darl and larry

The following is a transcript of Episode 17 of Championing Justice. You can listen to the full episode here, or watch it on YouTube.

Darl: Thank you for tuning into the Championing Justice podcast. My name is Darl Champion. I am the host of the podcast. I own my own personal injury law firm in the metro Atlanta area in Georgia. I am very excited about this month’s guest. It’s Larry Bishay. He is a solicitor in Australia, and we’re going to be talking about the legal system in Australia in general, but in particular the tort system and how it’s set up, and have a wide-ranging discussion on how that compares to how things are done here in the United States. So thanks for joining us, Larry.

Larry: Thanks, Darl. I really appreciate the introduction. I had a conversation with one of your staff earlier and I understand that you go by Champ. So if you don’t mind, I’ll use that throughout the podcast. I think you’ve got a pretty cool last name.

Darl: Perfect. Yeah, people tell me all the time, Champion is a good last name for a trial lawyer. So…

Larry: Brilliant last name.

Darl: Worked out well. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be a solicitor.

Larry: Yeah, awesome. So I was one of those weird kids who sort of always knew what they wanted to do from quite a young age. I was always quite argumentative. I was always quite happy to start a fight just for the sake of starting a fight. And I was very intrigued by written and oral arguments from a young age. So I sort of knew that I wanted to do something in the legal space from about the age of 11 or 12. So yeah, during my high school years–we call year 12 VCE in Victoria, Australia. So that’s the end of your high school tuition before you go on to university, what you guys would call college from my understanding.

I chose subjects that would allow me to get law school, so you just needed to get a certain level in your year 12 English, and I chose the hardest of the three, which is called English literature. I went to university at Deakin University in Burwood, Victoria where I did a double degree in law and arts and I majored in Middle Eastern politics, which is just something that I found interesting. I ended up in personal injury sort of on a fluke, but I was very interested at university, obviously in torts and also personal injury.

It was a subject that you were allowed to, it wasn’t mandatory, but it was one that you could choose and I decided to choose it and it was very interesting to me. I like dealing with people. I’m very interested in people’s backgrounds and how we all come from different walks of life and very interested to hear people’s stories and no two stories are the same. So after I finished up at law school, I applied for various graduate positions and I began working at a personal injury law firm in Werribee Victoria. It was for quite a large player in the Victorian personal injury space called Spars Lawyers. And yeah, the rest is history. Really.

Darl: Awesome. So you’re in Victoria, is that like a state, a province? What’s the terminology?

Larry: Yeah, we have states and territories in Australia and it’s one of the states and population wise, it’s the second largest after New South Wales, which is where Sydney is.

Darl: Got it. And so what city are you located in?

Larry: Currently I live in the western suburbs, so Caroline Springs, which is west of Melbourne CBD [central business district] and my law firm is going to be based in Baybrook, which is also in the western suburbs.

Darl: I noticed that from your LinkedIn profile, you started your own practice a couple of months ago, is that right?

Larry: That’s exactly right, yeah. So…

Darl: What’s the name of that? Your firm?

Larry: It’s called Reclaim Legal.

Darl: And how’s that going so far?

Larry: It is been very interesting. It’s been very full on, but I’m loving it so far.

Darl: Excellent. Well, I’d love to learn more about just how the torch system is set up in Australia. And so you mentioned that you worked for a larger personal injury law firm before starting your own. First question, do y’all have billboards and commercials for personal injury law firms in Australia?

Larry: We do, but there are some pretty strict rules around it and we are not as flamboyant about it as our American counterparts, I’ll put it that way.

Darl: Nobody with the money gun and the cash shooting out and…

Larry: No, no, no, nothing like that. There’s quite strict rules around it.

Darl: So when—you’re a solicitor, right?

Larry: That’s right.

Darl: And what’s the difference between a solicitor and a barrister, if there is any difference?

Larry: There is a difference. So in Australia, a barrister is someone who actually sits the bar exam. So they sort of represent clients and are engaged by solicitors and they do most of the court appearances solicitors are engaged directly by the client. They prepare court documents, they write letters of advice to clients, they’re the direct contact to the client. But barristers do just mainly court appearances, mediations, pretrial negotiations, things like that.

