Why Reviews Matter

Why do reviews matter? In this episode, the Josh, Aaron and Dave discuss how client reviews reflect the firm’s commitment to trust, transparency, and client-centered service—and why real experiences from past clients help future clients make more informed decisions.

 FVF Law is a well-credentialed, overwhelmingly 5-star reviewed personal injury law firm in Austin, TX. FVF strives to be the educational resource for the injured, available to guide those with questions about what comes next. It is FVF’s mission to ensure clients are prioritized and informed throughout the injury claim process, and to secure the best possible outcome. Josh Fogelman and Aaron Von Flatern founded FVF Law to offer a different kind of injury law firm, and a dignified alternative in the marketplace. They hope to show injured Texans that consulting a lawyer after an injury is a natural, and responsible thing to do.

Transcript

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0:00:00.1 Josh : Hey, Aaron.

0:00:00.6 Aaron : Hey, Josh.

0:00:01.4 Josh : What's the best online review you've ever read?

0:00:07.4 Aaron : It was about Hawaiian hamburgers.

0:00:10.0 Josh : Okay. Go on.

0:00:11.4 Speaker 3: Hawaiian hamburgers?

0:00:13.3 Josh : Elaborate.

0:00:15.4 Aaron : Do I have to reveal that I wrote it?

0:00:19.9 Josh : No, you don't. But we're so glad that you did.

0:00:24.7 Speaker 3: You can keep that to yourself.

0:00:25.3 Aaron : I love just reading my own writing.

0:00:27.4 Josh : How many times have you reread it?

0:00:28.9 Aaron : I waxed poetically for several paragraphs about a Hawaiian hamburger that I had that was just so good.

0:00:35.0 Josh : All right. Was it actually in Hawaii? Is that what makes it a Hawaiian hamburger?

0:00:39.5 Speaker 3: Yeah, was it a burger in Hawaii, or did it just have pineapple on it?

0:00:41.6 Josh : That's the question.

0:00:42.5 Aaron : No. It was made by some folks from Maui who had moved here to Austin, Texas, and were making burgers in my neighborhood.

0:00:53.5 Josh : Oh, wow.

0:00:54.3 Aaron : And I was hoping for their success.

0:00:57.7 Josh : Did it happen?

0:00:58.7 Aaron : Because I liked their burger, and I don't like very many burgers, so I was like, I really want this to work.

0:01:03.1 Josh : All right.

0:01:04.2 Aaron : And I kind of need it to work.

0:01:05.6 Josh : Did it work?

0:01:06.2 Aaron : For me. I haven't seen their truck around in a while.

0:01:11.0 Josh : So let's recap. The best review you ever wrote was in support of a now defunct business.

0:01:23.1 Aaron : Well, it was the best review I ever read.

0:01:25.1 Josh : It was so good, in fact, that the business did not survive. Is that what I've come to understand?

0:01:32.4 Aaron : I feel like I owe that business an apology. I could have done better. I could have done better. Yeah.

0:01:38.0 Josh : I'm glad we had this talk. The best review I ever read, and I would encourage everyone to do this, is to go on to Amazon and look for sugar-free gummy bears.

0:01:50.2 Aaron : Okay, we got to back up a little bit. At what point did you decide you needed to go online at all looking for sugar-free gummy bears?

0:01:58.0 Josh : I was just curious as to whether or not Haribo got the memo that sugar's out.

0:02:04.8 Speaker 3: Yeah.

0:02:05.4 Josh : And it turns out that they did. However, there is this review written by a young woman college student who had the grave misfortune of eating what apparently was a tremendous amount of erythritol-laced gummy bears.

0:02:26.2 Aaron : I think I know where this is going.

0:02:27.7 Josh : Before entering an exam. Erythritol, as some of you may know, can cause extreme gastrointestinal discomfort in some. I'm going to leave it at that. I just want you to know that this review is brilliant. So with that said, we're a law firm that cares a lot about the reviews that we get from our clients. And we've always been that way.

0:02:58.9 Aaron : We're a successful law firm, and none of the reviews of our law firm were written by me, coincidentally.

0:03:05.9 Speaker 3: I'm glad that is on the record.

0:03:07.6 Josh : Also, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has experienced severe gastrointestinal discomfort as a result of the services that we provide.

0:03:17.9 Aaron : No, that has not happened.

0:03:20.3 Josh : To the best of my knowledge.

