Kyle Wright on trial training budgets, case selection, and the systems behind a specialized personal injury practice
Kyle Wright of Wisehart Wright Co. LPA built his injury practice in Sandusky, Ohio, halfway between Toledo and Cleveland. He skipped the big metro markets. He went deep on trucking while most firms chase volume across every case type. He puts six figures a year into trial training for a small group of lawyers. He paid for his own personal brand out of his own fees.
He recently joined me as a guest on the Trial Lawyer View by Synergy podcast to discuss his practice strategies. Here is how the pieces fit together, and what to apply in your firm.
The small market buys you trial reps
Erie County has fewer firms competing for injury cases than Cuyahoga or Lucas County. Wright treats the lower competition as a foothold. Win share locally, build capital, then repeat the model in new markets.
The bigger advantage shows up on the docket. Big county dockets bump civil trials. Reps get scarce. In smaller rural counties, Wright gets in front of juries.
“One of the benefits of trying cases in some of these smaller rural counties is the judges are surprised when the plaintiff’s attorney is willing to go to trial.”
If you practice in a secondary market, stop treating it as a ceiling. Treat the open docket as full of opportunities.
Specialization has a real entry cost
Wright did not announce a trucking niche and wait for the phone. He studied the federal motor carrier safety regulations. He went to every trucking seminar available. He joined the trucking groups. He read the books. He co-counseled with trucking lawyers he respected. Then he flew to Montana and spent three or four days behind the wheel of tractor trailers on a track. He had never driven a stick shift. The coach handed him the keys anyway.
What he brought home: how to secure a load, which pre trip checks the rules require, and how differently a loaded rig behaves next to a passenger car. Depth like this shows up in deposition questions your opponent does not expect.
One question decides most trucking cases
Carriers run telematics, speeding alerts, and electronic logs. The company sees the data. Wright builds his liability theory around the next step.
“You can have all the bells and whistles in place, but what are you doing with that information to correct the driving, to order additional training, to coach and work with the driver?”
Safety culture starts at the top and works its way down to the drivers. When a company collects warnings and does nothing, the failure belongs to the company. Point your discovery at coaching records, retraining, and internal notice. Those documents carry more weight with a jury than a fight over one driver’s conduct.
Trial readiness moves carriers before you file
Wright secured a 5.7 million dollar policy limit settlement pre suit. Head on collision. A minor left paralyzed. Early tender came from preparation, not luck.
- He located and preserved video from a neighboring building showing the driver crossed left of center.
- He shared the video with the adjuster early instead of holding it back.
- He ordered expert reports before filing anything.
- A life care planner spent time in the client’s home and built the plan around the real injuries.
- He produced a day in the life video pre suit.
The carrier saw a file already built for trial. The message landed. Run your catastrophic files at litigation speed from the day of intake, and settlement value follows readiness.
Case selection narrows as the practice grows
Early in his career, Wright took risk on lower value files and worked them hard anyway. Growth changed the filter. Today he carries a smaller caseload of catastrophic cases and splits the work with one associate who wants to litigate, handles high end discovery, takes depositions, and does the research and writing. Fewer files. More resources per file. Faster movement.
A trial training budget with a real number attached
Most firms treat continuing education as a compliance line item. Wright treats it as case value.
- $15,000 dollars per attorney per year for training
- $35,000 dollars per year for himself
- Every lawyer picks two of the best national programs, anywhere in the country
- Two associates flew to California for the Trial by Human seminar
The old model kept knowledge at the top, partly out of fear of associates leaving with it. Wright rejected the premise. His lawyers work bigger cases because they carry the same training he does, and none of them have walked out the door with it.
Watch the second order effect. Attorney referrals now make up a bit over 40 percent of the cases he generates, and the share keeps climbing toward half. Lawyers refer to firms who get high value on hard cases. Training built the reputation, and the reputation built the referral pipeline.
“If you’re a personal injury lawyer and you’re not trying cases, you’re not getting the full value.”
He also studies on his own. For about a thousand dollars a year, he watches openings, cross examinations, and damages arguments from top trial lawyers on CVN while he is on the treadmill.
Personal brand inside a multi practice firm
Wright built Make It Right as a deliberate personal brand and funded it from his own fees. His partners backed the move, partly because firm money stayed out of it.
Structure makes the arrangement work. The firm operates as firms within a firm, with siloed budgets across injury, workers compensation, criminal defense, and probate and estate planning. Internal referrals move in both directions. His marketing drives direct searches and views for the whole firm.
He is honest about the limits. The setup holds because the practice areas do not overlap. His partner owns the most searched attorney name in the county on the criminal defense side, at a volume higher than Wright’s own intake.
Expansion follows the same logic. New offices get local lawyers from the community, working under the firm brand, instead of an out of town name on a sign.
Automation with a human checkpoint at every step
Personal injury work is process driven, especially in the first 60 days of a file. Wright works with software engineers on custom workflows.
- Intake calls transcribed, summarized, and loaded into the case management system
- Fee agreements populated automatically
- Notice and preservation letters generated automatically
- Staff verification required at each step before the file moves forward
His rule is simple. The system prepares the menial work. A person checks it before anything leaves the office. Efficiency gained on paperwork goes back into client contact.
Staff buy in decides whether the technology sticks
Wright learned this one the expensive way. He signed with vendors, rolled out products, and watched them fail because the people doing the work had no say in the decision.
“Had I had the staff involved earlier on in the process, I would have known that it wasn’t gonna work.”
Staff fear replacement. Wright brings them into the build, shows how their roles change, and asks what breaks in the current workflow. Nobody knows the process better than the people running it every day.
The defense is using AI too
Wright’s attorneys have flagged adjuster correspondence reading as AI generated. I pointed to a recent guest, a chiropractor, who described insurer models trained on medical records to argue case value down. Expect more of it. Your counter is accuracy in the record and human judgment on what the model missed.
Where Wright sees the next three to five years
Invest in trial and litigation. Invest in brand and marketing. Invest in technology. National competition for the same cases keeps growing, and firms willing to try cases keep the advantage. Trial lawyers are not getting replaced by software. The ones who prepare like Wright get paid for the difference.
🎧 Listen to the full podcast conversation on Trial Lawyer View here: https://partnerwithsynergy.com/podcast/kyle-wright/
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