[00:00:00] Lee Rudin:
Unless you’re the 800 pound gorilla, yeah, you’re gonna turn people off and people are gonna say you’re a bottom feeder and an ambulance chaser. And I took those comments and did videos on those as well. I know what people think. I don’t care.
[00:00:15] Bobby Steinbach:
Welcome to Hot Docket. The show where we talk about winning marketing strategies that have built the most successful law firms.
[00:00:21] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Join us every two weeks for the latest trends and tactics to grow your law firm.
[00:00:25] Bobby Steinbach:
Welcome to Hot Docu podcast. Today we have with us Lee Rudin of Get Rude Law. He’s got an amazing shirt on, which we’ll talk about in a little bit.
[00:00:38] Bobby Steinbach:
Thanks for hopping on and for anybody who’s listening, not watching. Lee’s wearing a shirt that says stop being polite, which is amazing. And he was just telling a little story, Lee, if you want to pick up with that story, because I think it’s a good opener.
[00:00:51] Lee Rudin:
Well, so, so the back says get rude, right? So people, I like this front of the shirt cause it stops people.
[00:00:57] Lee Rudin:
I was in the mall, uh, earlier cause I needed to buy some concealer for some video filming I’m doing tomorrow. And I’m walking out of the max store. And somebody is like, what’s that? What’s that shirt say? I think at some point she told me that like something about Jesus and I shouldn’t be rude, but I know, I know it was not being polite that stopped her in her tracks.
[00:01:15] Lee Rudin:
So I appreciated it.
[00:01:18] Bobby Steinbach:
Yeah, it’s very good. I think, um, like for us, we’ve got shirts that kind of look like that, but ours say fat and angry. And I’ve probably gotten stopped in air. I’ve gotten stopped by like TSA in airport being like, I love your shirt. Don’t know that you should be wearing that at an airport.
[00:01:35] Bobby Steinbach:
But, uh, at the day, it’s just about being different and like saying something different.
[00:01:40] Lee Rudin:
There’s a lot of fat and angry at the airport, so maybe you should be wearing at the airport.
[00:01:43] Bobby Steinbach:
Yeah, maybe we’ve got fat and angry. We’ve got pizza Fridays, pray to the pizza gods. Oh, that
[00:01:49] Andrew Nasrinpay:
just like a bunch of inside jokes, because we, for us, it’s not like we’re marketing to consumers the same way you are more just like an internal thing.
[00:01:58] Andrew Nasrinpay:
But uh, I do love that you’ve thought about your brand and you think about the little details like that, where would you go on his site? You can get the swag to, he gives away the swag, produces a lot of videos. So I definitely wanted to chat on social. Can you walk us through what your process is for producing all your videos, creating a schedule?
[00:02:20] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Because it seems like it’s, you’ve got a good routine going at this point.
[00:02:24] Lee Rudin:
Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of it’s trial by error. So we, I came out, started this firm alone. I was at a defense firm and I came out, had this organically grown plaintiff personal injury practice. But for the first six or so months, I was a hybrid.
[00:02:42] Lee Rudin:
And then when I knew I was going to rebrand and lean into this, stop being polite, get rude catchphrase, I said, first of all, I need to build up a base of social media content because if someone goes and looks on my website, they’ll see a nice looking website, but the first thing they’re probably gonna do is go to instagram or facebook and there was nothing there.
[00:03:04] Lee Rudin:
So I hired a company that offered this service and they said, you know, we’ll write scripts for you and we’ll do this and we’ll do that. And. If you go down to the bottom of my videos, the first go of it, it’s really just not my style. And so they, they hire a local videographer comes, we set up, we shoot in my living room and then lo and behold, he didn’t capture my eyes.
[00:03:30] Lee Rudin:
So they had to use AI to fix that teleprompter and I’m staring at the teleprompter, but the way the camera angle was, it looked like I was looking. Away . So they had to use AI to fix the first couple videos. And I said, okay, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna make that mistake again. Uh, but, but then I also kind of understood what the routine was like.
