Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] Welcome to Founding Partner Podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. Looking forward to today’s podcast, we’ve got Clayton Cain on with us today. He’s got an interesting background. I want to dig into all this. He played baseball, he’s in college, he was a sports agent for a while, and now he’s got two different law firms. We’re going to dive into how that came about, and what he’s thinking about doing with those two.
So, Clayton, why don’t you just briefly introduce yourself? Tell us what you do, where you’re located.
Clayton Cain: Yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks, Jonathan. Appreciate you having me out. I know we’ve talked about this for a while, and I’m glad to be on here. I’ve been listening to you since you started, so I’m excited to be on here. They say Clayton Cain had two law firms out in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Gwinnett County, it’s where I’m from.
Started Cain Injury Law in 2017. Started with a firm, Shiver Hamilton in Atlanta before then, and came back home, opened Cain Injury Law in 2017, had been doing the PI game. We litigate a lot of our cases, anywhere from [00:01:00] dog bites, car wrecks, trucking, we do a wide range of different PIs cases.
And then recently, within the last year, got the itch to do something else and add some diversity to our practice. And so, we added real estate and business and sports law. I say add, essentially, we started all about the firm. I ended up starting a firm that’s called 3Summits Law, and that is where we do all of our high-end PI cases.
So, all of our litigation, all of our more valuable cases, and we run through 3Summits Law then we do our real estate practice where we do all transactional, we’ll do closings, residential, commercial closings, we’ll draft leases, we’ll do dispossessory proceedings, things like that. And then on the business and sports law side, again, a lot of more transactional stuff.
We still litigate, we’ll litigate if we need our clients need to, so we do outside GC work for small to midsize local businesses. And then, I started back doing the sports law side. So, representing athletes, acting as their outside [00:02:00] general counsel. Other than the agent side, where we more or less work with the agents.
We act as their outside general counsel. So, if anything that they need from a transactional side, if they have a real estate deal or a real estate investment that they need help in, we’ll help with that. If they need a contract reviewed where their agent doesn’t feel comfortable doing it, we’ll do that.
And then if we need to step in and do some negotiating or handle more of their day-to-day, contract negotiations or sponsorships or whatever, then we’ll do that as well.
Jonathan Hawkins: So, this is very interesting to me. It’s funny, for a long time, it seemed like everybody wanted to pivot from where they were to get into personal injury, and you’re pivoting to get away from it. So, I definitely want to explore that. I think that’s an interesting counter-trend from a lot of people.
But yeah, let’s go back. So, you talked a lot about the sports stuff. I know you’re into that. Let’s maybe go back, I know you were a big-time baseball player in college. All American, you must have been pretty damn good, right?
Clayton Cain: I was all right. I could hit, that was the thing. I like to swing the bat a little bit. And [00:03:00] so, out of high school, went to Brookwood High School, right down the road here in Snellville. Out of high school, signed with Georgia, and went to Athens, played for the Dogs for 3 years.
Played during those 3 years, that’s when we had a good run of ’06 College World Series, ’08 College World Series. Signing class, it was ’08 where Beckham was it short. We had some studs, come through there. And I got to Georgia and realized real quick, I wasn’t the big man on campus anymore and I had to step up my game. And played there for 3 years, and then transferred to Valdosta State, which is a Division II school down in South Georgia, and played my last 2 years down there, and just had an incredible time down there.
It was a little bit different going from SEC Baseball to Division II, where we’re used to walking in the fall and having all of our cleats, and our workout gear, and however many gloves, however many bats, however much stuff that we wanted in our locker to going down to Division II, and having to work on the field after practices. And having to rake the field and having to wash your own clothes and stuff like that.
We had a lot of [00:04:00] transfers the year that I went down to Valdosta State. And so, we had a hell of a team, and we had a great 2 years down there. And so, I ended up playing extremely well, those 2 years and was an academic All-American on the field. And so, it was a real fun time down there.
Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool. Georgia Baseball, and I’ll say, High School Georgia, growing up, baseball, my understanding is one of the best in the country. It goes all the way back, the East Cobb side, really developing and people move here from all over the country to participate in it, especially in the Atlanta area, super competitive, right?
Clayton Cain: Yeah. Georgia Baseball. I would put it up there against any state, you got the top four, I would say, you got California, Texas, Georgia, Florida, every year you look at the draft boards coming out from high school, those four states are the majority of the states that you’re seeing.
Obviously sheer size from California and Texas. You may get some more players that are high caliber, but in terms of quality, Georgia has historically produced the [00:05:00] top quality baseball player for the last 20, 30 years. Since I was growing up, I can remember, in high school, I was a freshman playing against Frank or McCann there from right down the road here.
