IAM1407 – Attorney Helps People that have been Injured in Accidents

Malloy Law Offices is a personal injury law firm here in the DMV area founded by managing partner, Seann Malloy. They help people injured in car accidents, work accidents, slip and fall accidents along with handling social security disability. Seann founded Malloy Law Offices in 2004 and has exponentially grown his business ever since. He hopes to break the stigma that lawyers are intimidating by sharing legal advice that most lawyers don't take the time to share publicly.

• CEO Story: Seann called himself an accidental business owner. Worked as an associate in a law firm with a big case, then after that case, he had no job. Started his own firm, with no office meeting clients at Starbucks. While building his name and reputation, he was able to get an office and gradually hire lawyers to work for him. Seann has exponentially grown his business with over 40 employees and 5 offices. Truly his hard work and dedication came to fruition.
• Business Service: Helping people that are injured in car, work, slip, and fall accidents along- with handling social security disability.
• Secret Sauce: Always been interested in the business of law. Compartmentalizing the scope of work handled by his attorneys. Giving them a specialty in their field of work, handling the case more effectively, and making the business more scalable.
• CEO Hack: The mastermind group. Holding yourself accountable, sharing your ideas and what you do with like-minded people like you.
• CEO Nugget: Don’t give up. Just pick yourself up. Join a mastermind group. Success does not happen overnight.
• CEO Defined: Being willing to do any job in the law firm. Do whatever takes to make the business succeed and people will see that. Showing them that you are 100% behind them.

www.malloy-law.com

Facebook: MalloyLawOffices

Twitter: MalloyLawLLC

Linkedin: Malloy-law-offices

Instagram: malloy_law

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00:23 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEO's without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham. Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:50 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresham, the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Sean Malloy of the Malloy Law office. Sean, it's great to have you live in here on the show.

01:00 – Seann Malloy

Thanks for having me, Gresham. Good to be here. Happy to be here.

01:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And before, of course, I do that, I want to read a little bit more about Sean so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Malloy Law Offices is a personal injury firm here in the DMV area, founded by managing partner Shawn Malloy, and they help people injured in car accidents, work accidents, slip and fall accidents, along with handling Social Security disability.

Sean founded Malloy Law Office in 2004 and has exponentially grown his business ever since. He helps to break the stigma that lawyers are intimidating by sharing legal advice that most lawyers don't take the time to share publicly. Shawn, I appreciate you having you on the show again. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:46 – Seann Malloy

I am.

01:47 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's get it on, and let's make it happen. So, to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:56 – Seann Malloy

All right, so I am what I would call an accidental business owner. So I'll give you some more background. But just a short story I found myself working as an associate attorney at a law firm. Didn't really. We were working on one giant case, and eventually, that case ended, and I found myself without a job. So I was like, oh, you know, what am I going to do? So I. I'd been thinking about starting my own law firm for a while. So I started my own law firm, and this is probably back in 2009. And it was just me, and I had no money. I had a laptop and a printer, and I had no office.

First, I would meet with clients, like, you know, at a Starbucks or wherever, and I, you know, it's hard for a client to take you seriously when you're meeting with them. Hey, step into my office. Table nine over at the Starbucks. So eventually, I started attracting some clients because I was doing some good work for people, and I wasn't doing any personal injury. I was doing what I would call commercial litigation and real estate litigation. And it was basically, it's very different than what I do now. These would be business disputes. I would bill by the hour what you typically think a lawyer would do, they take a retainer and bill by the hour.

And competition is very cutthroat for clients that have enough money to pay a lawyer to go fight their fight for them. And I was competing with established law firms to attract these clients. But one of them gave me some free office space in her business, and things kind of went from there. So I got out of that situation as quickly as I could, because you don't want to be in the office subletting space or borrowing office space from a client because then you sort of turn into their free lawyer for everything. You spend a lot of time in my office just picking my brain about all kinds of stuff.

Eventually, I started my own office, went, and there was another attorney who's still with me, by the way, and I got him to leave his law firm and come work with me. And things have just gone from there. We went from that to today. We have 41 employees. We have 12345 offices, and we practice law in Maryland, DC, and Virginia. It's just things have gone really scaled up, and it didn't happen overnight. It was gradual. It was a lot of hard work. It's like a lot of things in life. There is no cutting corners or overnight success.