[00:03:48] Lee Rudin:
So they’d throw out some ideas and I’d say, ah, I don’t, that’s not for me, like I told. And then this has been an evolution. So where we are today is, you know, probably a year plus in the making. But there were a couple things that I said, I don’t, I don’t ever wanna do this. I’m not saying I don’t want to wish someone a Merry Christmas, but I’m never going to put up a static ad that says Merry Christmas.
[00:04:08] Lee Rudin:
What I will do is get dressed like Santa Claus and do a funny bit about Christmas. And I’ll do it about Hanukkah, and I have one coming about St. Paddy’s Day, and like, whatever you can think of to stop the scroll, I want to do it. And I think, you know, you said, you talked about social, you talked about the brand.
[00:04:27] Lee Rudin:
Like, to me, if you can’t have fun with it, no one else is going to have fun with it either. And you know, this is just, this is advertising. So I want to create merge that people are going to want to wear, which means it can’t say rude and law across the chest. Cause like, except for my mom and my good friends who wants to wear that.
[00:04:45] Bobby Steinbach:
And your mom doesn’t want to wear it either. She doesn’t.
[00:04:48] Lee Rudin:
No, my dad, maybe my mom, not so much. Um, Like I have, I have some Mardi Gras merch actually, you know, and I have one sitting here. So I’ll show you. I have a bunch of Mardi Gras merch, but this one, Oh, it’s so good, right? So on the back, it’s got my logo.
[00:05:04] Lee Rudin:
I mean, he’s got my name and my contact info. So people will wear it out on the parade route because it looks cool and it’s the right colors and it’s free advertising.
[00:05:13] Bobby Steinbach:
What was the Genesis of like, get rude. I’m sure you didn’t just land there one day. How’d you get there?
[00:05:19] Lee Rudin:
So I started doing things like this.
[00:05:24] Lee Rudin:
We’d be on a zoom or I’m talking to somebody and I’m like, Hey guys, are you tired of getting pushed around by insurance companies? They’re like, yeah. Like, okay, you should stop being polite. And they would smirk or chuckle. And like, once I got enough of those, I said, this is gonna work. And because it’s not fake in the sense that like, I can, I can lean into that and have fun with it.
[00:05:49] Lee Rudin:
And I joke, it’s not be rude. It’s get rude. Like it doesn’t, it’s get rude because that’s my name. And we do, we are somewhat of an aggressive. Uh, pushback type firm, but we’re not, you know, sometimes you get more bees with honey. So we’re not saying that everything’s going to be bull in a China shop. And I have a great working relationship with the other side and with insurance companies, but I tell my clients, we’re not just going to take their word for it.
[00:06:15] Lee Rudin:
So sometimes you do have to get rude and say, look, if you’re, if we’re going to draw a line in the sand here, we’ll file a lawsuit. We’ll take the case out of your hands and we’ll put it in front of a new adjuster, defense counsel or a judge or jury. And that’s what it takes sometimes.
[00:06:30] Bobby Steinbach:
And how have you thought about, like, I think.
[00:06:33] Bobby Steinbach:
A common concern we come across is people wanting to be everything for everybody, right? Where they’re like, I don’t want to lean into that because I need to be seen as serious or, you know, I don’t, I want to lean into that, but I feel like I can’t because I need my peers to take me seriously or, or whatever it may be kind of like, how’d you get your head around doubling down on your brand, even though it might turn some potential clients off.
[00:07:01] Lee Rudin:
So I’ll give you, Two little anecdotes to kind of to go with that. I am the first good videos that I filmed right there. One of them is pinned up on my instagram account. The other ones you can tell they’re not me in a suit anymore. And I play a pickup basketball game and it’s a Saturday and I get hit.
[00:07:23] Lee Rudin:
In the lane with some guy’s elbow and have the best black eye I’ve ever had. And like, this wasn’t even from a bar fight. Like this was an accident, but it was really good. And I said, Oh crap, I got to film social media content in three days. Like, what am I going to do? And I said, you know what? I’m going to lean into it.
