddy

of mine from a lot of the conferences. Not only that, he's

actually listens to the podcast and sends me notes and thoughts

and comments and stuff. So I bet he's excited to be here too,

Right?

Steve, if you're watching the YouTube video right

now, My smile is a lot bigger than yours right now. So really

happy to be

here with you. Jay, yeah, yeah, it's always fun

when you like the content and then you get to be a part of it.

Steve's one of the smartest guys, too. By the way, at these

conferences today, we're going to talk about four ways to add

millions to your cases. So we're not this is not a marketing

episode, so if the marketers, you'll probably tune out in

about 10 minutes. But for the lawyers, you're going to love

this one. And Steve's great. And he did this presentation

recently at a private conference we were at up in Banff,

beautiful Banff, Canada, and I asked him if he could reprise

that for our audience today. But first, let's talk a little bit

about Steve's background, and he's got a tremendous firm in

Michigan. Maybe tell us a little bit about your journey. Sure.

First again, thanks for having me, Jay. So my

journey started in 1995 when I was a baby, baby lawyer. And

it's funny, I actually have an economics background. So one of

the first things I realized was, oh my God, what did I get myself

into? Because even in 1995 supply and demand is that iron

law of economics and the supply of lawyers was greater than

demand, and now it's even even more so. And I started to think,

What can I do? So I'm not just one more of hundreds or 1000s of

lawyers in your city or state chasing the same cases as

everybody else, and I decided the quickest way to make myself

remarkable, to channel Seth Godin and stand out, was trial.

Because even with all those lawyers, there really are just

back then, and even now, there's just not a lot of real, true

trial lawyers. And I was very lucky, because 1995

coincidentally, was also the time when all very shortly by

State Farm basically created their minimal impact soft tissue

programs, where, for the first time in basically 20 years, they

started forcing lawyers to go to trial on these low vehicle

damage cases with soft tissue injuries. To give credit to

another wonderful Canadian, Malcolm Gladwell, from outliers,

like I was just in the right place at the right time, and I

had a ton of cases I could try, and it was a great opportunity,

and I got to try a lot of cases right away. Tried my first case

three weeks after I passed the bar. Ironically, my second case

was a million dollar verdict in a very, very conservative venue

in Michigan on a soft tissue case with a $10,000 offer. All

of a sudden, I had lawyers all over Michigan sending me these

hot grounders. Steve, I haven't tried a case in 20 years. Go try

it for me. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, it's and I'm,

to this day, I'm still the youngest lawyer. So you started

on your own. So I was lucky. Enough to start with my dad. I

was working for a law firm in New York City, which even then

and was on the Forbes list as one of the five most profitable

law firms in the world. Everything was catastrophic,

medical malpractice. The problem was, how do you ever get your

first case when every case is a multi million dollar case. And I

didn't really want to be on planes for 10 years, taking

depositions of doctors and defending motions. I wanted to

be in the courtroom. So my dad said, Hey, if you really want to

try cases, come home, I've got a lot of cases for you to try. So

so I did, and I was off to the races, but

did so did you write the New York bar and then

write Michigan as well?

I actually came home and took the Michigan bar.

And what was nice was my dad has the saying, and it's really

true. It's that no matter how many competitors you have, if

you're really good, people are going to beat down your door to

send you work. And that's true in your business, and that's

true in my business. The cliche, I guess, is the cream always

rises. But the point is that it's results that matter and

results that make you stand out and distinguish yourself. You

have to decide what your value proposition is, and I decided

early on that my value proposition is going to be that

I will settle cases for more money, that I will bring greater

value to the same kinds of cases than any other lawyer in

Michigan, and that's something we work very hard to do every

year. Basically, my goal is that we're going to get the top

verdict or settlement for an auto and trucking case in the

state of Michigan. Fortunately, almost every year we do, right,

yeah, and temple, you have to walk the walk. Right? You can't

just say you got to do it and but if you do it, lawyers will

be down your door to refer you cases. So that's kind of how

we've grown the business from I started with my dad, we were

four lawyers, and now I just hired my 27th lawyer here for my

Michigan auto law law firm, which is crazy,

and you've created some additional brands,

please tell us. So the main one is Michigan auto auto law, yes,

yeah. So that's that's really the flagship law

firm. And then around 2014 I created a workers comp law firm

as well, and they now have, I think, 11 lawyers. So we're now

the largest workers comp law firm in the state. I have a

Michigan slip and fall law firm, and we have a national,

nationwide electrocution burn injury law firm. And then last

year, I decided that I would enter the most expensive,

competitive legal market in the country, and I started my fifth

law firm there with a lawyer that I've worked with for 14

years I just absolutely love, named Jordan Jones, and we

created a California truck accident law firm in Los

Angeles. So having a lot of fun.