It's just dedicating yourself to doing things day after day and sticking with it week after week and setting goals and sticking to your goals. So one thing that maybe makes me a little different than your typical lawyer is that I've always been interested in the business of law, and I think it's far more interesting than actually practicing law. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this, but I just find it much more building the law firm, hiring people, marketing, controlling the budget. The operation of the law firm, I think, is far more interesting than actually the day-to-day lawyering. I do a lot of that, and I've been practicing law since 2004. So I've tried hundreds of jury trials.

06:09 – Gresham Harkless

Right.

06:10 – Seann Malloy

You know, I'm good at it. I know how to do it. But I just find this other business of law very interesting.

06:17 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And it kind of made me think about the e myth. I don't know if you heard of the e myth of the people that a lot of times start businesses.

06:24 – Seann Malloy

That's a myth.

06:25 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, they really love what they do.

06:27 – Seann Malloy

I read that. His first book.

06:29 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly.

06:30 – Seann Malloy

Michael Gerber.

06:31 – Gresham Harkless

But a lot of times, people don't have the business knowledge or even the excitement about business knowledge. And I imagine that probably contributed a lot to your growth just because it wasn't all about Sean. Sounds like it was about how can we grow this business and impact more and more people.

06:45 – Seann Malloy

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, I did not. I was not thinking about myself. It is just, as I said, kind of a reluctant law firm owner. And I would, each year, I would add, basically every year for the last seven years, I've added one additional lawyer every year. And that's kind of in our business, that's the. That's like the economic engine that produces the money. You know, like, think of it as, you know, a jet plane, and each jet on the plane is a lawyer, you know, and you're just. You're adding lawyers. It's probably bad. Seven lawyers. Yeah, that's probably a bad comparison.

07:30 – Gresham Harkless

But it's a jet.

07:32 – Seann Malloy

Yeah. It's a private jet, and you got it, you know, and then that's. That's, at the end of the day, that's what generates the money, the economic engine of the firm. So that's interesting. You brought up that book.

07:44 – Gresham Harkless

You touched a little bit upon your secret sauce and things that you feel kind of set you apart and make you neat. Was there anything more about, like, you know, how you serve clients, what you're doing to help support them, and kind of like your process that you wanted to kind of talk about?

07:55 – Seann Malloy

Yeah. So we have a. I do a couple of things very differently than any other law firm in our area. There are some other law firms around the country that. They do similar things to what I do, but we have things compartmentalized at our firm, so we don't expect an employee to be an expert at everything from A to Z. And a lot of law firms that do what I do, personal injury law firms, have that the paralegal will do everything from the first contact with the client through the whole case, supporting the lawyer.

The case goes to trial or it's settled or whatever. You know, it's the same paralegal. And what we do is we compartmentalize it. We have intake paralegals, we have case managers. We have, you know, the attorney, the paralegals who handle the money when the case is done. And it's, you know, it's not. This is something that any business could do. You know, you got to think carefully about if you want, what your expectations are for the employees and if you want them to have to be able to do everything. This system lets us handle cases more efficiently and more predictably, and there's. It's faster, and we're able to do a much better job for the law firm's clients and get them more money translates into more money.

09:29 – Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. You might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:41 – Seann Malloy

I shouldn't have given up my mastermind, my group, because that actually, would be your hack. That helped me a lot when I first, like, I'm in like, a formal one, right? You know, like a Yemenite group that you have to, you know, be invited into. And it's. And when I first started doing that, it really opened up my eyes. And so that, you know, I would almost say it's a turning. It was a turning point because I was just kind of crawling along.

I was sort of building it. But, you know, when I saw what other people in other parts of the country were doing, I thought, oh, my God, you know, I could be doing this. I'm. You're sort of holding each other accountable in a way without even really realizing you're doing it. Because sometimes I think, oh, I need to have a bunch of stuff that I'm doing that I can show these guys and talk about when I get together and show off. And it holds your feet to the fire and makes you execute.

10:41 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you now for a seal nugget. It's a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. I know you gave us a few, but it might be something you've been writing about in your book that you would tell your younger business self or potentially a client.