[00:07:41] Lee Rudin:
I did a boxer video. I did one laying in a handicapped parking space. Like, Oh, I just get knocked out by the insurance company. Like, you know, we’ll, we’ll fight back. And then I got, I did one dressed in a full clown costume with clown makeup. And my dad, he says, Lee, like, don’t you think like this is going to destroy your reputation?
[00:08:01] Lee Rudin:
And I’m like, dad, what reputation? Nobody knows me. So, like you wanna, you gotta get people to know you before you have to worry about that. And I’m working with this business consultant, and they say, you know, keep marketing. Nobody knows you. And I think, I think that’s it. Unless you’re the 800 pound gorilla.
[00:08:18] Lee Rudin:
Yeah, you’re gonna turn people off. And people are gonna say you’re a bottom feeder and an ambulance chaser. And I took those comments and did videos on those as well. And, and so I know what people think, I don’t care, but again, if you can have fun with it, maybe people will say, you know what, that guy’s really creative.
[00:08:38] Lee Rudin:
I want someone creative representing me because maybe he’ll come up with a, a good approach or a better solution than the guy who’s the tried and true, this is the way we’ve always done it. Bullshit.
[00:08:51] Andrew Nasrinpay:
So when you’re making these videos, do you get like a backlog of them and post them on a regular basis?
[00:08:57] Andrew Nasrinpay:
What does it look like for you right now?
[00:08:59] Lee Rudin:
Yeah, uh, not really like I’m, you know, this is going to be great because this will give me some filler content, you know, we can chop this up and have some non character content and stuff. It’s really me, but, you know, I’ll film 6 to 8 videos and then we’ll schedule them.
[00:09:17] Lee Rudin:
You know, we like to have some other stuff, you know, reviews. I call them like rude reviews and Yeah. Yeah. Um, rude and results, things like that. Just to kind of tell people, Hey, we all, we are also a law firm. We’re not just, you know, a comedy routine. Um, but I come up with ideas and then, you know, I’ll try to find if I need costumes, I’ll get costumes.
[00:09:36] Lee Rudin:
And then actually on Friday, I have a videographer come to my office. I have a massive green screen. And so like where we can use the green screen, we will, uh, because it does make it more efficient, then. So I think what do I have queued up? I have, I’m going to do something for like daylight savings. I’ll do something for the turn of spring.
[00:09:55] Lee Rudin:
I have St. Paddy’s Day. Um, we have Pi Day. March is a tough month. Like there’s not a lot of stuff. You know, April gets better. April we have like locally we have Jazz Fest and we have French Quarter Fest and we can do some stuff that’s more specific to where we are. I have a whole Oompa Loompa video that I’m really excited about.
[00:10:15] Lee Rudin:
I wrote a whole Oompa Loompa song and so I’m looking forward to getting in the the green suit and the green screen and seeing what the editor can do. So yeah, we record them all in a couple hours. You know, I figure out like how to choreograph the the costume changes, right, the ones that I have to like look presentable.
[00:10:32] Lee Rudin:
I gotta do those first. And then when I start putting on costumes and like, you know, stuff on my head, we usually put those at the end.
[00:10:39] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Yeah. By the end of the day, you’re like full joker. Like this is how I negotiate with insurance companies.
[00:10:46] Lee Rudin:
You know, it’s so funny. You know, I tell people, you don’t quite understand like this, that part is exhausting.
[00:10:54] Lee Rudin:
It’s like sitting in a deposition for a couple hours. Cause you just have to be on. All the time, whereas like you’re at your desk, maybe you get up, you have coffee, you’re messing around. It’s, it’s more relaxing on the mind, but like when you’re in it, it’s, it’s a tough day.
[00:11:10] Bobby Steinbach:
How, uh, how do you measure like the impact of what you’re doing on social?