And East Cobb was coming up right during those days, we were playing against them and Travel Ball and things like that. And so, Travel Ball was really starting to pick up back in that early 2000 time when I was coming through high school, and Georgia was just the pinnacle of high school baseball, it was incredible. And it still is, it’s only gotten better.
Jonathan Hawkins: It’s insane. My son likes baseball, and I’m not a big guy, he’s not a big guy. He’s taller than I am, but he’s skinny. And it’s just not fair when you see these men out there that are 12 that are like men. You got all these college and professional athletes that moved to Georgia to live here.
And then, of course, their children are just incredible. And it reminds me, maybe two years ago, Druw Jones, I think was number one or number two, and then somebody else [00:06:00] here in Georgia was number one or number two. It’s like the top two out of high school from around here.
Clayton Cain: Druw, he was a Wesleyan, I remember that year, they had two or three top draft picks. It was incredible to see them on a high school level. What high school baseball has become now though is, it’s the high school season itself.
It’s like the preseason to the actual Travel Ball season. That’s where a lot of these guys are really getting seen, and where a lot of the recruiting takes place, and we’re a lot more of the competitiveness is, whereas before it was, you played Summer Ball, you play 50 games, maybe. And then you get ready for your high school season.
And now, the high school season is just to be there. For these kids to have something to do during that time, and get ready for the Summer Ball when they’re playing Travel Ball and traveling across the country, playing a hundred games a summer. It’s insane what it’s become now.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. It’s a little much, but yeah, there’s some really good players. So, what about you? After college, did you try to go pro? Did you try your hand at that?
Clayton Cain: So, I was a 5th-year senior, my last [00:07:00] year. And I’d had wrist surgery, had a bad back, and I worked out for a couple of teams, and they’re like, yeah, we can sign you as an undrafted free agent, couple offers to go play Independent Ball out West. I’d seen so many of my buddies who I played with at Georgia, and they were playing at other colleges and everywhere.
They’d go play, and they were much better than I was. And they’d go play for 2 or 3 years, ride around on a bus, and they’d either get released or just say, I can’t do this anymore. I had to come to that realization where I’m not going to make it, I’m not going to make it to the big leagues, it’d be great to say.
I wouldn’t play pro ball for a year or two or something, but I had to have that come to Jesus moment, and sit there, and look myself in the mirror and say, what are you going to go play for 2 or 3 years and mess around? Are you ready to get moving and figure out what the next step is? I ended up just hanging it up after college and saying, it’s not for me.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I get it. It sounds like, it is a grind and there’s no guarantee that you could be the best ever, and then one injury derails everything. It’s like, that’s what’s scary about [00:08:00] it.
Clayton Cain: Yeah, it’s hard on your body. One of my best friends, he was a left-handed pitcher out of Georgia, had a heck of a career at Georgia and was drafted. He was moved to the Minor Leagues, got up to Double-A through a no-hitter his first game on the Double-A squad.
After a while, he just got burned out from it. He’s just like, I just can’t, I can’t do it anymore. And it’s just one of the things where it’s like, you can’t blame them. If your heart’s not in it and you don’t love it anymore, you don’t feel like you have that passion anymore, then, it’s the right thing to do.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Okay. So, you decided not to go pro, but you did the next best thing. You decided to go work for a sports agent, right? Or a sports agency. So, tell me about that.
Clayton Cain: So, before I started with the sports agent, I had to figure out what I was going to do next. I was like, all right, not playing, what’s the next best thing? Cause school, it was not a real focus of mine in college. I was there to play baseball and have fun, and that was about it.
I had to figure out what I was going to do next and ended up getting a graduate assistant coaching job at Georgia State. And so, went to Georgia State and got my master’s, and was getting my master’s in sports management while coaching baseball. And so, did that [00:09:00] for a year and realized, I couldn’t stand being around the game and not being able to play.
Coaching was just really hard and I get there and I’m a year out of college. So, I’m not much older than the guys playing. And they don’t want to listen to me, they know everything. And I look back, and I sit there and I remember calling one of my old coaches and say, man, I’m sorry. I was probably a jerk, wasn’t I?
Because dealing with these college kids, you think they know everything. And I’m like, these guys are just a bunch of jerks. And I’m like, I was that guy, I guarantee I was that guy. And so, I remember calling my coach and being like, man, I’m sorry. You got a tough job here.
And so, did that for a year and learned a lot, saw the landscape of what college coaching is. And just, again, realized that that’s not for me. And so, then I had to figure out, okay, what’s next? And I knew I wanted to somehow combine sports and business, and find something to do in there. And I ended up getting a job with ASM Sports out of Atlanta, where all we did was represent basketball players.
And so, the guy that I worked for, he was [00:10:00] the VP of the company. And he was based out of Atlanta, and we had some of the bigger agents there, they had a lot of NBA guys, Kevin Garnett was, you know, one of the bigger clients, Porzingis. That’s the big NBA guys and our job in Atlanta was a lot of the international players.