Yeah, Los Angeles is not for the faint of

heart. It is a crazy market. Anyways, it's a

funny story how we did it, but it's really working out well.

And believe it or not, we just hired our second lawyer out

there in this year. So really, it's really going well,

congratulations.

Thank you. And one of the interesting things

about Steve is, as you can tell, he's a super performance guy.

And if you're only listening to this on audio, I'll let you know

that he's in tremendous physical shape. And he's like, one of the

rare guys that all the other guys the conference are. Like,

check out that guy. Tell us a little bit about your personal

ritual. We see each other in the gym every morning at these

conferences. Yeah, way too early, right? Yeah. Well, hey,

if you want to be at the breakfast at eight, exactly,

exactly. No. I have a great morning ritual,

though, and it really keeps me kind of sane. Look, I will be

honest. One of my greatest regrets in life is I took about

20 years off, like I didn't exercise. I had 30 pounds of

really bad weight. Some of my health measures were not looking

so hot, but again, I was really I was building up my law firm,

and, you know, I had a young family, and every hour was

either working 70 hours a week and working seven days a week,

or it was trying to be a good dad and spend time with my kids

and trying to be a good husband. So I wish now, now that I'm

getting close to 60, that I had spent a little more time in the

gym when I was younger, and results would come by a little

bit easier. But about 45 I just decided it was time, and I felt

secure enough and in a good enough place. And the reality

is, I think all of us need a channel for stress, especially

trial lawyers, right? We are one of the last professions in the

world where everything is still zero sum game. Well, it's not

win, win, it's zero sum and I. What that means is that your

gain tends to be someone else's direct loss. When you're dealing

with an insurance company, and I always joke that I get lied to

every day for a living defense lawyers, adjusters, they just

lie to me all the time. It's a confrontational profession, but

if you're trying to maximize results, it kind of has to be so

you need an outlet for stress. And fortunately, I chose, I

think, a healthier outlet than alcohol or drugs or women or

gambling, all the other things that we see out there. And yeah,

I've got a really good routine right now. I'm splitting it up.

I'm channeling my Peter Attia now for you, but splitting it up

with a lot of Zone Two cardio training, I've got so I do about

two and a half to three hours a week of Zone Two cardio. I try

to do at least

outlive what you referred to me. Thank you. Yeah,

that's right, and that's what you're referring

to. Again, yes, and it really is, and really

important for all of us to think about health markers, like

cardiovascular health. And it was three days,

the Zone Two is getting to about 70% cardio.

Yeah.

I mean, I ideally, if you don't have a

good so I wear the whoop and, you know, the Apple Watch also

will give you your zones. You don't need to get tested in a

lab, but an easy way of doing is just the talk test. Can you

basically talk out loud without huffing and puffing and read a

sentence or two, basically getting to about 10 to 15 words

without having to, like, take a big breath, yeah. And if you can

keep that, it just helps you with your metabolic flexibility

and mitochondria density and just long term heart health. So

I do that.

I think what you said was 45 minutes, like four

times a week.

So the research tends we are going way off

topic, but I love the topic, so ideally, it looks like most of

the benefits are when you get to an hour and longer. That's why

they used to call it long low intensity steady state. But 45

minutes is fine. 30 minutes is better than nothing. But

ideally, if you could find the time you want to try and get an

hour, and I think when you look at most of the studies out

there,

hey, great. I guess I gotta add 15 minutes.

Those last 15 minutes are not always as much

fun as the first 15,

right? Oh yeah, it's hard. I've actually started

bringing an iPad. Yeah, I do too on the elliptical, and it just

is ups the game, because if you're just watching TV or

listening, even though a podcast like this might get you through,

uh, how do

you think I listened to all your podcasts?