0:03:20.7 Aaron : Not during an exam.

0:03:21.7 Josh : Not during an exam. So when we started this firm back in, what was it, 2014, we knew at that time how important that was going to be to the success of our organization. And it was important to us for a number of different reasons, many of which go beyond just the actual survival and success of the business. Why? Why did we care so much?

0:03:56.7 Aaron : We were broke. We couldn't afford big billboards or commercials or helicopter with our name on the side. And yet we had to get our story out there, right?

0:04:11.3 Josh : That's right.

0:04:11.1 Aaron : Is that fair?

0:04:12.9 Josh : Yeah. I mean, we were coming up in a world where obviously Google was the mainstream and Yelp was kind of coming to be a platform that people relied upon mostly for things like restaurants, but also beginning to rely upon for service-based industries. And I think that that was sort of an inflection point when reviews mattered, but they weren't the end-all be-all to a business's ability to succeed. And I feel like when we were evaluating what it is that we wanted to accomplish as an organization, we allowed ourselves, we actually, I would say, challenged ourselves to be a true five-star organization end to end from the first interaction with our organization until the time that we're hugging our clients goodbye, even though we do keep in touch with them even after we're finished providing them with the legal care. But we challenged ourselves to be the best.

0:05:26.2 Aaron : I think I remember saying we're not plumbers. If a plumber has a four-star review, it seems okay, like it'll probably get fixed. Your airline pilot has to land the plane every single time.

0:05:42.7 Josh : Five stars mandatory.

0:05:43.8 Aaron : Yeah, it's mandatory to get five stars for landing the plane.

0:05:46.3 Josh : Absolutely.

0:05:46.8 Aaron : You've got to land it.

0:05:47.7 Josh : Absolutely.

0:05:48.7 Aaron : And we are lawyers with people's livelihoods at stake, with their futures at stake, with this tremendous burden of the worst thing that's ever happened to them sometimes in our laps. And from our perspective, in the beginning, less than five stars in that situation was embarrassing. We just couldn't do it. And I've also found, I talked in a previous podcast about the mission of our work, in the beginning, how I was kind of looking for that, looking for, in the beginning for us, I think you had coined this phrase, it was like, changing the perception of personal injury law in Central Texas, and I was excited about that mission. The other thing I was excited about was this concept of every single client walking away five-star happy and us doing whatever it took to make that true. And that being in line with our concept of the law degree as a privilege, the license was a privilege, we're allowed to do this, and therefore we need to do it right. Not like, okay, I've got a license to print money, but it's like, I've got this tremendous responsibility now. People have trusted us and kept me up a lot of nights, but I think that was a great way to start our law firm.

0:07:10.3 Josh : Yeah, well, one of the things too, and why... A, we're very value-driven people. You and I have always been aligned in sort of our ethos and wanting to be good stewards of the opportunity that we have while we have it in this life, and that's something that runs deep in the fabric of who we are as human beings and who we are, and consequently runs deep in the fabric of who we are as an organization. But when we were starting the law firm, there was a lot of, I'm not going to say dishonesty, because it's not really the appropriate term, there was a lot of opportunity for people to be taken advantage of in our industry and not a lot of opportunity for those who were behaving in that manner to be held accountable. In other words, there wasn't a lot of transparency at that time about who out there was doing what and how were they doing it. A lot of people were just kind of rolling the dice when they picked up the phone or chose their personal injury attorney, which is, in many instances, one of the most important decisions that person will be making at that time or maybe in their entire lives because so much can be at stake.

0:08:36.4 Josh : And I think that that was one of the driving forces behind how we decided to really approach that mission seriously, that mission being to provide five-star service, over-deliver every single time, go to, in many cases, not in many, but in some cases, extreme lengths to earn the trust and earn the satisfaction and respect of our clients, even in situations where many people would have just given up on the client or walked away and let them walk away dissatisfied, sometimes people being unreasonable or impossible to please. We strove and still strive to please and exceed the expectations of even those people because we knew, I think, ultimately, that we had to do that in order to change the perception of personal injury attorneys in this state and to instill confidence in the public that our profession is a valuable one, is an important and a meaningful one, and one that should be taken seriously and one that should exude integrity rather than what the industry had sort of been painted to represent, in many instances, up until that time.