And so, we would get them ready for the draft. And then we would represent the day-to-day on a day-to-day basis, a lot of the international players. Obviously, with the NBA, the rosters aren’t big, the draft is two rounds. You got your guys who you know are going to be lottery picks. You got some of the top guys, let’s take Georgia, for example, a not-a-basketball school, they had some guys come in and out every now and then.
So, you could take Georgia’s best player and he’s probably not going to get drafted, but he’s good enough to wear, he’s either going to play G League in the NBA, or he’s going to go overseas. And he’s going to play in Europe. He’s going to play in China. He’s going to play in Korea, somewhere over there, and they can make a lot of good money over there because they love American players coming over there.
They’re [00:11:00] marketable, they’re obviously very talented. And so, we’ve managed a lot of the international players. And so, we would take those guys and we would have workouts over here. They would have a whole Korean league that have sent 4 or 5 coaches, and they send their owners over, and we will put together a combine for them all.
They signed whoever they wanted, it was very interesting to see on the business side because there wasn’t the collective bargaining agreement in place like the NBA has, there wasn’t this specific contract terms and everything like that. It was a lot more kind of freelance in terms of what you can make the terms. What they got paid? What the fees would be? And everything like that.
And so, it ended up really enjoying that, and really seeing how fun that was, and being able to say, okay, I can be around sports. I can be around the business side and this is something I really wanted to do. And so, I talked to the guy that I was working for and would say, Hey, listen, what do I need to do?
What do I have [00:12:00] to do to get to this level, you know, in terms of being an agent or running a firm like that? And he said you gotta go to law school, first and foremost. So, he told me, that’s the next step is that if I wanted to do that, then law school is the next step. And so, then I find myself applying to law school.
Jonathan Hawkins: Interesting. So, let’s go back to the sports agency real quick. I don’t really know anything about it other than my impression is, it is cutthroat as hell, we’ve all seen Jerry Maguire. But it sounds like, you guys may have found a little niche. Was it less competitive and you guys dominated your little niche where you found NBA players to go overseas? Was it less of a competition for you guys or was it what I imagine?
Clayton Cain: There’s that whole thing that went down a couple of years ago with the agencies paying Adidas, it’s exactly what you would think of, right? It’s exactly that like you would expect. And so, I think where the guy that I was working for Andrew, where he found his success was, he played basketball in college and he went and played pro ball.
He had that ability to connect with players, and [00:13:00] he had that ability to have that one-on-one conversation with players, and go into living rooms and talk to the parents and say, Hey, listen, I’ve been here before. I’ve been here before. I know what it’s like. I know what your son’s going to go through. I know how it’s going to go.
I’m here to make sure that they’re taken care of. I can promise you they’re going to be taken care of. And I can promise you that I’m going to do everything to get them the best deal and put them in, set them up for success even after basketball. He did a really good job of that. And I think he gained such a good reputation around the league and around just the industry in general, that he was able to find that niche you’re saying, we’re really good at two things.
We’re really good in the Atlanta office. That is preparing guys for the draft and then we’re really good at creating and making those connections and having those resources overseas, and knowing where to play certain players, right? Cause certain personalities don’t mix with certain cultures, right? In certain countries, overseas, they may be a great basketball player, and China may want them to come over [00:14:00] there, but they just may not be a great fit for that league, or for that culture, or for that area, whatever it may be.
And so, he had that knowledge of being able to place players where they would excel, and where they would find the most success. And I think that’s a big part of why he was able to build up such a successful business in the international world. And he was very open about the NBA side of things.
He’s like, I would get destroyed if I tried to step into that area and try to compete with the guy who ran the ASM Sports, Andy Miller. He is one of the top four agents in basketball. And he’s like, I’ll never be able to do what Andy does just because it is so cutthroat. You gotta have a certain personality and you gotta have a certain thick skin to be able to get through the day-to-day, and be able to compete with the recruiting, and be able to compete with the backstabbing.
And somebody coming in and trying to swoop underneath you and take your client out, that’s basketball. You take baseball, for example. When I first opened my firm, I started [00:15:00] doing some baseball some agent work. And so, I’ll represent some guys here and there, and just getting them to sign up was almost impossible, because you’re dealing with agencies that have deep pockets.
Again, it’s a recruiting game. You got to whine and dine, make sure the parents know, and then they understand it. What can you do for their kid at that time? Why are you the best fit and trying to compete with some of these bigger agencies that had deep pockets that had the contacts with Under Armour, with Nike, with EvoShield, all these other baseballs, with all the equipment and all that?
The contracts that they were able to get, and the relationship with the scouts too. You got to maintain that relationship with the scouts, and if the scouts don’t trust you to do a good job, they’re going to go to the parents, and they’re going to go to whoever and say, listen, I don’t think this is the right guy.
