Most trial lawyers think the hard part is winning. You try the case, you get the verdict, you move on to the next one. Then you start your own firm and learn the truth. Winning cases and running a firm are two very different jobs. Being great at one does not make you good at the other.
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The Executive Director role most PI firms are missing
The Executive Director seat at a personal injury firm is still being defined. Most plaintiff firms run on the traditional managing partner model, where the lawyer who loves trying cases ends up running HR, intake, and finance by default. Marina’s role exists because someone has to own the operational side so trial lawyers stay focused on the work they were hired to do.
“It’s even hard to admit you need help sometimes,” she said. The work starts with separating founder-level tasks from leadership tasks built around the business itself.
Hire ahead of the need
One of the biggest mistakes Marina sees in plaintiff firms is reactive hiring.
“You can’t wait until you need the paralegal to hire the paralegal. You have to have that paralegal training six months before.”
The fix is forward-looking workforce planning. Watch file counts. Watch phone volume. Train the next role before the gap becomes a fire.
The metrics worth tracking weekly
Marina sends a firmwide scorecard every week. No mysteries. No leadership-only data. Everyone sees the same numbers and rows in the same direction. The four she watches most closely:
- Signed cases, split between marketing-sourced and referred
- Complaints filed
- Demands sent out
- Resolution, both pre-lit and in litigation
Monthly, she tracks cost per case and average fee. About 30 percent of OG’s cases move into litigation, which explains a higher average fee and a deliberate choice to file cases.
Time on desk is where the money hides
If you want to find quiet revenue inside your firm, look at time on desk.
“If you cut a couple of months off the time on desk, you’re putting revenue in the previous year. You’re doing 14 months of revenue in 12 months.”
Lien resolution sits inside this problem. Cases stall while medical liens, Medicare obligations, and reductions get worked through. Clients wait. Five-star Google reviews die in the gap between settlement and check.
Intake is the most expensive operational leak
Ask Marina where plaintiff firms lose the most money, and she points straight at intake.
“One call could be a $5 million case.”
Her position: staff intake heavier than feels comfortable. Train constantly. Listen to the recordings. Coach the conversations. Intake feeds every other metric on the scorecard, because nothing moves without the signed case.
Culture as a hiring filter
Ostroff Godshall built core values and a social contract the partners stand behind. Those values drive interviews. Predictive Index assessments help match personality to role.
The lesson Marina learned the hard way: a high-performing hire who fails the culture test pulls the rest of the team down. Her rules are simple. Hire for traits. Train for skill.
The view from the operations seat
The competitive picture is shifting fast for plaintiff firms:
· MSOs backed by private equity entering more markets
· AI tools rewriting how cases get litigated
· Marketing spend climbing in every major metro
· Gen Z workforce expectations reshaping how teams operate
Marina’s response is to focus on what you control. For her firm, that looks like a client experience built on real human contact, with automations used to free up calls rather than replace them. Community presence matters too. Her firm gave away 1,000 backpacks last year and plans to give more this year.
“Grit” is one of OG’s core values, and Marina lives it
If she were building a personal injury firm tomorrow with a goal of 30 lawyers, her first three priorities would be:
· Document every process so the founder’s knowledge lives outside their head
· Lock down cybersecurity, secure phones, and secure email
· Write an AI policy before the team starts using tools without guardrails
The takeaway for plaintiff firm leaders
Operations is the difference between a firm with great verdicts and a firm with a great business. Build the foundation, measure the numbers, protect the intake, and keep the human side of the work alive.
🎧 Listen to the full podcast conversation here:
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