Right? I know. I

know. I've seen you do it, awesome. Well, thank

you for sharing that and more on that to come. And this might

even be a topic at tgr live our conference on March 16 and 17th,

down in Delray Beach. And the regular listeners heard all

about it, and you'll hear more as we get closer to that date,

why don't we get into the meat of it here, your presentation

was four ways to add millions to your cases. And I love the

simplicity of the title. Why don't we just get right into it?

What's the first way you can add millions to your cases? Sure.

So think of it as as gerson's Rule number one,

right? Which is, try big and settle small. And the idea is,

you want to chunk up for trial and itemize down for settlement.

And the reason I say that is we have to appreciate most

insurance companies out there about, I think, 86 or 89

insurance companies as of today use some form of Colossus claim

software. State Farm uses Xactimate, which is similar The

point being that most adjusters out there really don't have a

lot of discretion or freedom when it comes to how much money

they could offer someone for a settlement, and really they're

stuck within the ranges of what their claim software tells them

to offer. Now, there are couple things you can do as a

plaintiff's lawyer to use that to the highest advantage you can

for your client, right? So, for example, the easiest is be known

to try cases. I had a bad faith case with farmers on an excess

verdict a couple years ago, one of the things we learned from

the bad faith litigation after the trial was an adjuster can

offer up to four times more just based on the reputation of the

lawyer. Are they a lawyer that's known to take cases to trial or

not? That's insane. So if you've never tried a case for 20 years,

and I try cases frequently, I can make four times as much just

on the same case. The other things you can do, you can gain

the system a little bit. So for example, saying and showing the

adjuster that someone has neck pain. I. With radiculopathy

going down into the extremity will always be worth more money

than just neck pain alone. That's a good example of that.

Trying to make it easier for adjusters. But in general, the

reason I say itemized down for settlement is you want to try

and spoon feed it for the adjusters and make it easy for

them to put in all the information so that you get the

highest number you can.

So is that the chunking you're talking about?

That's the opposite.

Yeah. So that's itemizing down. Yeah, that's why

I say settle, small, try big, or chunk up for trial. So my

takeaway here is this, and this comes from now having 14

separate trial verdicts of over a million dollars on defense

offers of between zero and $30,000 so I know this works

too, because I I've walked the walk. Math is there, the math is

definitely there, and the proof of concept is there. Is these

claim software programs, they don't look at things, these big

umbrella type injuries, like, for example, chronic pain

syndrome. You're not going to get a number from Colossus for

that. But guess what? Even though the computer doesn't get

it, juries do and is much more real life. And my talk when we

were in Banff together was just showing how medicine today,

because doctors are just stuck in all these specialties and

then sub specialties and sub sub specialties, so many injuries

get missed, and because everyone's just focused on their

own very narrow area of medicine. And the problem is you

don't normally see the total cumulative compound effect of

how multiple injuries are affecting our clients, which is

real life, by the way. So even though all state adjusters using

Colossus don't get it juries do. So what I try to explain is it's

not the low back pain or the neck pain or the rotator cuff

surgery or the tinnitus or the headaches or the pain or the

cognitive impairments or the sleep or the fatigue, it's all

of that, and then it's how all of it affects each other and how

they sometimes it creates this vicious downward spiral for our

clients. But guess what? Our clients got hit by a car. They

got hit by a truck. This is real life, and this is what happens

to them. So when you're taking 14 different doctor depositions

for trial, and each one is just talking about their own little

narrow world. The total picture, the big picture, what matters

most, gets lost. So if you're able to bring that to life for a

jury, and this is really the key here, that's how what adjusters

and insurance companies will sometimes look at as very small

injuries, they're worth a lot become all of a sudden really

big, million dollar plus verdicts, because juries do get

that. And again, it's not just the headaches, it's not just the

tinnitus, it's not just the shoulder, but it's how all that

affects each other. So think of it as pouring gasoline on a

fire, right? Because what happens is with pain and with

sleep deprivation, the pain cycles that we all go through

shorten, and all of a sudden, now there's always something

that's been exacerbated and aggravated, and that's what

starts that again, that compound effect. One of my favorite

doctors puts it like this, I think this is so profound. He

says you have to understand with multiple injuries, and the

effect on the person two plus two doesn't equal four, that

these people's problems go up by multiplication, not by addition.