Darl: Got it.

Larry: A solicitor doesn’t actually have to sit the bar exam in Australia.

Darl: I mean the most common personal injury in the United States is automobile wrecks. I mean any car, truck, whatever, and supposed to have insurance for car wrecks, not everybody does. How is that system set up in Australia where if somebody gets in a car wreck and gets hurt, how did they get compensation?

Larry: Yeah, that’s a great question. In Victoria, it works differently to other states. I’ll explain the Victorian system to you. We have something called the TAC, the Transport Accident Commission, which is a state government entity. And every year when we take out our license renewal, we pay a fee and that goes towards the TAC and the TAC indemnifies or takes the place of any wrong door who gets into a car accident. And above and beyond that, we also have individual insurance for the damage to motor vehicles. But if there’s a personal injury, the TAC is the body that deals with that and the compensation that flows from that.

Darl: Is there any right to, I mean, in the United States, we would deal directly with an insurance company oftentimes before filing a lawsuit. If the case doesn’t settle, then we file a lawsuit in court. If it doesn’t settle in court, then we go to a jury trial. Is there any kind of jury trial system for personal injury cases in Australia or is it all handled with some sort of administrative governmental entity?

Larry: Yeah, so with motor vehicle accidents in Victoria, there’s a lot of pre-trial negotiations and the TAC are fairly reasonable and make fairly fair offers if the case is strong enough and they see it as being worthy of compensation. But if it doesn’t settle pretrial, then yes, you can have a trial with a jury or a judge alone depending on the parties and what they decide.

But there’s a little bit, it’s a two-pronged system in Victoria. You need to prove first that you have a serious injury which is defined in the legislation and is quite a strict threshold. And that is dealt with if the TAC doesn’t believe that your client has suffered a serious injury that’s dealt with by a judge in a court hearing before you talk about damages and compensation,

Darl: What are the types of damages that can be recovered? I mean in the United States and it’s typically lost wages, medical bills, and then pain and suffering. Is that the same in Australia? Are there different damages more or less?

Larry: That’s a great question. With motor vehicle accidents once again, and workers’ compensation accidents, the medical expenses and wages are covered by a statutory scheme. So you are paid for work cover, for example, workers’ compensation, you’re paid 95% of your wage for the first 13 weeks. That’s then reduced to 80% from weeks 13 to 52 weeks, and you can go for a total of 130 weeks. But at the year mark, they don’t account for any overtime or for any meal allowances and things like that.

And your medical expenses are also covered, whether it’s a motor vehicle accident or a workers’ compensation claim, as long as it’s reasonable, necessary and related to either the form of work that you were doing or the transport accident. So that’s paid for before any, it doesn’t form part of your lump sum payout. In terms of lump sum compensation, both schemes will cover you for pain and suffering and loss of income.

But for example, in workers’ compensation, we have a strict rule that states, in order for the plaintiff to be eligible for loss of income lump sum payment, they need to prove that they will suffer a permanent 40% loss of income until the age of 67, which is quite a strict threshold. But yes, in terms of lump sum, it’s pain and suffering and loss of earnings.

Darl: So in most states in the United States have, well, all states to my knowledge have a workers’ compensation system. The interesting thing about that system in the United States is in the vast majority of states, the employer has immunity and cannot be sued for any tort damages. The rationale is the workers’ compensation system is like a trade-off in exchange for guaranteed payment of lost wages.

And it’s typically a percentage, I think it’s two-thirds of your average weekly wage in Georgia, and then it’s capped at a certain amount each week plus medical expenses. You get that guaranteed payment, but you also get no pain and suffering for workers’ compensation injuries. It’s kind of interesting because employers from my perspective, don’t really have the same incentive to provide safe places to work because they don’t really have any damages exposure.

There is the federal body that investigates work accidents that result in death or serious injury is OSHA, I think it’s Occupational Safety Health Administration. They can levy fines, but it’s relatively small. In Australia, when you’re getting workers’ compensation benefits, can you also sue your employer if they did something wrong for tort damages?