0:10:07.0 Aaron : Yeah, and from that grew client education as one of our core values. Because you can hire the worst realtor in town, and your house is probably going to sell for about what it's worth anyway. With personal injury law, the disparity between a good and bad experience can be a multiple of 10.

0:10:27.3 Josh : Absolutely.

0:10:28.3 Aaron : Or more.

0:10:29.2 Josh : Correct.

0:10:29.9 Aaron : And that's just on the sort of net-to-client number. To say nothing of all the other ways that a lawyer can add value, whether it be the concierge service, whether it be the investigation, whether it be finding all the insurance under all the rocks that you don't know to overturn.

0:10:46.7 Josh : Helping.

0:10:47.6 Aaron : Whether it be to layer the insurance coverage in a way that doesn't waste money on the wrong services, whether it be to identify the high-level diagnostics that you need to ask your doctor about, otherwise something will be missed and you'll be 80 years old still feeling this and not have the money for it. We had to educate our clients on what kind of house they had so they could know whether they were selling it for about what it was worth. And that took a lot of energy. Most lawyers, at least back then, I don't know about now, but you'd hire a lawyer back then and they weren't going to tell you how it worked. They were going to hand you a check. You wouldn't know whether or not it was good or bad at the end of the day, but it was more money than you'd probably seen at once in your whole life, so you were fine with it. And now I hope the expectation is that your lawyer will explain to you why this is the correct amount. And that is one of the things you pay for is peace of mind. And the lawyer will also explain why it's not possible to get more than that, or if it is, it comes with some risk that you have to sign off on what you can do and give you that option to make an informed decision. All those things were born out of the idea of like, well, what does it mean to get a good review? I mean, they can't review something they don't understand. And so there was a very like virtuous cycle there of once we started to orient ourselves towards client happiness, the rest kind of took care of itself. And not only when I say the rest, I mean the way we practice law took care of itself. Because it's easy when you have a true north and you have a law degree and you're reasonably smart, it's easy to make it work.

0:12:34.2 Josh : Well, when you're listening to the people that you have committed to serve, you can really learn a lot about yourself and a lot about what kind of service you're providing. And by keeping an open mind as an organization and really in, not... I mean really inviting feedback, wanting to get better, acknowledging when you screwed up, doing a root cause analysis when things didn't go the way that you intended or hoped that they would go so that you can fix the system and do it better next time. When you put yourself out there in that manner, the result is you develop. You get better over time in a much more holistic way than just judging and gauging yourself by the numbers of dollars of cents that are coming into your bank account and the number of times your phone is ringing every week. And we care so much more about that, right? We care about developing meaningful and lasting relationships with the people who have chosen to invite us into their lives to help counsel them through something extraordinarily difficult and overwhelming and anxiety-inducing. And I think that we take that role and that... I don't think. I know. We take that role and that obligation and that opportunity extraordinarily seriously.

0:14:03.6 Aaron : Agreed.

0:14:04.3 Speaker 3: Well, there's also, Josh, you mentioned that there historically has been opportunity for lack of transparency and that environment allowing people to leverage it for their own gain.

0:14:18.5 Josh : Sure.

0:14:19.1 Speaker 3: And so you have two options as you navigate, which is we're just not gonna do the wrong thing, or we're going to do the right thing.

0:14:29.2 Josh : That's right.

0:14:28.8 Speaker 3: And I think...

0:14:29.9 Josh : Even when no one's looking.

0:14:30.7 Speaker 3: Right. And that's literally the definition of integrity is, right? Doing the right thing when no one's watching. And so it's one thing to say, well, we're not gonna take advantage of people, but people don't know that they haven't necessarily been taken advantage of if they don't understand what it means to be taken advantage of. Because as someone who's younger and not new to, I mean, that was new to the legal world when I started at FVF, I have heard my whole life, ambulance chasing is bad. But what does that mean? What does it mean for an attorney to take advantage of an injured person for their own gain? And it's like, because there is such a veil behind what the public sees that goes on in a case for all sorts of different reasons, it's like I have this understanding of culture that says this is probably what's happening, which is it's bad. But I don't have any of the language to point to like, well, what does it mean I got taken advantage of? They got a lot of money. And so the reviews for me, I think, are the evidence that we didn't just not do the wrong thing. We were willing to inconvenience ourselves so that we made sure to do the right thing, right? So we have gone out of our way to make sure that we serve people, that we answer their questions, that we help them navigate the process to the best of our ability. And it's like, you don't know what you don't know until you know it.