And so, being able to get my foot in the door there, I had the ability because I had the experience. I still knew a lot of people that were in the game and that coaches, players, things like that, that I had the ability to connect with [00:16:00] and have that conversation with parents and with the players and connect on that personal level with.
But at the end of the day, when they’re sitting there asking for, Hey, I need new batting gloves, $50 pair of batting gloves every week starts adding up when you’re the one fronting that cost. And then your fee on a $50,000 signing bonus at 4%, that goes pretty quickly. Having the ability to sustain and build up an agency is incredibly difficult.
Jonathan Hawkins: I imagine now that we got NIL, it’s probably even more insane and crazier. Alright, so you ended up, you go to law school with the idea of maybe going back into a sports agency. It sounds like, when you first came out, you did a little bit of it. When you came out, did you also do personal injury or how did you get into the personal injury side?
Clayton Cain: Obviously, I went to law school and I had no clue. Law school was never on the radar. Law school was never even an option. I never even thought about being a lawyer. It was never occurred to me that that’s something that I would want to do. Until about 4 months before I started law school, I go and take the LSAT, I don’t even know [00:17:00] what this is.
And he helps me sign up for it, and I gotta take it and start applying to schools around the southeast and ended up choosing Cumberland at Samford University in Birmingham. And so, I get there. I don’t know anybody, but I ended up being there with a couple of people I went to high school with that are still some of my good friends now.
There’s the only people I knew going into law school that we just so happened to be in the same class. But I get there and I’ve been noted to me, Cumberland is a well-known national trial powerhouse. Their trial school, or their trial program is well known as one of the top trial programs in the country, and I didn’t know anything about it. And so, when you start there, in your 1st year, you have to compete or participate in a 1st year trial competition.
You see it on TV, you watch A Time to Kill, some of these movies, and my cousin Vinnie and stuff like that. You’re like, okay, I can do this. I know what to do here. And got into that first trial competition and really found something, I like this, I really like this. Was able to fill [00:18:00] that void that was missing from sports, from baseball.
That competitiveness, that me versus you, preparation, putting on that show in front of a judge, in front of a jury, being able to put all that together, and the competitiveness of it was something that really struck with me. And something I’m like, okay, I really like doing this, it’s something that I feel like, I can really sink my teeth into, and be good at.
After that 1st year, I ended up clerking for a trial judge in Birmingham. It’s the Circuit Court, which is in Georgia, it’s equivalent to State Court, clerking for a circuit court judge. And so, I got to see a lot of trials, a lot of jury trials. Got to see a lot of interesting cases, and that’s where I was like, all right, we solidified, this is what I want to do.
This is absolutely what I want to do. And one trial in particular that really pushed me over the edge was like, all right, this is my calling in a sense was, it was actually Brett Turnbull, a good friend of mine. And he was trying a case, him and his former partners in [00:19:00] Birmingham at Farris, Riley & Pitt, they were trying to an apartment fire case.
And it was this young mother, she was a plaintiff, defendant was an apartment complex, and it was during a snowstorm, and she was frying up some French fries in her kitchen, and a grease fire broke out. And she’s trying to search for a fire extinguisher, there’s not one underneath the sinks, they run outside, in those apartment complexes, they have them on the walls outside the apartment complex.
And there’s not one in the door that’s closest there. And so, she runs back in, gets the pot, the burning pot of grease runs it outside. It’s snowing and so it’s cold, and so you got that combustible reaction, and essentially blew up all over her and just burned her from head to toe.
It was awful. I remember the husband was testifying and just talking about how she had the skin like, falling off of her, and everybody was in tears. The jury was in tears. The judge was in tears. Like, all the attorneys were in tears. It was very powerful. And so, [00:20:00] watching that case and watching that trial was something where I’m like, this is what I want to do.
I want to be able to get up and represent people like that who have been wronged, who have been seriously and catastrophically injured by something that was completely preventable. Essentially, this is what I want to do. Try to do the sports thing, but this is going to take a step above, and what I want to do. And so, that’s what led me to be a trial lawyer.
Jonathan Hawkins: I’ve said this before, maybe on this podcast, I wanted to be a plaintiff’s lawyer coming out of law school, but I found it really difficult to find a job at a plaintiff’s firm straight out. Usually, you go to a defense firm for 2, or 3 years, and then you make the switch over. What about you? Were you able to go straight to a plaintiff’s shop, or did you have to do something else before you got into it?
Clayton Cain: Watch that trial and if it was the next week or something like that. Actually, reached out to Brett and I was like, I want to work for you. I want to work there. I want to clerk there. And that was the summer after my first year. Convinced him to let me come in and start clerking for him. And so, I worked there from, I guess, it was the second half [00:21:00] of my first summer all the way until I left law school. So, that was my foot in the door.
