Sean Chalaki on growing GoSuits through client care
Sean Chalaki, Managing Principle at GoSuits Personal Injury and Accident Lawyers, discusses the growth of the trial-focused personal injury law firm, founded in 2010. The conversation looks at how community relationships and referrals brought in clients, and how the firm uses automation while keeping personal support central.
Build around client care, then use systems to support the work without losing personal attention. For Sean Chalaki, satisfied clients and referrals matter more than the number of cases signed in a month.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
Our business started with me opening up shop during the 2010 recession with one goal in mind: quality legal services. Throughout the years, we have been able to combine our growth with quality services. This means we have the infrastructure to take on a large number of clients, while maintaining individual attention to each case. This is done simply through automation of repetitive processes that were previously handled by workflows, and are now handled by AI agents.
In addition to that, we litigate all of our cases in-house. We have a team of litigation attorneys and paralegals that have litigated a combined total of thousands of various personal injury cases. How is that different from other firms? Well, when those other firms are asleep, our AI agents are still working to ensure case progress. Is our client’s data–or any data–shared with the AI? Absolutely not. We submit everything to our own platforms as encrypted numbers, and our own system can only see encrypted information. We stand firmly against any law firms using general AI chats to handle client’s cases.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
I gained my first clients by weaving myself into the community. I took every meeting, shook every hand, and passed out my business card to anyone who might be interested. My favorite method was leaving my pen in a bill book every time I signed something. I don’t see my clients as numbers. I genuinely love interacting with them. At our Dallas location, some of our clients drop by simply to enjoy a morning coffee. We host monthly happy hours so that they can connect with new people. We understand the rough time that they’re going through, and we want to ensure that they have outlets to be social with others, and to create meaningful connections that foster emotional support.
We also gain new clients through referrals. To this day, the majority of our clients actually come from referrals. Every satisfied client has the potential to lead to five new clients. It has never been about the number of cases we sign up in a month. It has always been about how many happy clients we produce.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
Everyday I fail. There is not a day that I come to work and I don’t fail. As a matter of fact, a running joke at the office is that if everything is going smoothly, something is actually wrong and I just don’t know it yet. We solve other people’s problems. Everyday is a new challenge. What I learned early on was to learn how to be flexible, document mistakes, and learn from those mistakes. We created an ongoing training platform to go over those mistakes, and teach everyone how to avoid making the same mistakes.
One thing that I have learned throughout experience and time is how to communicate and engage effectively with my employees. Recognizing that they go through ups and downs as well, and creating an environment where they can be comfortable being human and dealing with those ups and downs in a safe and understanding environment. The happier the employees, the better the productivity and client interaction. I really focus on the growth of my employees.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
Fraud has been a huge issue in our industry, and has doubled. From solicitation to receiving fake treatments. We ran a campaign making people aware of spam, and fraudulent promises of outcomes. We ran a campaign warning people not to talk to people who steal their police report and contact them. We do site visits to most clinics where patients are being treated to ensure that the treatment is legit, and the patient is getting proper medical care. We don’t get involved with the fraud of using particular doctors to burn and turn cases. We don’t have hidden administrative fees to cover our google ad marketing clicks. We provide 24/7 multilingual service to our clients so that they can report any issues or problems. We follow up with them to make sure that they don’t get wrapped up in the ugly side of our industry. Fraud varies from state to state as well. Lastly, clients just want someone that listens to them and takes care of them. Our customer service is impeccable and personable.. Although we use automation for most repetitive tasks, we do not use AI to answer client calls.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Find your niche as fast as you can, and master one area. Don’t get bogged down in trying to master it all. Ignore all of the noise. Ignore the showing off on social media of attorneys stepping out of Rolls Royce’s and flashing expensive watches. Focus on your clients and do good by them. The money will follow.
Thank you to Sean Chalaki and the team at GoSuits Personal Injury and Accident Lawyers for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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