Larry: Yeah, so we have a scheme, a workers’ compensation scheme, where every employer must take out workers’ compensation, workers’ compensation insurance. So it’s run by a few companies. They’re called authorized agents because there’s only a few you can choose from. And they sort of oversee the scheme for WorkSafe Victoria, which is the state government scheme. And yes, you can sue the employer’s insurance company for pain and suffering and loss of income in long payer. Yeah,

Darl: Interesting. 

Larry: I find that very wild and weird that you can’t do that in the States because as you said, there’s no real, it’s a bit of a slap on the wrist for the employer if there’s an unsafe work practice and there don’t really have anything that sort of prevents them from making their workplace safe really.

Darl: Yeah, I mean in Georgia the workers’ compensation immunity is pretty ironclad. There’s really no way around it. I’ve heard various things from different states, mostly anecdotal stories about, there might be exceptions based on certain egregiousness of the conduct, but we don’t have anything like that in Georgia.

If, now I will say this, if you’re injured on the job, so let’s say you’re working at the time you get in a car accident, you can get both workers’ compensation benefits from your employer and bring a personal injury claim against the other driver. So you can potentially get both benefits, but in terms of your remedy against your employer, you’re pretty much capped. So as a solicitor, do you handle car accident cases?

Larry: Yes, I handle all areas of personal injury, particularly workers’ compensation, transport accident claims, and public liability cases, which are like slips and falls in public places. So I handle those three main areas mainly.

We also have a separate scheme called TPD, which is Total Permanent Disability insurance that some superannuation funds have. A superannuation is a set amount percentage of your wage that goes towards your retirement and some superannuation funds. If you pay extra fees over the years, you can have a TPD component, total permanent disability. And that is if you can’t work due to injury or illness, you could potentially get a TPD lump sum payout in addition to any other rights that you may have under workers’ compensation or transport, the transport accident or public liability schemes.

Darl: Are there any caps on damages, like limits on what you can recover?

Larry: There are. It’s in the low millions for 1.2 I believe pain and suffering and 1.4 philosophy income for transport accidents. That’s a rough figure. So yeah, we don’t get the sort of payouts that you guys do in the states.

Darl: Yeah. How do you get paid?

Larry: So most law firms in Victoria, and in fact Australia in the personal injury sphere operate on a no-win, no-fee basis, which means they only get paid if the client is successful in obtaining lump sum compensation. We don’t charge caps or contingency fees like set percentages. I think that that’s, a lot of firms in the states do that, but that’s illegal in Victoria. But the way that it’s charged that we charge is according to the Supreme Court’s scale of costs and there’s set fees that you can charge for document review and letters that you send out, and that’s how it generally works in Victoria.

Darl: Interesting. So is that hourly, like you keep your time and say we worked X number of hours, or is it based on how far the case goes and the work you did? And it’s kind of set up according to that

Larry: It’s hourly per document. It depends on what you are sort of charging for, but yes, you can say it is a time basis. But some firms do offer caps, which is sort of a way to get around contingency fees, which is we’re not going to charge you a set percentage, but we’re never going to charge you over this set amount. So if the work that we do on a time basis is less than that percentage, we’ll charge you the lesser amount.

But it is a little bit, it’s a bit of a gray area because it’s very strict in Victoria, you cannot charge a contingency or a percentage. You welcome now to in larger cases where you’ve got a class action with multiple plaintiffs, but you need court approval for that. That’s my understanding. But for individual plaintiffs, you cannot charge a contingency fee.

Darl: Wow. So you’re essentially charging an hourly rate. I mean it’s tied directly to your time, but you’re not getting paid unless you win, which seems to present some challenges economically at least.

Larry: It definitely does.

Darl: Yeah. I mean, one of the arguments for the contingency fee in the United States, and this is probably one of the best rationales for it, is the risk that the lawyer is taking on by doing all the work without any guarantee of compensation and potentially not getting paid. There’s some cases where the contingency fee works out better for the lawyer than if they had billed hourly. There’s certainly some cases that works out worse for us because we spend a lot of time and the case ends up not being worth as much. But is that contingency fee prohibition, is that all of Australia or is that just Victoria or Victoria, multiple territories or?