[00:11:14] Bobby Steinbach:
Because you’re so heavy on brand. Do you just kind of like throw your hands in the air and be like, this is going to work or it isn’t. It’s like qualitative or do you try and measure what you’re doing?
[00:11:25] Lee Rudin:
You know, it’s hard because I started out from nothing. So, like, you know, what’s a good measurement? I have a bunch of posts that in the past we’ve boosted that have hit 70, 000 views, 70, 000 impressions, 80, 000.
[00:11:42] Lee Rudin:
That seems pretty solid. Now, then the Rudy Boucher video that I showed you, that one was a little more strategic. I knew it was temporal because we did it. It was a football themed video around the time of the Super Bowl. We boosted it. And then for whatever reason, people thought it was really funny. I mean, I know why they thought it was funny because it was funny.
[00:12:03] Lee Rudin:
And so then it got 300 likes. Now I only have 700 followers. And like, when I saw all of these people that I didn’t know, liking it, sharing it. Uh, following me. Then I was like, okay, this is working. And so we went from like, I don’t know, 500 followers. We’re over 700 now, which for a law firm, a small law firm, that’s a decent number because most people don’t follow businesses in the way they would follow like an influencer or someone putting out more pertinent content.
[00:12:37] Bobby Steinbach:
But when you’re doing your like end of month or end of quarter end of year, whenever you’re doing your look back of like what’s worked for us on marketing, what hasn’t? What’s been our cost per case on this channel versus that channel for something like this social strategy. It’s just, is it just blended for you where you say, I spent this much kind of all in on brand and I got this many cases and I could kind of exclude, you know, anything that was like direct response.
[00:13:03] Bobby Steinbach:
I know it came from a specific campaign and that’s kind of like my blended branded acquisition costs, or are you just like, I don’t even care about that. My cases went up this year. I know more people know me and think about it that way.
[00:13:16] Lee Rudin:
So I don’t look at the content that I’m producing for social media.
[00:13:20] Lee Rudin:
In the way that you’re describing, like it’s not designed to be a direct to consumer lead generator. It’s, it’s on brand awareness. So in that capacity, I’m looking at, well, how many people do follow me? Cause then they’re following the brand. They’re not following me because they got into a car accident and they need a lawyer today.
[00:13:39] Lee Rudin:
Right? That, that’s brand awareness in my space anyway. I’m running meta campaigns that are on my accounts, but I’m not in them. So those are designed to really hit the consumer, you know, when they have a need. and then generate the leads. But none of those people are saying, Oh, I clicked through your ad because I saw your entertaining video.
[00:14:01] Lee Rudin:
So the idea of the entertaining video is kind of to be out there. Uh, hopefully people are seeing them. And then over time, that’ll put me in the consciousness. So they’ll call me without needing to see a meta campaign. Cause they’re gonna be like, Oh, I know that get rude guy.
[00:14:18] Bobby Steinbach:
And are you, what’s your opinion on like lawyers who have personal brands versus their corporate brand?
[00:14:23] Bobby Steinbach:
Cause you know, there’s like for every, I don’t know, 10 Facebook pages for a business, I would say the number that are successful in actually creating a following is probably slim to none, maybe zero to 1%. And it feels Like the lawyers who’ve established their personal brand outside of their company page have been more successful in creating traction.
[00:14:53] Lee Rudin:
So I tend to agree with you, but I wonder who are they, who are they building traction with? Right? Like I, I can name half a dozen to a dozen lawyer celebrities, but are they celebrities amongst the legal crowd? You know, if I went to a big lawyer conference, I would know all the speakers because they do the speaking circuit.
[00:15:16] Lee Rudin:
So is that who they’re trying to attract or, you know, if I go to their municipality, do they actually generate cases because their personality that that’s, I think
[00:15:29] Andrew Nasrinpay:
I, I think some of the folks that do the speaker circuit are trial lawyers and they only want the high quality cases and they are targeting lawyers like, like yourself.
[00:15:37] Andrew Nasrinpay:
But I, I agree with you where some of them, it may not be super effective in terms of like a direct response. Going after people in their local market for PI.