That's such an important thing for people to understand. And

again. This is not hard. Juries get this because it's so

intuitive. They can relate to this, and they see this,

whereas, frankly, insurance company adjusters don't or won't

because they're too cynical and skeptical, and their computer

software doesn't give them the flexibility to be able to take

all these different the compound effect into account. So making

these injuries bigger than they are, chunking them up for trial

is, I guess, step number one.

They're chunking them up. You're collecting them

together. And I get it. I unfortunately had experience by

being a customer of a couple different personal injury

lawyers got rear ended couple times, and when you're in pain,

you can't sleep. When you can't sleep, you feel like crap during

the day when you can't exercise. You know, we talked earlier

about the importance both of us wake up and go to the gym and

have way more energy, livelihood, Joy. Eight so I see

how you could build it up and make the case to a jury

absolutely again, I just think it's intuitively so

much easier for people to understand because it is part of

their shared life experience.

Yeah, and what's the backside? When do you

settle?

At the end of the day, I'm a big advocate that you

should be pushing your cases to trial if you want to maximize

settlements. So I don't really like pre suit settlements. It's

a part of the business. But again, if you're trying to

maximize settlements, then you know the idea is that these

cases, sometimes they need an incubation period. Normally, you

really don't know the full extent of someone's injuries for

at least six to eight months. So I'm always a little bit

concerned when I hear about these law firms that are

settling cases a month or two after they open the case. I just

how do you really know what's there? But there's a difference

between pushing good cases to trial and taking calculated,

smart risks and pushing bad cases to trial. And that's a

point I always try to clarify, because we don't have enough

hours in the day to push every case to trial. You want to take

calculated risks on cases with big upside. It's a lot tougher

if you've got minimum, low policy limits. Your hands are

really tied, right? What are you going to do? You're going to

incur all the costs, and the client's going to get nothing.

So I understand that. But what I try to do, there are two things

here I try to do one is every year for last 20 years, at the

beginning of the year, I picked my 10 Best cases. And by best,

what I mean is a really likable, credible client, because I think

that's 50% of it, and you need policy limits that justify you

being aggressive on the case and good injuries that are serious.

So if you don't have the injuries, then you're kind of

wasting your time, because there's a ceiling on how much

you can get. If you don't have high policy limits, then there's

a ceiling on how much you can get. And if you don't have a

likable, credible, worthy client. Jury is probably not

going to want to help them as much. But the point is, you look

at all your cases, you pick your 10 Best and you push them to

trial. Now what you don't do is tell the defense, hey, I'm going

to try this case. Because you just keep it quiet. You don't

want them focusing anymore in that case than they would. Let

them be lazy, let them not be hyper aggressive on IMEs and

getting defense doctors, but keep pushing it to trial. And by

that, what I mean is keep looking at those cases, and keep

looking for holes and red flags and ways that you can maximize

injuries, and what other specialists can they get to, and

what else can you do to build value and keep doing focus

groups? And at the end of the day, what you will find is, when

you're pushing those cases to trial, that eight or even nine

of the 10 are still going to settle. The difference is now

they've settled for three or four times more than what they

would have. And now, when you are trying that 10th case, guess

what, your chances of hitting a grand slam home run and really

getting a great verdict really increased dramatically. So

that's on the higher side. That's what I do with my 10 Best

cases. Yeah. And then going back to what we were talking about in

terms of a moment ago, with when you're dealing with the

insurance companies, one reason why we've been able to get

really big verdicts on very small offers because, I got to

be honest, I don't know another law firm in the country that's

gotten 14 separate jury verdicts on Defense offers of $30,000 or

less, but that's because the insurance companies are

misevaluating those cases. They're looking at each injury

by itself in an isolated fashion, and evaluating those

injuries individually, adding them up and making very small

offers and sometimes just saying, you know, I don't buy

the close head, I don't buy this. So you end up with these

ridiculously low offers. But if you're looking at it as a whole,

and you're looking at the injuries in terms of the total

effect on a client that is worthy and likable and that a

jury is going to want to help your odds of pushing that case

to trial and getting a really good verdict increase

dramatically so on the high end and on the low end. On the high

end, it's the Pareto point, right? It's the 80% of your

dollars that come from 20% of your cases, and on the lower

end, it's taking smart. Calculated risks, where your

upside is far, far greater than your downside. Because when I

give this talk to the lawyers, I always say, like, what does

selling that case for $30,000 do for you? It certainly doesn't

help your client. You're not doing anything for them. They're

not walking away with anything. So if you're not moving the

football, if it's not making a difference, then take smart,

calculated shots, because that's what changes things.