0:15:56.2 Speaker 3: And so, to your point, Aaron, about education, it's, I am here because of the reviews, right? When I was looking for jobs and I applied, it took me five minutes of being like, oh, these are like, not just good job, thanks for fixing my toilet kind of regular reviews of like, you did a good service, good job. It's like story after story after story of people saying, I was in such a low place because of the circumstance. And because of my experience with FVF, I'm now able to operate a different version of life that I didn't think was going to be possible for me. And that is not something that happens if someone just does their job, right? There's a different level of impact when the way someone does it, the experience in the relationship matters so much that you go to leave a review. Because most people don't leave good reviews if it's just satisfactory. People leave really negative reviews when it's bad, but they don't tend to leave reviews when it's just fine. And so I think for me, when I see people choosing to leave those five-star reviews, it's obviously great from a business perspective to know that people are appreciating us and there's a good reputation out there, but more it's a sign that we did the right thing. Like we operate in the way that we want to. And it's that level of affirmation and encouragement that we're going in the right direction.

0:17:26.5 Aaron : Yeah, it takes a little bit of courage, I think, to educate your client because when you tell them this is how it works and this is why it works, they will hold you accountable.

0:17:39.7 Josh : That's right.

0:17:40.8 Aaron : And that's the part where I think you've heard of commitment devices where you put something in place to prevent you... You put your milkshake 100 yards away from yourself so you're not tempted to go get it. We educate our clients in part to help us because they absolutely will tell us, well, I thought this is how you said it was supposed to go and this is why it needed to go that way. You told me that. And so by putting that out there to our clients, I think we've gotten another good feedback loop going where they're keeping us on track.

0:18:17.2 Josh : Yeah. Well, we've also created a culture internally to hold each other and hold ourselves accountable. And, I love how meaningful our review system has become to the organization and how it's sort of become sort of the center of gravity for the firm. Always something that we can point to and say, this is who we are. We will never, ever, ever stray from this. And if we have to stray from this as an organization, then we don't want to be an organization anymore. And kind of to your point earlier today when you talk about a disparity, I want to be really clear about what that means, right? Imagine you have a really fancy German car and all the check engine lights come on and you drive into the mechanic shop and the mechanic starts using a bunch of words that you don't understand and you're desperate and your life has been turned upside down because this vehicle is the thing that has to get you from point A to point B so that you can pay your bills and get your kids to school on time and make it to your job. And all you need is that it's all you need is to be able to trust that you can hand it over to this person and you're vulnerable and you're prepared to pay them whatever amount they ask for. And you're completely at their mercy to be fair and honest with you.

0:19:46.0 Josh : Well, I mean, we all know how that story ends many, many, many, many, many times is they see that vulnerability. They see that opportunity to take advantage. And unfortunately, unfortunately, that exists in many, many service-based industries where it requires specialized skill to repair the problem, which is what being an attorney is. That's the value of being an attorney. That's the privilege of holding the law license. And we have seen in this industry, time and time again, people walk in and hire someone because... I mean, we get these calls, right? We get calls of dissatisfied, from dissatisfied people. We hear the stories, like we see them. And they walk in with their lives having been turned upside down, and they don't even understand the system that they have been thrust into through no fault of their own into this legal system, into this personal injury world. They don't even know what questions are right and what questions are wrong and what they should expect and how the system works. And as a result of that, they're vulnerable. And when the person on the other side of that phone is feeding you information, and they're going to get paid a percentage of whatever they're able to recover for you, then in many cases, they can be incentivized to do that as quickly as possible at your expense because getting paid for them means that they get to move on to the next one. And that's a huge problem.

0:21:30.1 Josh : And I think that that's something that we really, really take pride in our own organization about is our willingness to open the hood and take the time and explain the lingo and educate our clients, even though sometimes it can be stressful or sometimes it can be really, really time-consuming to do, that's what you do. That's just what you do because that's the mission you have chosen to pursue. And I feel like looking back now, 11 years after we started this organization and the hundreds of reviews and the thousands of people we've helped, the theme that our reviews explain over and over and over again is that people trust us, that people felt like they got that education, and they felt that way because they did. We took that time, and we did that thing. Even though we could have run a business that took advantage and got paid quickly and moved on to the next one, we have made a very conscious effort not to do that for the purpose of being able to present ourselves with integrity to the world and achieve that mission of changing the perception of personal injury attorneys in this state.