[00:15:50] Lee Rudin:
Yeah, you know, it’s easy if you are a firm that doesn’t, that you are not the brand, meaning like the firm isn’t your name, then maybe it is important to be a personal brand so that you can, uh, maybe bootstrap you to the firm when the firm isn’t clearly associated with you.
[00:16:10] Lee Rudin:
But, you know, for me, how hard is it? I am. I am rooting. It’s rude and law. I mean, at some point, I probably have to start buying like get rude law or like the things that people might search to get to me if they’re not really putting two and two together. Um, but, you know, I said, I’ll know if I made it if I’m walking the concourse of the Superdome Smoothie King Center, the French quarter, and they’re like, oh, that’s the get rude guy.
[00:16:37] Lee Rudin:
Then I’ll know that it’s like broken through the social consciousness,
[00:16:40] Andrew Nasrinpay:
you know, you know, the other one that I’ve heard about that a lot of lawyers talk about the moment they knew they made it was when kids were dressing up as them on Halloween. That’s the one I hear a lot where it’s like, Oh, I knew my brand is like solidified in that market forever.
[00:16:58] Andrew Nasrinpay:
When just kids are dressing up as me for Halloween, like there’s no getting rid of that brand.
[00:17:03] Lee Rudin:
We, we talked offline, but like, but Mars part in my, my area, he’s the 800 pound gorilla. And every year you see people like they’re a billboard of his or their him or whatever it is. But, I mean, you’re right. If you’ve been in the market, you just become another figurehead.
[00:17:22] Lee Rudin:
Amongst the people, you’re not a politician, but the same way they would dress up like the mayor or somebody else. Like they know you, you’re on TV all the time, maybe more than their favorite show.
[00:17:31] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Yeah. I, I think in a lot of DMAs, an attorney is typically the top advertiser in that market and the most popular person besides maybe the college football coach or something along those lines.
[00:17:47] Andrew Nasrinpay:
So yeah, I totally agree with you.
[00:17:50] Lee Rudin:
Yeah. You know, and I guess back to one of your original points. I’m not running TV ads, but when I do, I want them to be entertaining. Like, I don’t want people to watch that ad and be like, Oh, it’s another lawyer ad. I’d rather it just be a really funny ad and a good ad and like hire a good writer to do it because hopefully that, that gets you through.
[00:18:11] Lee Rudin:
The consciousness faster than just doing the same tried and true thing that every other lawyer does.
[00:18:16] Andrew Nasrinpay:
I always like to say you don’t have to jump off an 18 wheeler with a hammer in your hand, but keep in mind that your competition is gunning. So if you, if you want to be memorable, you probably should plan to invest in your creative and make it something people will actually like and remember.
[00:18:35] Lee Rudin:
I agree.
[00:18:36] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Is there anything you want us to promote for you? Like I, I enjoy watching your social videos, but if, if you have a, a podcast you’re making or something you’re going to be on, is there anything you want us to call out specifically?
[00:18:49] Lee Rudin:
No, but do you want to plug get rude. com at get rude law, you know, those kinds of things just so people know where to find me.
[00:18:57] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Yeah. Just let us know where to find you and we’ll, we’ll put it in the show.
[00:19:02] Lee Rudin:
You can find me a pretty easy get rude. com. at get rude law on Instagram. We’ve got a Facebook page, YouTube. I was told we need more YouTube followers. So if you’re out there being generous, you know, give us a like and a follow and you’ll see all the same outrageous content on all the platforms or on LinkedIn X, Twitter, whatever you want to call it now.
[00:19:23] Lee Rudin:
So if you’re looking for us, we’re not that hard to find. Sweet.
[00:19:26] Bobby Steinbach:
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of hot dog. We’re your hosts, Bobby and Andrew, founders of the marketing agency for ambitious law firms
[00:19:34] Andrew Nasrinpay:
have questions about marketing or anything we covered today. Email us at mark at mean pug. com. Be sure to subscribe.
