What made you want to do the work you do? Please share the full story.
I worked as a court reporter for over seven years before going to law school, which exposed me to all types of witnesses, lawyers, and jurors from only a couple of feet away. Throughout my time as a court reporter, I witnessed the impact of a good story as it could sway a jury, while an poorly constructed story could result in losing a case – even when all of the evidence was in the favor of my client. I realized during this time that I wanted to be the one who tells the story, instead of being the one who reports the story, so I attended Stetson University College of Law, where I received my J.D. and was admitted to The Florida Bar in 2008.
When I opened Kemp Law Group, I wanted to provide a service for those who were injured in Trinity and the surrounding areas of Tampa Bay and give them the confidence to pursue their legal rights. I had seen so many people get taken advantage of by insurance companies and didn’t want my clients to have to experience that. Hence, I developed my practice to include aggressive trial work and the care for my clients. My philosophy can be summed up in a simple statement: I would rather have my clients than trophies.
How is AI changing your business? What changes are you making to adapt?
A major development in the intake and early evaluation stage of Personal Injury law currently taking place is how AI is being used to enhance the process. Currently, we use AI tools to help us:
• Automatically transcribe client phone calls
• Identify the important aspects of a client’s medical records
• Draft the initial Demand letter much more quickly
As a result of these advancements, my staff spends less time on administrative tasks and more time engaged with clients who have been injured.
We are investing in training for our paralegals and attorneys to ensure they have the skills to evaluate the output produced by AI critically and not just rely on it without question. Ultimately, though, we continue to have a human being involved in every Settlement Demand and Trial Strategy decision because machines cannot represent emotionally distraught families in the same way as courtroom lawyers do.
If AI is impacting your business, please tell us 3 things you expect to change in the near future.
AI is likely to significantly change the role of attorneys in the near future. AI will automate the routine tasks of seeking and preparing documents. As a result of this automation, attorneys will no longer be engaged in large amounts of time summarizing documents such as depositions and medical records. Instead, attorneys will spend their time working on the trial, meeting with clients and working to obtain bigger settlements. AI will not eliminate the attorney’s job; rather, AI will reduce the time attorneys spend on low-level work associated with a personal injury case.
What do you think are your 3 biggest weaknesses and how are you overcoming them?
I have always viewed myself as a person who must do everything by himself, particularly during the beginning of Kemp Law Group, where I was creating all of the demands, reviewing every medical record, and taking every telephone call from our clients because I had no faith in others’ ability to care about our clients in the same way I did. My belief in myself as the only one who could take care of everything caused me to overwork myself and my firm initially; however, I quickly discovered that by limiting how much work we were doing due to my inability to share responsibilities with well-qualified team members, I was reducing the opportunity for growth and increasing chances of burnout.
In response to this issue, I am in the process of creating a leadership team within Kemp Law Group and writing down our company’s processes, so that we have trained, capable attorneys and paralegals who can handle the same level of quality in their cases that I would provide. I am now at the point where I force myself to delegate categories of work, such as initial client screening and discovery responses, and only oversee the pre-trial strategy, serious settlement negotiations, and the overall relationship with the client. This has allowed the firm to experience growth in the states of Florida and Georgia without having me present in every single meeting.
Tell us about a time you were dead wrong about something.
At the beginning of my career as a lawyer specializing in Personal Injury law, I was completely wrong about a Motorcycle Accidents case where I initially estimated the value at $100,000 at most. Due to the Client having a complicated medical history, and how the insurance company portrayed the situation, I began to second guess the client’s credibility and how the jury would view the Client’s complaints. I almost recommended that the Client accept a low settlement offer just to bring an end to the case.
Fortunately, I listened to my Client and followed my instincts instead of my fears. We took the case to trial and the jury awarded $2,300,040 in damages. From this situation, I learned an important lesson: Never allow an Adjuster’s version of the case to dictate your version of the case; and I now encourage every Young Lawyer at Kemp Law Group to rely upon the evidence and the Client and not upon the confidence of the Other Side.
What is the biggest challenge you face each day and how do you handle it?
My daily struggles are being a lawyer in the court room and CEO of a growing business. At times, I am preparing someone’s client for a deposition and at other times, I am analysing how best to spend my time and how to allocate funds for our marketing budget as well our human resources budget for our offices located in both Florida and Georgia. I manage this by setting a posting system for my calendar so that I have blocks of time for strategic discussion with clients and for operations and administration of my firm. Also, I give my managing attorneys the power to make the day-to-day litigation decisions on behalf of the firm. By creating this structure around how I allocate my time, I am able to keep from being pulled in multiple directions at once and keep each case moving forward.
What do you value most and why?
Integrity is extremely important to me as it relates to how I do business. In the area of Personal Injury Law, clients are in a situation where they have suffered an injury and in most cases the insurance companies have failed to perform as they promised prior to the couple being injured. If I say that I will call a client back, work on their behalf to attempt to get them a fair settlement, or take the case to trial, I will do it. People refer their family and friends to Kemp Law Group because they can build on the fact that they can count on Us to uphold our end of the agreement. Every case we have won is built on that reliability.
What achievement are you the proudest of and why?
Creating Kemp Law Group has been the proudest achievement in my life. I took a single location in California and turned it into a company operating in more than one state, handling more than 20,000 cases, recovering millions of dollars on behalf of injured clients, and treating each client as a person instead of simply a number in a file. Although our awards and honors (Inc. 5000, Small Business of the Year) are very important to me, what I consider to be our biggest success is that we achieved this growth while maintaining the original purpose for which I became an attorney.
What is your favorite book and why?
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird has been my favourite book for many years. When I read this book prior to attending law school, I found it very interesting how Atticus Finch used very calm and methodical story telling techniques to challenge the people of the fictitious town of Maycomb that made up their minds about their guilt before a trial even began. This novel reminds me of a lawyer’s responsibility; as a lawyer it is my job to be the voice of a person who has been written off by society, but as members of Kemp Law Group we do this each day for our injured clients.
What advice would you give to your younger self and why?
If I could go back and talk to myself when I was younger, I would advise myself to start forming a team and assigning responsibilities to others sooner rather than later. I spent a lot of time thinking that I should draft all demands myself, review all documents myself, and personally answer all client calls. This limited how many people I could assist. Had I hired and trained effective paralegals and attorneys sooner, I would have been able to expand more quickly with this addition instead of exhausting myself, plus I would have been able to assist many more injured individuals in both Trinity and throughout Florida and Georgia as a company through hiring additional qualified individuals earlier.
Are you willing to be a mentor? If yes, what is the best way to reach you?
I would be happy to serve as a mentor. The William F. Blews Award for excellence in pro bono representation was given to me by Stetson University College of Law. I feel very strongly that every experienced attorney has an obligation to provide guidance to the future generation of attorneys. If you would like to reach me, please visit the Kemp Law Group website at www.kemplaw.com, or call our office in Trinity at (727) 847-4878. If you have any specific questions regarding how to establish your own personal injury practice, trial tactics, or balancing a busy legal career with creative interests such as film making. I am here to answer any questions you may have.
Just for fun, what is your favorite dessert?
Ice cream