That's great, all right. Well, let's pick up the

pace a little bit and get to number two, the second way you

can add millions of dollars to your case.

So very much related to the first which we

were just talking about. So we were mentioning how the compound

effect is sometimes much more valuable than the individual

injuries, right? So when it comes to traumatic brain injury

and mild TBI, I'm going to use the example that most lawyers

deal with, because these are tough cases, and there's a

reason why insurance companies don't normally make significant

offers on them. Normally, you have a big gap of time. Normally

you have a big delay in diagnosis. So let's say you've

got no loss of consciousness confirmed at the scene, and

you've got eight months before it was diagnosed, and let's say

a year before they get into their first doctor for

treatment. That's a case most lawyers are probably going to

lose if they tried it as a TBI case. You can explain that 56 to

80% of all TBI are missed in emergency rooms, that brain

injury is a process, not an event, that it happens over

time, that the reason it's happening over days, weeks and

months is because you have this neuro metabolic cascade in our

brains where you've got this combination of Apoptosis and

excitatory toxicity and neuro inflammation and and how it just

creates these problems that then worsen over time, that can take

days, weeks, months and years, and you can explain all that to

a jury and still lose, because they still think you need a loss

of consciousness, right? And it's really hard for them to

believe that a case that you're asking for $10 million on that

it took eight months before it was diagnosed. But remember what

I was saying about going back to things that are intuitive and

easy for a jury to understand. So if you take that case and

instead of trying to push that giant boulder up the hill and

try to convince them that this was all caused from the initial

trauma to the brain, if you flip it and make it an acquired brain

injury as a result of chronic pain syndrome, then it's a lot

easier for that jury to understand that those exact same

symptoms and impairments, the problems with memory,

concentration, attention, Emotional impairments,

depression, sleep, fatigue, can all be caused by exposure to

chronic pain. And guess what? That same exact jury, they would

have a really hard time believing it. In the first

instance, there's so much more willing and so much easier for

them to accept it and believe it is true. In the second cuz,

again, it's part of their general fund of knowledge, and

you're not telling them something that would be contrary

now to what they would ordinarily believe. Because, of

course, people are going to have those issues when they have

chronic pain. So it's just reframing it the exact same

impairments, exact same injuries, but repackaging it in

a way that's much easier for a jury to accept and believe is

true, right?

So that's number two. That's number two. Number

three, the third way to add millions to your cases.

So this is, I think, the biggest mistake most

lawyers make. They don't talk about what the future holds for

their clients, and they are losing millions of dollars by

not doing that. Think of it as a math formula, right? If the jury

likes and believes the client, and if the jury believes the

injury, then they have to believe the consequences of that

injury, and lawyers are not talking about what the future

holds. So the law is really favorable to us. Here you can

look at the law in your jurisdictions in terms of

environmental exposure and toxic tort. You can talk about

increased risk and increased likelihood based on reasonable

medical certainty, but there's no reason, for example, based

upon the peer reviewed medical literature that exists today

that, let's say you have a brain injury. There's no reason why.

You're treating doctors should not also be talking about what

the future holds in terms of things like dementia,

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, just all these terrible conditions.

And you're able to talk in your closing argument and say, Hey,

we can't come back 10 years from now if they're medically

warehoused because they have dementia and they need 24 hour

care, but you're able to talk to the jury at closing and explain

about transferring the risk. So it's not all 100% just on your

client, but now it can be shared between your client and the

defendant, because, after all, they're the ones that caused the

crash and caused these injuries. So it's only fair, it's only

right that they also face some of this future exposure for the

problems that they caused. So I think it's really important to

tie in the medical literature and talk about what the future

holds, and the way I really believe this. It's almost like a

math, you know, formula, if they like and believe a client, and

if they believe the injury, then of course, they have to believe

the consequences of that injury. And most lawyers are not talking

about what the future holds.

I love that, and sadly, I connect to it a little

bit because my attorney didn't talk to me at all about the

future. It was all about get an MRI, go to the neck doctor, get

platelets, injections, which I didn't do, and get surgery,

which I didn't do for my shoulder. But here I am. I think

six years later I'll get woken up in the night because my neck

sore, my tennis serve is not the same. I can't quite get the

extension, and I can't really shoulder check well in the car.