Larry: I’m pretty sure most states and territories have a prohibition on contingency fees. I definitely know it’s prohibited in Victoria. I believe that it’s prohibited in New South Wales. I’m not sure about the specifics of the other states and territories.

I will say this, there is provision in most costs agreements to charge an uplift fee. An uplift fee is if it’s sort of an area outside of your specialty or if it’s a bit of a difficult case, you can charge up to 25% more than the standard scale of costs. And for example, in the Queensland jurisdiction, because a lot of personal injury law firms were charging too much, the courts and the legislator introduced something called the 50 50 rule, which is a personal injury law firm cannot charge you in professional fees, anything more than 50% of the amount of compensation you receive after you take away disbursements, which are obviously the costs that they pay for medical reports and things like that.

Darl: Interesting. So it’s essentially a cap on the fee.

Larry: Correct.

Darl: When you’re talking about whether it’s a slip and fall or car accident case, you mentioned the car accident case. There’s this fund, it sounds almost like it’s a public fund that’s administered by a government agency. Is that accurate?

Larry: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So the fund is there for compensation for compensation payable to those injured in transport accidents, but it’s overseen by a body called the Transport Accident Commission, the TAC for short. And it is a state Victorian state government body.

Darl: Interesting. So one of the things that we have in the United States is sometimes you get hit by a car that has no insurance or maybe only the minimum limits, which most states the minimum required is $25,000 per person. And even if there’s a death, that’s the most you’re getting from that insurance company. It doesn’t mean that that’s all you can recover from the defendant, but practically speaking, most individuals don’t have the money and resources to pay serious damages.

And then sometimes you get hit by a tractor-trailer that might have a million in insurance or more. If I’m understanding this right in Victoria, if you get in a car accident, the only limitation on what you can recover is whatever’s set out by law. In other words, it doesn’t matter if the person driving you is wealthy or poor, you’re going to have this government administered pool of money that may be available to you.

Larry: That is exactly right, Darl. And in addition to that, there are certain contingencies on that. For example, if you were drunk or over a certain blood alcohol level or had drugs in your system at the time, you could be excluded from receiving compensation or it could be reduced by a certain amount. But if you are a sober driver and you’ve been hit by someone with no insurance, you will be covered by the scheme according to the caps for pain and suffering and loss of income or economic loss. Yes, that’s right.

Darl: Now, you mentioned if they’re not covered by insurance, can they also have private insurance on their vehicle in addition to the TAC?

Larry: They can, but that’s more for damages to the motor vehicle rather than personal injuries. All areas of personal injuries or most areas of personal injuries are covered by the TAC and overseen by the Transport Accident Commission.

Darl: Interesting. So you could have a multimillionaire in Victoria cause a car accident and kill somebody they don’t have any liability for.

Larry: They could be charged, they could be charged with criminal offenses obviously, but in terms of personal injury, yeah, the TAC would be the appropriate body that Yeah,

Darl: And there’s no exception if the defendant driver is drunk, you can’t get any extra from them individually or…?

Larry: No, the same caps apply. Yeah.

Darl: Interesting. Well, I mean it sounds like there’s certainly some trade-offs there. I mean, the benefit is in the injured person from their perspective is going to have a pool of money that can compensate them whether they’re injured or not. The only real way in the United States that we can protect ourselves from another driver that has no insurance we’re not enough, is we have something called uninsured motorist coverage, also known as underinsured coverage. And that applies if the defendant driver has no insurance or not enough insurance.

So some people that have really good insurance on their own vehicle might have a million dollars or more in uninsured motorist coverage to protect them. But I’ve seen many cases here where there might be a fatality and we’re only able to get $25,000. If you’re looking at a good automobile wreck case under the TAC. Good from a monetary compensation standpoint, not good for whatever happened to the plaintiff. Right. If they’re getting a lot of money, something bad probably happened to ’em. But what are the settlement ranges for, let’s say a death case? Are those typically getting the maximum payout across the board because of the caps or does it vary?

