Welcome to episode 61 of The Earley Show, hosted by personal injury attorney Christopher Earley! For this conversation, Chris is joined by Angel Reyes III, founder and president of Angel Reyes & Associates in Dallas. Angel has been a lawyer for 35 years and has spent 33 of them building a roughly 650-person firm with 46 lawyers and more than 550 jury verdicts in Texas. He got there doing the opposite of what most firms do: narrowing to one case type, shutting off every TV ad, billboard and bus wrap he had spent two decades buying, and refusing to spend a dollar he can't measure. He and Chris walk the whole arc — the 1994 policy-limits fee he put into Univision instead of a new car, the meeting where he told a dozen lawyers the firm would never touch another mass tort, the 2019 decision to go fully digital that produced a 5x increase in case count, and the machinery holding it together: Litify, nearshore teams, always-on Zoom rooms, the Wonderlic, and a training academy that never stops running. 00:00 Intro 00:52 35 years a lawyer, 33 in business 03:13 Michigan Law, Wall Street, and the move to Dallas 09:13 The firm today: ~650 people, 425 nearshore 10:32 The 1994 case and the $50,000 Univision bet 11:45 Cutting everything that wasn't car wrecks 16:26 The only three jobs of a CEO 24:10 "We are never doing another mass tort" 26:52 Hiring the person, not the resume 28:04 Why every hire takes the Wonderlic 30:29 Killing broadcast media for Google 33:01 The hockey stick: 5x the case count 33:37 "If you can't measure it, don't spend it" 35:04 Leaving Needles for Litify and Salesforce 42:51 ActivTrak, RTO and the nearshore decision 46:03 "An overpaid watcher of watchers" 48:10 How to reach Angel About our guest Angel L. Reyes III is the founder and president of Angel Reyes & Associates in Dallas, Texas. Born in Hawaii to a Puerto Rican family and raised on the island until age 11, he finished high school and college in Kansas City before attending the University of Michigan Law School. He started his career in corporate securities and finance at a Wall Street firm, moved to Texas in the early 1990s, and opened his own firm about five months later. Today the firm handles auto and truck cases exclusively, employs roughly 650 people including 46 lawyers, and has secured more than 550 jury verdicts in Texas. Connect with Angel Website: reyeslaw.com Email: angel@reyeslaw.com Topics covered Growing up between Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Kansas City — and how speaking Spanish shaped the firm Michigan Law, Wall Street big law, and the accidental move to Texas The 1994 policy-limits case and the $50,000 Univision buy that followed Building around a market nobody else was serving in 1990s Dallas Why the firm dropped mass torts, work comp and premises to focus only on auto and truck The three criteria that make a case worth taking: fault, coverage, and a willing client Case cost financing, phantom income tax, and keeping case costs in a separate account Hiring: interviewing the person instead of the resume, and why every hire takes the Wonderlic Why 2018-2019 was the right moment to kill broadcast media and go fully digital Competitor keyword bidding and where the Fifth and Ninth Circuits landed Attribution: unique numbers per ad since the 90s, and the 2021 test that proved TV wasn't lifting Migrating off Needles to Litify on Salesforce — and what that unlocked in measurement The nearshore decision: service, not savings Always-on Zoom rooms, ActivTrak, Power BI and "watching the watchers" Training as a permanent operating discipline, not an onboarding step The only three jobs of a CEO: vision, talent, and paying the bills People and resources mentioned Angel Reyes & Associates, Dallas, TX — reyeslaw.com Glen Lerner — Lerner and Rowe; Ninth Circuit keyword-bidding litigation Mike Morse — Fireproof Gino Wickman — Traction / EOS Michael Gerber — The E-Myth Univision — the network behind the firm's first big media buy Litify — case management platform built on Salesforce Needles — the legacy system the firm migrated off in 2019 RingCentral and Invoca — telephony and call tracking Power BI — productivity and activity reporting ActivTrak — workforce activity monitoring, adopted in 2020 Wonderlic — the 50-question, 12-minute test the firm gives every hire practicetipoftheday.com — Chris's free weekly email list for lawyers Learn more about Chris' practice, the Earley Law Group, here: https://www.chrisearley.com/ Check out Chris' book "Scaling The Wall" here: https://tinyurl.com/mrxxyv5n The Earley Show is a part of the Answering Legal Podcast Network. Learn more about our podcast network here: https://tinyurl.com/yk7t3nms Interested in learning more about Answering Legal? Book an appointment to speak with us here: https://tinyurl.com/ufnvb2a3 You can also give us a call at 631-866-0801.