Like every time I do it, it's like a little stiffness or pain

or I'm afraid it's going to hurt six years later, and

unfortunately, it'll get worse, you know,

thanks. I'm sorry, but, you know, the literature is pretty

clear. Like, when you have a disc injury in your neck, the

level above and below are much more susceptible. They should be

talking about things like what your risk for surgery will be in

the future, what the risk for adjacent discs will be in the

future. That's such a huge part of our world. The difference, I

think, is you're in a world where you have to study every

day because digital marketing is constantly changing. I mean,

look, in the past year, how much your world changed with

artificial intelligence and AIO results and everything you're

like going to school therapy. Yeah, it is insane. But in my

world, this is our trade, this is our craft. But I'm always

amazed at how bad most lawyers are when it comes to really

understanding the medicine, but this is what we do for a living.

You have to study it. You have to know it. And the more you do,

the more success you will have for your clients.

That's great. Well, there's three. What is the

fourth way to add millions to your case?

All right, so this one is my absolute

favorite, believe it or not, because no one else it seems

like is doing this, and it kills me, because this can add

millions. So there are studies that show that when people have

multiple injuries and they're asked, what is their biggest

complaint, their biggest problem, what is impairing their

ability to live their lives the most you know, what they say,

the majority of them, it's impaired sleep and constant

fatigue. And I guarantee you, 99% of the people listening to

this podcast are doing nothing with their clients, biggest

complaints, especially, by the way, the more serious the injury

case, the more serious the physical injuries or the brain

injury, the more likely they are to have greatly impaired sleep

and constant fatigue. So the question becomes, how can you

use this to secure your client's economic loss damages? And there

are couple different ways I've been doing this. In the interest

of time. I won't go through all of them, but we have this

wonderful new world with fitness trackers, where, for example,

the literature on the oura ring and the whoop shows that they

literally are as good and as accurate as a sleep study. So

what I've started doing is buying aura rings for my

clients, and I've probably bought just alone me and not the

other lawyers in my office, but I probably bought over 40 order

rings just for my clients. And what I am doing now, so I've

actually changed it a little bit. What does the oura ring do

if I'm not Yeah, so what it is, is it's a sleep tracker, and it

measures four different types of sleep. It measures sleep

latency, it measures sleep interruptions. It measures REM

sleep, deep sleep, which is where your body heals. And

recovers itself. It's also where, by the way, the brain

removes the proteins, the waste materials that accumulate, so

that people are less likely to have a worsening or

deterioration of their brain injury where they're less likely

to have things like dementia and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

It's incredibly important for our ability, obviously, to

function, but you can go down the rabbit hole in terms of

sleep, increases your risk of everything from cancer to being

involved in subsequent accidents to depression to suicide to

divorce, and it's this whole world that is just left

unexplored. So what I have been doing is, if the ordering is

showing greatly impaired sleep, I am sending my clients for a 48

hour sleep study, and then I'm having my vocational expert talk

about how based upon the sleep study results that my client is

not capable of, what's called competitive gainful employment

by the United States Social Security Administration. So this

is important. It's not me Steve Gersten saying that they can't

work because they have impaired sleep. It's the US government

saying they can't work because they have impaired sleep that's

now been objectively proven and documented in an objective

university setting. And what the SSA guidelines say is you have

to be capable of at least 40 hours of competitive employment

week to be considered gainfully employed. So if you take the

sleep study results and combine that with your vocational expert

and your economist, now you have a basis, especially when you're

18 to 24, months down the road on these cases, where you now

are at the point where you could say these are permanent and

permanent residual impairments that your client will have. In

other words, it's not going to get better. They're now going to

be able to get better and go back to work. You now have a

basis to bring these multi million dollar economic loss

claims on these cases. And again, it's just, it's there,

Jay, it's there in all these cases, we're looking right at

it. It's right in front of our noses. Yeah, and most lawyers

are not doing anything with it,

yeah, because sleep impairment is not an

injury, so I guess it's easy to miss, right?