Larry: So I was just going to explain to you, there are separate payouts for death. So in a motor vehicle accident, they will pay for the funeral, they will pay for family counseling up to a certain amount, and there is a set lump sum to be paid. It’s a death benefit. I can look it up for you quickly.

They’ll also pay for the dependent spouse or dependent children support, which is weekly benefits of compensation, and they pay up to $19,000 for the funeral. They can pay for travel and accommodation if the person needs accommodation to attend the funeral, family counseling up to $20,000 and a lump sum payment up to $225,000. Now the interesting thing about this, and I’ve got one case like this at the moment, is if for example, the wife or the children have a psychiatric reaction to the death of the family member, let’s just say the husband for this argument’s sakes, they can make their own TAC mental health claim. And then for the lump sum compensation, they have the same caps that I mentioned to you earlier for payments of income.

Darl: Interesting.

Larry: In addition to this death benefit.

Darl: How does the medical malpractice system work? In most states, we’ve got the ability to file a lawsuit and sue for money damages. The difference being by state, there might be different caps on what you can recover, different procedural requirements in terms of do you have to clear some hurdle of having an affidavit from an expert or something like that. But let’s say somebody’s in a hospital and undergoing surgery, the surgeon cuts something and the patient dies. How does that claim get handled?

Larry: To be very frank with you, I’ve never done too much of what we call medical negligence. My understanding of it in Victoria is you need a certain threshold for it to be considered an injury that’s compensable for pain and suffering. So it needs to be more than 5% whole person impairment, which is just a certain threshold for how serious the injury is and how much loss of body function they have and the loss of range of movement for that particular body part or loss of body function. And you also need to prove that the medical practitioner was negligent, which is the same sort of tortious threshold that you need for most areas in torts. So yeah, that’s my basic understanding of medical negligence in Victoria.

Darl: Interesting. So is there any situation in which a private individual can be sued for damages directly for a personal injury? For any type of personal injury?

Larry: You can sue them under the Wrongs Act, but it’s probably the same sort of advice that you were mentioning earlier. A lot of the time these people don’t have very deep pockets and you probably won’t get much out of suing them. So that’s why I think the Victorian scheme covers a lot of areas so that people are protected and there aren’t that many holes. I mean, obviously the scheme could be improved significantly, but I think it is quite a decent scheme as it currently stands.

Darl: Okay. Let’s talk about your firm and how things are going and what your business model is like. So first of all, what made you want to start your own law firm?

Larry: So after I finished up at Zaparas, which was quite a large personal injury law firm in Victoria, I worked for a firm called Littles Lawyers, which is a Queensland- or Brisbane-backed firm. And they were just entering the Victorian market, and I was one of the key players that they hired to expand their Victorian operations.

And I guess I sort of just saw that I was able to bring in a lot of work and I was quite good at the business development side of things and was able to create really good relationships with treating practitioners like gps and physiotherapists. And they referred a lot of work to me and they trusted me with their patients. So I guess I thought it is probably better to do it on my own. So I made the decision only a few months ago really. I sat my wife down and I told her, listen, I’m very interested in starting my own firm. We were just recently married in February this year, so it was quite a big step to take.

Darl: Congratulations.

Larry: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate that. But yeah, I guess a really important step for me is keeping your mentors close and not closing off any bridges. So I left on really good terms with both of my firms, and I’m still very close to both of the managing solicitors that were overseeing me, so Rebecca Christofidis at Zaparas and Tenny Kim and Adam Attard at Littles Lawyers.

So we’re still on very good terms, and I see particularly Tanya and Rebecca as quite important mentors for me professionally. And I think it’s really important to leave on good terms and to sort of speak to these people that have already done it themselves so you can seek that mentorship and guidance in the future.

