Trey Harrell from Charleston’s Trey Harrell Law Office joins us today to discuss his upcoming PILMMA presentation on how to compete with that 800lb gorilla.
Every law firm has different goals. Some want to be the big fish in their small pond. Some want to be the big fish in a big pond. Others are happy just to have a few really great cases a year. Either way, law firms need to attract cases in order to meet their goals.
In today’s episode, we discuss how small firms can capture a sliver of the market, how to build a brand by leaning into your authentic personality, and how to create consistent, authentic content across different platforms.
This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our “Spotlight on PILMMA” podcast series.
Visit Trey online here: https://treyhelps.com/about/.
We’ll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/.
See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/.
Transcript:
Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. Law firms come in all shapes and sizes and have different goals to match. Some firms want to dominate their area, while others would be happy getting just a handful of really great cases every year. Regardless of the goal, every law firm wants to get their piece of the pie. But some... Locations make that challenging, especially when you are competing against the giant-sized law firms spending millions of dollars every month to dominate their area. How can a smaller law firm compete against them to get even a bit of attention? Trey Harrell:, founding partner of Trey Harrell: Law Office in Charleston, joins us today to discuss his PELMA topic, Competing Against the 800-Bound Gorilla. Thank you so much for joining us today, Trey.
Trey Harrell:
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Lindsey:
Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your law firm.
Trey Harrell:
Yeah, we run a small three-day attorney shop in Charleston, South Carolina. We represent clients all over the Palmetto State. We've been open for about five years. I've been practicing a lot longer than that. Before we opened up this firm, I was a special assistant United States attorney, a federal prosecutor. So, you know, we did our time for the government and then decided to go out on my own. And here we are today.
Lindsey:
That's great. Well, talk to us about some of the challenges that you see, you know, especially when you have some of these monster personal injury firms that are kind of encroaching on your market.
Trey Harrell:
Yeah. The hardest part of dealing with one of those big firms is their budget is at such a massive level. And then being able to saturate the market that they do in the way they do is just such a challenge for us to deal with. So you got to be really smart and very strategic in how you market and how you go about getting the clients because you can't, you don't have the dollars to waste on a bad TV commercial or a bad billboard. You've got to be very strategic in what you do.
Lindsey:
Right. You're not going to be able to go toe to toe against them using the same methods that they're using or else you're going to be bankrupt in an hour.
Trey Harrell:
But see, there's also a kind of a benefit to that is because they're spending so much money, they have to bring in so much revenue in so many cases. I think a lot of problems. Problems with a lot of small lawyers, particularly when they're starting out. They try to compete with the big dogs. We all know who I'm talking about, right? They try to go head to head with them. You don't need the whole pot, right? You don't even need half the pot when you're a small law firm. You need just a little sliver.