It's tragic. But now here's the thing, though,

again, like the magic of AI. So what I used to do was I used to

send them for neuropsychological testing, because the Hal said

Ray 10 battery, for example, has about 20 different tests that

are sensitive and specific to fatigue to varying degrees. Now

I can use AI and go through my client's histories and the

medical records and pull out those clients that are

complaining of sleep impairments and fatigue, and I can check off

those cases and then talk to the clients, ask them what they're

doing, talk to the spouses, see if they're falling apart, buy

them the ordering. If they are getting consistently four hours

sleep a night and they're having 10 to 12 interruptions a night,

they are not capable of gainful employment. And the one thing

I'll add, and this is really important, when you talk about

sleep and fatigue. You have to remember, these are quantitative

injuries, not qualitative injuries. That's really

important, because most of our clients are going to look pretty

good. They're going to talk pretty well when they're rested,

but they're not rested on day three, four and five on the job.

That's why it's a quantitative injury. So it's like you using a

laptop and you've got 20 different screens open at once,

and you're using a lot of processor speed that laptops

battery is going to crash much faster than a laptop that has

been fully charged, and you're only using one screen, right?

People are no different. And if you can bring that to life and

show that to a jury, juries get it, and that is also how we've

been able to walk the walk and get these verdicts for our

clients.

That's awesome. Thank you for doing this. I'm

going to ask you to sum it up, because I get a little lost in

the technicalities of it. So give us the four, just back to

back. What are four ways to add millions of dollars to your

cases?

Sure. So I would say, Try big, settle small.

Consider turning your mild TBI case into chronic pain syndrome

cases. Talk about the future and what the future holds for your

client, and don't forget about bringing the sleep, the impaired

sleep and fatigue injuries to life for your jury, because they

will compensate your client for them.

Steve, I love it very, very good, and thank you

for taking it down a level for the rest of us. My pleasure,

there's a big lesson here, actually, which is. Hopefully

there's a few people out there listening, and hopefully a few

of them are in Michigan, and they're going to realize that

they should definitely hire Steve. But if not talk to Steve

Ryan, we can recommend someone who actually goes to trial. And

you said you'll get four times as much if you have an attorney

who's known to go to trial and have a good record in trial,

because the insurance companies, I've heard this dozens and

dozens of times, insurance companies definitely take that

into the equation when they're making the settlement offer. And

also, you can see like I thankfully had a relatively

minor accident, but there's a dozen things I've learned in the

last six years that I probably would choose my attorney

differently and approach my case differently because this stuff

sticks around. Well, Steve is a regular podcast listener. You

know, the last section of the technical podcast these quick

one line answers that we've been doing for more than 10 years. So

the first one is, what apps or techniques do you use for

personal productivity?

So right now, I'm using notion, and I really,

really like it. I was a very frustrated notes user with the

Apple products, and I just, I really like notion.

And what is notion? Is it like an AI note

taker? It can be What

does have an AI component, but notion is it's a

productivity app that you can use, either with teams or

individually. It just gives you is so many just robust features,

for note taking, for organizing your thoughts, for everything

from collecting certain things you see and organizing it so you

never lose it. It's almost like an Evernote with a very robust

note application and AI features as well. When I'm on the road a

lot, and I'm always on the road, it seems like it's just a great

way to keep organized

Great. Well, check that one out, because I'm

an Evernote user. I'm using Fathom for note taking, and the

Fathom AI is pretty good, but I want to bring it all together. I

want to see, see what that's like. We talked about your

personal wellness and fitness routine. Best business books,

I would say my favorite still is Good to Great

by Jim Collins. I just, I've gotten probably more out of that

than any other business book, from getting the right people on

the bus and the wrong people off the bus to just ready shoot aim,

which has helped me in terms of launching multiple law firms.

There are just so many great nuggets of wisdom in that book.

So that is probably my absolute favorite, the books you've heard

100 times on your podcast like E Myth, I think is really valuable

for lawyers. And honestly, I am a huge Seth Godin fan. I love

him. I love his daily blog. And I just feel like in a world

where there's just lawyers coming out of our ears, his

thoughts on standing out and making yourself remarkable are

more valuable than ever.