10:56 – Seann Malloy

Don't give up. Don't get. You're going to fall on your face. You're going to want to quit. You're going to want, you know, you're going to want to throw in the towel. Don't do it. Don't give up. Okay? You have to bet on yourself and just pick yourself back up when you have a setback and keep at it. Learn from your mistakes and, you know, little things. Join a mastermind group. Read Gerber's book. You know, keep at it. It's not going to happen overnight, but it will happen. Your success, if you keep at it. Whatever you're doing.

11:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. The same rest if you must, but just don't quit, because you only really fail if you stop and if you continue to keep going, even if you fall on your face. I always think about the kid when they learn how to walk, you know, no one, you know, when the kid falls and says, hey, you know, walking is a cutout for you. Maybe this is not your thing.

11:49 – Seann Malloy

Maybe you shouldn't do it.

11:50 – Gresham Harkless

You share them, and you understand that that's part of the process, but somehow we don't do as much of that related to business and what we do.

11:56 – Seann Malloy

Yeah. Yeah. And that's true. I would agree with that. So, awesome. Yeah, definitely.

12:01 – Gresham Harkless

Well, I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. Our goal is to have different, quote-unquote, CEO's on the show. So, Sean, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:11 – Seann Malloy

Being a CEO to me means being willing. Being willing to do any job. In my law firm, I joke around with people. I'm everything from the janitor to the managing partner. And I learned this from a guy growing up who I kind of considered a mentor. And he ran very successfully, a giant organization. One thing about him is he would get his hands dirty and do whatever needed to be done. And it wasn't unusual. And if you're like, I don't really think of myself day to day as a CEO, but I very much am the head of the business.

You set the tone, and people imitate what you do, you've got to be willing to do whatever it takes to make the business succeed, and people will see that you're willing to do whatever it takes. So, you know, I will go. Oftentimes, our lawyers will have a bunch of trials backed up at the same time or hearings. And I always tell them, I say, just give me the worst one. Give me the most difficult one. I'll do that one.

And just to show them I am willing to do whatever it takes to make this place successful and to make our cases have good outcomes. And to make all of you a success. And the employees know that I want them all to be successful and have lucrative, successful careers. And that's at least with the lawyers, that's how I let them know that I'm behind them 100%. And that's what we do.

13:56 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that speaks volumes. And I think it kind of speaks to the whole idea of the culture. And a lot of times we forget that we look externally for culture and how we can kind of implement it. But a lot of times it starts with the, you know, the CEO, the entrepreneur, the business owner, the founder, whatever title it might be. At the end of the day, you start to kind of create that culture and it manifests itself in.

14:17 – Seann Malloy

It's so true.

14:19 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. I love it. Well, Sean, truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you to the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find out about you, your team, the book you're writing, and all the awesome things that you're working.

14:37 – Seann Malloy

My name is Sean Malloy, again, Malloy Law Offices, and we handle personal injury cases. Anything you could think of that might happen on the roadways, truck, motorcycle, pedestrian, hit by a car, car accidents, any premises, cases slip and fall, trip and fall, any accident that could happen, big box store, apartment, you think about it, you name it, any place, any accident that happened on a work site, medical malpractice cases, medical mistakes, Social Security disability.

And if you've got a problem like that, you can just Google Sean Malloy, Malloy law offices. There's lots of information out there about me, and it's so easy to get a hold of us. You just, pick up the phone and call. And like I've been describing, we have, you know, it's everything. We have a group of employees that are, they're holding. The reason for existing in our firm is to talk to somebody calling up.

15:33 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, I definitely appreciate that, Sean. To make it even easier, even though I know it's easy to find, Sean, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes, too, so that everybody can reach out to you via social, website calls, all those different ways. But I truly appreciate you for taking time out.

I appreciate that message as well, too, because it can be a grind. It's not always easy. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. So we need to have that reminder of that, the people that reach success. Don't give up. They don't quit. They don't throw in the towel. So thank you so much for not doing that and reminding us of that today. And I hope you have a phenomenal day.

16:06- Seann Malloy

Thank you for having me, Gresham. And I hope you have a phenomenal Memorial Day weekend.

16:10 – Gresham Harkless

There we go. Appreciate it.

16:12 – Seann Malloy

All right.

16:13 – Gresham Harkless

Thank you, sir.

16:14 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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