Darl: That’s great. That’s great. I totally agree with that. When I left the firm that I worked at for about four years, I made sure to leave on good terms. We talked about the cases that I would be able to take with me, some that I originated, some that they wanted me to take with me. I had done all the work, but I’ve stayed in close contact with them. They’ve become referral partners for me, so that’s really good. Do you have any employees or is it just you Right now

Larry:

It’s just me at the moment, but I’m looking to hire pretty soon. It’s quite difficult starting a law firm on own, but the work’s starting to pile up, so I think I’ll probably hire a legal assistant pretty soon and a solicitor not too long after that, I think.

Darl:

Excellent. Yeah. How are you getting your business? How’s it coming in the door for you?

Larry: Yeah, so I’ve got a bit of Google ads and quite a decent website that was set up by a close friend of mine, fat IUs, who runs Web Divine, which is a really good agency. And as I said to you earlier, I’ve got really good relationships with gps, surgeons, physios, and they may have injured patients that may be entitled to lump sum compensation or are having a minor issue with their claim that I sought out for them free of charge. And then I explain to them their full rights and entitlements, and a lot of the times they will sign up with the firm and will proceed with their lump sum claims as well. So a lot of it is natural word of mouth from treating practitioners, and that’s how I get the vast majority of my work.

Darl: Got it. What’s your plans for the future?

Larry: I’ve got, I’m trying to keep it lean and mean at the start. That was a piece of advice Tenney Kim, who was the CEO of Littles Lawyers gave me, and I think that’s been pretty, that’s served me well so far, but obviously I have plans to expand and as the firm grows, I’ll open up more locations hopefully and hire more solicitors and continue doing good work. I think it’s really important.

There’s a lot of personal injury lawyers in Victoria, and I’m sure the same applies to you, and I’ve read a lot of your LinkedIn posts, and I think it’s really important to be different to the competition in the way that you treat your clients. It sounds very cliche, but I’m very available to my clients and I treat them like human beings and I treat them the way that I’d like to be treated if I was injured. So a lot of the times we can get frustrated with clients that call often and they’re very anxious, but a lot of the time I say this to junior lawyers that I’ve mentored, you have to be a solicitor, you have to be a psychologist, you have to be a teacher. You have to be many things in this profession in order to retain clients and make them feel like human beings.

Darl: Yeah, a hundred percent. I totally agree with you there. I think one of the things that I’ve tried to emphasize at our firm is the client service, and it’s one way as a smaller law firm. We’ve got some firms here that are just massive. I mean, I’m waiting for Morgan and Morgan to open their Australia office. They’re everywhere in the United States, and we can’t compete with our advertising budget nationwide.

I think I saw a statistic last year, they spent something like 250 to $300 million nationwide on just the TV advertising. That’s insane. It’s crazy. But we can’t compete with that, and we don’t try to, from my point of view, personal injury is supposed to be personal. And I think when you look at a lot of law firms that are just really, really massive and huge, it’s really difficult to give that personal service to the client because they’re just so big.

And it becomes at that point, a business, a business decision. And when somebody’s got a serious injury or lost a load to one, they want to feel heard. That’s something I hear a lot is I want to feel heard. I hear that also from people that are clients of these other large law firms that get upset and want to fire them and hire us, that they don’t feel heard. So I really applaud that. And one of the things that I read on your background was, I think this was the LinkedIn post where you announced starting your firm was that your dad immigrated in the early nineties from Egypt.

Larry: That’s right. Yeah. My parents came in the early nineties.

Darl: Yeah. How did that inspire you to be the person you are today and to be the type of lawyer that you are?

Larry: Yeah, that’s a great question. My dad, I see him more as a best friend than I do a father, we’ve got a very close relationship, and my siblings always say that I’m his favorite. He’s just a really awesome guy. So he came from Egypt in the early nineties, as did my mom, and they fled Egypt because we’re actually Coptic Christians, which were a minority in Egypt, which is a Muslim majority country, obviously. 

So they came for a better opportunity for their family as many Coptic families did. And yeah, my dad initially worked hard to make sure his engineering qualifications were recognized in Australia, and he did that successfully. He went to university again and obviously took English classes to improve his English, and then he eventually got a job at a city council doing civil engineering works, and two city councils amalgamated to become one, and a lot of people were obviously let go.