I love Seth, and I want to apologize to him

publicly, because I unintentionally offended him so

many years ago now, 12, 1314, years ago. We both spoke at eBay

live, and it was a big conference, and actually had to

be 20 years ago. I can't believe it. And Seth spoke first, he was

the morning keynote, and he was amazing. He was fantastic. And

then the people who thanked him said, Seth is going to be going

to the bookstore now, the conference bookstore, and he'll

be signing books. And Seth probably had four or five books

at that time. And then I spoke next, and I did the 10 golden

rules of online marketing, which was my signature talk at the

time. And then the guy thanked me and said, jlb at the

bookstore signing his new book, The 10 golden rules of online

marketing. And so about 30 people followed me there. And

when we got there, Seth was done, and he'd signed all his

books, and probably signed like 100 books, and then there was

one little table, and so they kind of shoot him out of the

way. And I said, Oh, Mr. Code, and I'm a big fan. I want to be

you one day, like, meaning that I wanted to have four or five

books and be so famous and popular. And he kind of said,

I'm funny, you know, because I there's a crowd of people

waiting for me and not waiting for him, so I unintentionally

offended him. So Seth, I apologize publicly. Now we're

both big fans, Steve and I.

Seth, I apologize for my friend Jay I can't do,

and he's gone on to be much more famous for many,

many blogs, podcasts and YouTubes, in addition to the 10

golden rules of internet marketing for law firms, which

blogs or YouTubes hit your stream and then you stop

everything and you listen to all right?

You're not going to like this answer. I'm kind

of, I mean, listen. I try to listen to as much as I can. The

biggest problem with a lot of these lawyer interview. Podcasts

is honestly, a lot of them are full a lot of a lot of them are

just lying. And I get it like you want to sell yourself and

you want to make yourself out to be as smart as you can so you

get referrals. But I just realized there's such a

difference between how lawyers act in the reality sometimes

behind the curtain. Yeah, the big hat, no cattle. And the

reality is, like, I just so many of them are just everyone wants

to sound so smart, and half the time they're just making shit

up. I go more by the individual than anything.

So the interviewee or the subject of

the podcast

Exactly, exactly, and I just found out to be a

better fit. Do you

remember one of the 10 golden rules podcasts

that you liked? How many have

I texted you on right? I'll give you an example,

because I think this is a good example of a lawyer that walks

the walk and talks to talk like Tim summer rock. It was on your

podcast recently. Yeah, Tim's Great. Yeah. Tim is great. And

he's just kind of like understated guy from Iowa. He's

not the one that's thumping his chest in public and the loudest

guy at the dinner, but still, water runs deep, and he's got a

lot of substance. And I love that about him, that he's

someone that the more I talk to, the more I learn from. And man,

I just sometimes wish there were more lawyers in our profession

like Tim.

Yeah, highly recommend that one go listen to

it. And Tim's a two time glam award winner, and the glam

awards are coming up this fall, and you'll be a candidate for

the Millie Award, which is similar award where we analyze

everybody's websites on 25 different criteria, including

your website design, your SEO performance. We even call the

firms and see how you do an intake. We add it all up, and we

allocate points on a on an algorithmic scale, and we pick

the winner of these awards. And Tim's a two time back to back

winner, and Steve's a first time candidate, first time nominee

this year.

So will I get penalized? Well, I get penalized

because I'm so specific, because each

not at all, not at all, right? Because I know

Google likes it when you're more specific,

all right, good, good. I don't want to own the

world. I just want to own Michigan for carbon truck

accidents. How's that?

Yeah, so what's a great introduction for you? I

assume an injured person in Michigan. But who else do you

meet?

I mean, look, my core value, so to speak, what I

try to always say to the lawyers here and the entire office, is

we are so incredibly fortunate that we can do very well by

doing good. And I think that does get lost, and it gets lost

in my industry, because so many law firms now are turning into

Mills, so to speak, and businesses where every phone

call is X number of dollars. If we take a step back and think

about the reasons we entered this profession, hopefully it

was something other than just money and the idea of being able

to spend a career and a life well lived by really making a

difference in people's lives and really changing things and

really helping them. How many people can say that, and to be

able to say that and be able to have a pretty damn good living

doing it, man, I'm pretty lucky. I want people to say that I made

a difference, and I think that's a good way to live.

I love it. Last question, Where can people get

in touch with you?

I always welcome people reaching out. I was happy

to talk my law firm website is Michigan auto law.com people can

email me ask Gersten at Michigan auto law.com always happy to

chat.

Awesome. Steve. Thanks so much. This was a lot

of fun, and I'm sure super high value for people.

Jay, it was such a pleasure. Thank you. Bye.