0:23:00.1 Speaker 3: And I think the reviews above all do that and serve prospective clients the most. And I think that's the hard thing to communicate sometimes because every business is looking for reviews. Every business wants a good reputation so that they have continued client, people coming in and consuming and purchasing and keeping the doors open. And so there's always obviously a more practical baseline need for a good reputation and so reviews do that. But one of the things that I think is most critical for people to understand or at least for us to communicate to our clients is one of the best ways that you can serve your community is by sharing your experience with us. Because you knew when you were going through this process, you didn't know what was going to happen. You didn't know the things to think about. You didn't know the expectations. All of these things were learned in the process. And so that's going to be true for the next person. And so one of the best things about leaving a review about your experience is that you are able to provide even more of a resource to the community of people who are looking to say, who should I trust with this situation?

0:24:23.8 Speaker 3: And also, they might not understand how significant of a trusting relationship it's going to be and what the stakes are going to be. And so the reviews are not for us to just say, well, great, now we can make so much more whatever because we have more people coming through the door. It's we want other people to know that in a world and in an industry that has not done itself any favors in general by the way that it's conducted itself, those reviews are another resource for other people to see that there is an option that's trustworthy, that's quality, that's good. And so our mantra from the beginning has been our clients tell our story better than we do because of course we are going to tell you that we're great because we're us and we think we're great. Everyone thinks that they're great.

0:25:14.0 Josh : We are great, by the way.

0:25:15.7 Speaker 3: But it's way more compelling and way more authentic and accurate, which I think is the most important part, because it's like, we can think we're doing a job a certain way, but if it's not coming across that way, then we're not doing it that way. And obviously, there's nuance and context for people who are more challenging or there's a difference of opinion or perspective. But overwhelmingly, like you were saying, Josh, we're going to do what we can to serve you in the best way that you need to be served. And so if your feedback is, it could be better, then our response is, well, then it will be better. And so I think too, people need access to knowing what's around them before they have to commit. And so those long reviews are, they're serving other people more than they're serving us. And they're absolutely serving us and it's super encouraging and it's helpful for our business.

0:26:05.0 Speaker 3: But most importantly, it's giving another person an opportunity to say, hey, where can I find myself in these reviews? Which person has had the same experience I've had? Because then I'm going to feel like, oh, this person who was very similar to me in their situation, they felt heard, they felt understood, they were served really well. I feel way more confident picking up the phone, having that conversation. And when it can get scary at times to go back to, no, I know this is good because overwhelmingly people have had a positive experience here. That's the beauty of the reviews. And that's why I care so much about it as a... From a marketing perspective, it's like, I want you all to know that this is what people's experience are. Don't just take our word for it. In fact, don't take our word for it. That's why these things matter.

0:26:48.9 Aaron : Yeah, if you've lost your spouse in a tragic accident, you can have 10 different friends telling you to call a particular law firm and none of them have been through it. But if you go online and find the reviews, you can find someone who's been through exactly that and say, hey, this was my experience. It's like a note at the trailhead. We're taking people up the mountain and back down again, leaving a note for the next person to see is incredibly helpful. And so we have to thank our clients in all this because when they're leaving these reviews, it does help our business and it's great for us. But it's especially, as you point out, especially helpful to those people who are going through incredibly difficult circumstances, giving them the kind of encouragement that they need.

0:27:33.6 Josh : Yeah, well, I mean, we celebrate them, right? At the end of the day, it's been so important, this concept of staying true to our values and staying true to who we are and who we set out to be when we created this organization. I appreciate how much we actually take the time to celebrate those and how much purpose and fulfillment and joy seeing that positive feedback come through really gives to the whole team, how energizing it can be and how it helps to reaffirm, like you said earlier, how it helps to reaffirm the decision that our team members have made to spend their time and their energy with us and to be a part of this thing that we're so fortunate to have.

0:28:31.7 Aaron : Great.

0:28:33.5 Speaker 3: Five-star reviews on this conversation. I might write one. That'll be my favorite review I've ever read.

0:28:39.1 Josh : Don't let Aaron write it.

0:28:40.1 Aaron : Yeah. Don't. You don't want that.

0:28:41.8 Josh : Thanks, guys.

0:28:42.6 Speaker 3: Awesome.