And so, I never got to have that experience of working for a defense firm. I’ve done nothing but plaintiff’s work my whole career. And so, it’s a little bit like you said, it’s different. It’s not, you do that, that typical stepping stone is working for a defense firm 3 years, however, it is, then you go to the plaintiff’s side. I never got the experience of working for a defense firm or doing any insurance defense work or anything like that.
Was working with Turnbull at Farris, Riley & Pitt, finished law school, and just had that itch to come home. Thought I was going to be able to be fine. I’m going to go, make my own path, and do my own thing and be all right. But at the end of the day, I just miss home.
I miss Georgia, I miss my family, and being close to my family. I grew up with a very close-knit family. And so, I want to go back to Georgia and Brett actually got me in touch with Alan Hamilton at Shiver Hamilton. And so, when I moved back, I started at Shiver Hamilton.
Obviously, [00:22:00] had to take the Georgia Bar and already taken Alabama Bar, was already licensed in Alabama, but had to wait until February to take the Georgia Bar. I was able to come on and do some stuff with Alan and Jeff during that time that I was studying and getting ready for the Georgia Bar. And then once I took the Georgia Bar in February and passed. Became a full-time associate with Jeff and Alan at Shiver Hamilton.
Jonathan Hawkins: They’re good lawyers, good firm, good lawyers. I’m sure you learned a lot there. But at some point, you decided you want to try your own thing. Did you always know you wanted to do your own thing? Or was this sort of some people always know, or always knew, and some people fall into it for one reason or another? Where did you fall on that spectrum?
Clayton Cain: I always knew that I wanted to run my own business. That’s just something that has always been ingrained in me growing up. My whole family, my grandfather, my aunts, my uncles, and my parents, they all ran their own businesses. They all had small businesses in the community.
That’s something that was just something I knew I wanted to do. I don’t know if that was just growing up and that being what I was [00:23:00] around, but that was just the mentality I always had was, I always knew I wanted to have my own firm or have my own business.
And so, got to have the experience of learning from, like you said, Jeff and Alan were two of the best around, got to have that experience. But, again, just felt the need to say, this isn’t going to last but I think it’s time to go back and go back to Gwinnett and start my own shop.
And that was right about the time where Gwinnett was turning and Gwinnett was going from one of the more conservative venues in the state to one of the best plaintiff venues in the state. And so, I think Jeff had recently got like a four and a half million verdict out of Gwinnett on a case that was historically and traditionally not worth 4 and a half million dollars at Gwinnett.
And so, it just seemed like the right time, and knowing the connections that I had, the ability that I would have to network, and be able to get involved with the community, and generate business. It just felt like the right time. So, I was with Jeff and Alan [00:24:00] for about a year and then went out and started my own shop in Gwinnett.
Jonathan Hawkins: You did that for a number of years on the plaintiff’s side. And you can backfill as much as you want, but I’m interested because we teased it early on. You had a plaintiff’s firm that you were running, doing well. But then you got the itch to maybe pivot and try some non-PI-related stuff.
One of which is the sports law, which makes sense, going full circle, you’re bringing it back. But I want to explore, what led you down that path to go. A lot of people want to be playing soldiers because, in their view, they see big dollar signs. And there are, but I think there’s probably some other side of it that’s tougher.
But you say, you know what? I want to go back and focus on sports, business, and other things. Take us through the thought process there.
Clayton Cain: One of our core values is community, right? We do a lot with the community. We do a lot of sponsorships. We do a lot of volunteering. Our firm really gets out there and I’m a board member of the Gwinnett Chamber.
And so, as I got more [00:25:00] involved and as I started getting out there and networking and being more well known in the community, obviously, I would have people coming up and saying, Hey, I got this issue, my business is being sued. I don’t know what’s going on. My insurance company isn’t really helping me out.
Could you represent me in this? And I kept having to say, no, that’s not what we do. But I can send you and free to somebody who does a really good job. And that just kept happening over and over to the point where I started saying, you know what? I’ll take a couple of these on. Somebody would come and say, Hey, I really want to start a business.
I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what I need to do. What do I have to file? What documents do I need? All of that. And so, I said, yeah, I can help you do that. Helped a couple of people set up their LLCs, get their operating agreement going, getting their FEIN set up, and helping people get set up and going. And then would say, if you need anything else down the road, let me know.
And sure enough, 6 months down the road, they would come to me with a contract issue or say, Hey, I need to take a look at our bylaws or whatever it may be. We’re going to add a partner and we need to do an [00:26:00] updated shareholders agreement, whatever it is.
And so, I started doing some of that stuff slowly and started getting involved in, being like, okay, I really enjoy doing this because there’s the ability to build those relationships and personal injury. Obviously, you want to build a relationship and you’re going to build a relationship with your clients.