And yeah, he felt quite disheartened. And then he eventually just started his own business. So he owns a petrol and convenience outlet, and he works crazy hours doing pretty menial work, but he did that all for us to give us a better opportunity. So I find that very inspiring. And obviously a lot of my clients come from migrant backgrounds. They don’t speak English as their first language. Their employers a lot of the time will take advantage of them and not properly explain to them their rights and entitlements.

So yeah, I think that really inspired me to be a voice for those that can’t speak for themselves, and it’s one of the reasons why I started Reclaim Legal and one of the reasons why I think I work a little bit differently to other lawyers and sort of understand where my clients are coming from. I don’t come from wealth particularly, and my parents really started from the bottom up.

Darl: Well, excellent. That’s a great story and I think inspires a lot of people, and I think a lot of people’s origin story inspires them to be the lawyer that they are and the type of work that they handle. So that’s really awesome. We talked a little bit about what the future is and kind of immediate stuff, but before we go, I just want to ask you, where do you see yourself in three years? By the way, the name of your firm is Reclaimed Legal, right?

Larry: That’s right.

Darl: Yeah. So three years from now, where is Reclaim Legal? What does that look like? If you close your eyes and imagine you’re a perfect law firm in three years, what’s that look like?

Larry: I still think in three years it’ll be a pretty small operation. I’d like to think that it would still be based in the western suburbs, which is where I grew up and where I’ve sort of worked and lived my whole life. I still like it to be a boutique law firm at that point, and I still wanted to have that sort of personal touch and feel. I’d like a few more employees, maybe a team of five or six up to 10. That’s probably where I see reclaim legal in three years if all goes well.

Darl: Excellent. Well, I can tell you from somebody who never thought I would have 20 plus employees, which we do, you kind of never know. And so I kind of laughed a little bit when you mentioned I still imagine myself being small because sometimes if you do great work, it just kind of takes on a life of its own. One of the guys that is in our building that bought the building with me, I still joke with him because when we bought the building together in 2020, just four years ago, it was just him and a paralegal and he kept saying, oh, well, I’m never going to have more than one or two people, three or four. And then it was five and then it was 10.

So you never know. I mean, I do think the one thing to identify, and I would advise this of any law firm owner, is to identify what your values are and just be guided by that and stick with that as you go forward. Well, Larry, this has been a very engaging and informative conversation for me. It’s really fascinating to hear how the tour system is structured in Australia, or at least in Victoria in particular, but then also to learn more about your practice. Before we go, is there anything that you would like to add or questions you have or maybe any observations of the US legal system where you’re like, man, I wish we had that in Australia.

Larry: I was just telling one of your staff before we got on that. I visited America a few years before the Covid Pandemic, and I found it very interesting the amount of billboards relating to personal injury claims. And the advertisements were quite hilarious, to be honest with you. And it’s just pretty interesting to see how vastly different the schemes are and how they operate and the rules around ambulance chasing and advertising and things like that. So I found that pretty interesting. But I more want to close off with a comment to you, Darl, thank you so much for your presence on LinkedIn. It means a lot to those of us that are just starting out our law firms, and I’m really glad that we crossed paths and had this podcast interview today. Thank you for your time.

Darl: Well, excellent. Well, I appreciate you and appreciate you being on. If people are interested in learning more about your practice, I don’t know if I have any listeners in Australia. I hope we do, but if people want to reach out to you on social media, is LinkedIn the best place to find you?

Larry: Yeah, LinkedIn’s totally fine. Or you can reach me at my website, which is www.reclaimlegal.com.au.

Darl: Awesome. Well, thank you, Larry. We really appreciate you joining us.

Larry: Thanks Darl. Let’s stay in touch. Appreciate your time.

Darl: Absolutely. And if I ever come to Australia, I’ll make sure to look you up.

Larry: A hundred percent. You’ll be staying at my house. No worries at all.

Darl: Awesome. That sounds great. Thank you.

Larry: Thanks, Darl. Appreciate your time.

Darl: And for our listeners, make sure that you follow and subscribe to the Championing Justice podcast so you can get the latest editions as they get released.

 

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