But for the most part, those are single-event cases that you may hear from them, you may not hear from them. A lot of times at the end of those cases, you’re not going to hear from them anymore, right? You want to stay in contact and do all that, but you spend that time, whether it’s through litigation, whatever, building that relationship, and then they’re gone, right?
With doing more on the business side and more on the transactional side, I was able to build those relationships. And in return, I was able to generate the business on the business law side, but I would also see referrals come around on the PI side. They’d have their brother’s girlfriend getting a wreck or something like that.
And they call us. And so, saw it as, Hey, I can add this [00:27:00] additional practice area. And grow that because I enjoy doing that. I enjoy building those relationships. I enjoy doing that type of work. And it also helps the PI side on the back end, right? And so, my personal practice, again, I wanted to shift more towards that, towards doing more of the business law.
And then, on the sports law side, it’s the same situation where I had somebody come to me and say, Hey, they were doing marketing for Bull Riders. And so, a sport that I’ve watched on TV every now and then. And everybody knows the story about The 8 Second movie where Lane Frost gets killed on the bull, Bull Riding is a very dangerous sport.
And so, I didn’t really know much about it. But they came to me and said, Hey, we do some marketing for some of these riders and they are just getting screwed over on the contract side. They’re signing contracts that are not in their favor, they’re signing contracts that have some language in there that we feel like, needs to be looked at.
Nobody was looking at it. Nobody was helping them out. And so, I said, [00:28:00] yeah, sure, I’ll take a look at this contract and see what it’s all about. And then sure enough, I took a look at the first contract that I was set and it was awful. What’s the contract and the terms of the contract and how much these riders are being taken advantage of was mind-blowing.
Jonathan Hawkins: So, let me ask real quick. So, Bull Rider, so you’re in Georgia. In my mind, I’m thinking of Texas or out West. Is there a Bull Riding circuit in Georgia? How did you get there? I’m curious.
Clayton Cain: So, honestly, it was by chance. It was again, the guy that I know, he’s from Georgia and he’s from here. So, they started a team series about 2 or 3 years ago, and he was doing some marketing for the Austin team out of Austin, Texas. And again, there’s an event that comes through Georgia every year, but in terms of actually there being a circuit or there being a team here, there’s not one.
And so, most of them are out West. There’s one in Carolina. There’s one in Florida, but as far as here in Georgia, specifically, there’s not one. And was able to get in contact with that individual, and with that rider, and [00:29:00] was able to take a look and see what the agreement was all about, and see what the contract was all about.
And this was his first team series contract. And so, the GM of the team that we were working with actually was an old baseball guy. He used to run Nolan Ryan’s and then JJ Gottsch out of Austin. Awesome guy. Love JJ. We’ve worked together since, and we have that kind of ability to understand each other, I think it comes from the baseball background. But he ran all of Nolan Ryan’s camps.
He was the GM of the Corpus Christi, Triple A team down there. Really awesome guy. He took control of the Austin Gamblers Bull Riding team. Got hooked up with him, negotiating this first contract that we, his name is Jose Vitor Leme, he’s currently the number one Bull Rider in the world.
A good kind of way to describe him as he’s a Michael Jordan Bull Riding. They handed me this contract and I was like, I don’t know who this guy is. I don’t know anything about him. And then I started looking him up. I’m like, Oh, wow, he’s broke every record [00:30:00] in Bull Riding.
He’s a Brazilian guy, and he’s come up through the ranks and has just completely rewrote the history book, and the record book in Bull Riding. Knowing that I was able to go in with some leverage and say, all right, you’ve got the Michael Jordan of Bull Riding here. And was able to negotiate the highest contract and Bull Riding history for him. And so, from that point on, that industry took off.
Jonathan Hawkins: It’s funny how these things happen, you got to be open to it, but it’s chance a lot of times. You were thinking about, you were moving away towards it, and then this thing dropped in, and we can get into all the other alternative sports types of things you do now too. But again, it’s chance.
But before we get to that, so you have Cain Injury Law, which is a PI practice. It’s clear in the name, but now you’re starting to do some business and some sports stuff. So, from a marketing message standpoint, how are you going to go out and say, all right, now we do sports and we do business and all that. What was going through your head and how did you approach that?
Clayton Cain: Knew pretty quickly that, that was going to be an [00:31:00] issue. Because the more business and the more sports that I started doing, then I’m like, okay, now I want to market. I don’t want it to necessarily come to me. I want to go generate. Now, I’m gonna go get that business.
And so, I would go and meet with people, and meet with business owners and say, Hey, here’s what I can do for you. And then hand them a card and they would say, wait a second, injury law. So, you’re an injury attorney and it would just create that automatic sense of, the connotation that comes with injury lawyers, it’s we’re ambulance chasers, all of this stuff.
And so, immediately, as a business owner, they’re going, you’re the type of lawyer that I’m having the problems with because you’re filing all these claims against us and all this. And so, there’s that hiccup that kept occurring. The solution has to be, I got to come up with a new name, right?
You got to come up with a new name or kind of start a completely separate firm. And so, I came up with is Cain Injury Law. I don’t want to necessarily lose that branding for now, because that’s been the bread and butter. That’s been the community brand. That’s what everybody knows. And so, essentially, what I decided on is, I got to start a separate company. And the separate firm [00:32:00] has to be tailored towards something else, towards the business, towards the sports, towards more of the transactional side.
So, I can go into these businesses, and talk to these business owners, and talk to these athletes and say, Hey, listen, here’s what we do, we named it 3Summits Law, it’s the same logo. Essentially, it’s the same mountain logo as Cain Injury Law, but it’s a separate name, 3Summits Law, three different practice areas.
And that’s the purpose behind it. But it allowed me to go into those businesses, and talk to the owners, and talk to athletes, and have that trust and not have that injury law name attached to it. That would immediately cause them to question what we’re all about and had that sense of trust built into it. And so, that’s why I ended up just starting that separate firm. And now, we’re rolling with two firms.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, we’ll get into that. So, let me ask when you started to approach these people with the new name, the new business card, was it like night and day?
Clayton Cain: Personally, I didn’t think it was a big deal, because I knew what I was going to bring to the table, and I knew [00:33:00] the service that we were going to provide, and whether we’re an injury firm or not, it didn’t affect that. And in reality, I was trying to use it as a plus and say, yes, we did focus on, and we have focused on injury law primarily over the past however many years. And now that’s going to allow me to come in and help you more because now I can see the risk. I can see the liability. I can see where the holes are.
Where you’re risks and liabilities lie, because I know what I would be looking for if I was to come out for you. But in their eyes, in small business owners, they already have that opinion about injury attorneys. It’s just automatic. They have that opinion about injury attorneys because that’s who they’re dealing with. And that’s what’s causing their premiums to go up. And that’s who’s filing the claims against them and making their cop score go up and all that type of stuff.
And so, that immediately created that sense of trust where I didn’t have to worry about explaining, yes, we have done injury law. But here’s how it’s going to help you, or here’s why you should trust me. It just allowed us to jump that whole part of [00:34:00] this conversation, which has been beneficial.
Jonathan Hawkins: You know, a funny thing in life and in business, you saw for one problem or challenge and then another one pops up. So, the challenge at first was that the branding and having two different types of practice areas. So, you create a new firm, you solve that. But then you’ve been at it for a while now and it seems like, probably, another challenge has come up. Because now, you’re dealing with two different law firms you got a run.
So, tell me about that. What’s it been like managing two different law firms, and any lessons learned from that?
Clayton Cain: At the beginning, it wasn’t too difficult because we weren’t that busy. With 3SummitsLaw, with the business side, there just wasn’t enough business to really create any inefficiencies. But as we started getting busier, as I started signing more clients on, it did become, from an operational standpoint, that’s where the issues came up.
There’s different SOPs. There’s different KPIs. There’s different bank accounts. There’s different everything that you have to be so clear, and specific [00:35:00] has to keep separate. At the beginning, we were able to use the same practice management software, and it was working fine.
We were able to build the hours that we needed to without that actual billable hour, feature built into the practice management system, and we’re able to do it by hand and do all that type of stuff. But as we got busier, and as time went on, even down to the phone number, right?
People would be calling and somebody answer Cain Injury Law. Hold on, that’s not who I was calling. I was calling 3Summits Law to talk, and it’s like, we were having the receptionist be like, Oh, that’s the same firm. And so, at the beginning, we were able to make it work. But as time went on, as business started being generated, as we started getting busier, then it became, okay, we got to have two separate operating systems.
We got to have a case management system for Cain Injury Law, case management system for 3Summits. We got to have different phone numbers, we got to have different email addresses. We got to have different Amex cards. We got to keep everything separate. The case expenses are different over here. And really we just had to put a fine line down [00:36:00] in the middle and just separate everything.
The time that it took to do that, which again, we’re still going through things come up all the time where we’re trying to find the best way to separate it, even down to the office things, right? Simple things that you don’t really think about that probably should be separated, but, you know, a copier, right?
The copying machine, which firm is going to cover the cost of that? And how’s that going to work? And certain things like that. But now, as we’ve hit a stride where we feel like, we’ve got good traction going with 3Summits. Obviously, with Cain Injury Law is easy because everything just operates the same. We just kept everything operating the same. Nothing really changed.
But we did have to put that clear-cut date on things to say, all right, on November 1st, any new matter, any new case is going to 3Summits Law, right? And so, that has been the most difficult part of running two firms is really keeping that vision clear [00:37:00] of where we wanted Cain Injury Law to be and where we want to 3Summits to go.
And we want to keep those separate. We want to somehow, merge them eventually. Do we want to take that brand, that Cain Injury Law that we’ve been able to build up for the past 7, 8 years, and not lose that? Because we have the assets of having the website, and Google My Business, and the reviews, and everything like that, where we’re generating organic cases from, do we want to lose that and are we going to lose that if we do merge them?
Should we just keep them separate? And so, that whole decision and that whole process of figuring out what’s going to be in the best interest of, not just one firm, but both firms and how’s it going to be easier on the staff? Do we need to hire completely new staff for 3Summits?
Or can the current staff that’s in place with Cain Injury Law, are they going to be okay with picking up and learning a whole new practice area? Because I’ve some paralegals who they’ve only done personal injury. They don’t know anything else. They don’t know any other practice area. They don’t know how to bill [00:38:00] hours.
They don’t know what a billable hour is, or anything like that. That learning curve that we had to go through and try to figure out, okay, is it going to be something that we’re going to have to hire all new people for? Or is it something that we can transition the current people that we have in place who I know are the right people, are they going to be okay learning this whole new practice area and learning all the new processes and SOPs and KPIs and everything like that?
In theory, I thought it was going to be easy. This is going to be easy. We’re just going to keep them separate. We’ll just generate some business, bill hours, and have our flat fee outside GC contracts, and there’ll be nothing to it. But, the details of running a firm, again, I think a lot of people and I know that you know, this as well as anybody, the details of running a firm, they get lost a lot of times. And a lot of people don’t think about the little things.
Everybody thinks about the big things that it takes to run a firm, but the little things are really what matters. And if you forget about those little things, and you forget about the details, that can make all the difference in the [00:39:00] world.
Jonathan Hawkins: I’ll tell you, I talked to people and they may have even under one umbrella, the different types of business models will say, you know, you got a flat fee, this that, they’re contingency. And it’s hard enough to merge that into the same firm, two different firms like you said, in theory, sounds like it might be easier, but you double the complexity almost, you’re not really getting economies of scale. Because you got two different bank accounts, all that kind of stuff.
Have you made a decision? Are you going to keep the two firms? Have you decided what you’re going to do moving forward? Just keep it the same? Or are you going to try to bring them together?
Clayton Cain: So, we made the decision very recently to merge them. And so, we’re going to essentially rebrand. We’re going to rebrand Cain Injury Law and merge into 3Summits Law the firm that we’re going to be operating under is going to be 3Summits Law. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is to simplify the operations, and simplified operating systems that we’re already utilizing and combine them.
So, we don’t have 2 separate things going. And so, 3Summits Law is going to be comprised of, again, 3 summits, 3 [00:40:00] mountain tops, 3 summits, so to speak, 3 practice areas, you’re going to have the PI side, which is going to run the exact same as it has under Cain Injury Law.
Then we have the real estate side, and that’s just going to be a completely separate practice area. And then the business sports law side. So, those 3 what makes up three summits law. So, essentially, we’re just taking what Cain Injury Law is and putting it into that 1st pillar under the 1st summit and just say, okay, all of our operations and everything, we already got that built out. We already know what that is. That’s easy. That doesn’t change.
And then we’ll transfer over the phone numbers, and the emails obviously change, and things like that. But it just makes sense at this point, and the vision that I have of being more diverse, and adding these additional practice areas long term, that just makes more sense to my vision and where I want to go as a firm, personal injury world is cutthroat, right?
It’s like the agent world. It’s not slowing down. It’s so unbelievably competitive now, and the number and the [00:41:00] amount of marketing dollars that’s being put into the personal injury world is astonishing. And so, when I first started here in Gwinnett, there wasn’t a whole lot of competition. I think I got to the top three in Google within 7 months of opening my firm and stayed there for years.
And then all of a sudden, right around COVID, post-COVID, when a lot of firms figured out they could use some of these dollars for marketing dollars. And they pushed a ton of money into SEO, pay-per-click, the digital marketing side, all the new LSA stuff that has come out. To where now I’m sitting there going, okay, why have our leads just fallen off? We used to have this many leads from an organic standpoint, this many leads from a referral standpoint, and our organic leads just plummeted.
And so, we started doing some market research and started looking at some things. And if you just Google Gwinnett personal injury lawyer, all these firms started popping up and I’m like, who are these people? They don’t have a firm here. They don’t have an office here. Obviously, what was going on is they’re just pushing all these [00:42:00] marketing dollars into the system, knowing that Gwinnett is one of the top plaintiff’s venues in the country at this point.
And so, knowing and seeing that, all right, here’s the two options, you spend an ungodly amount of money on marketing to compete. Or you just go to the straight referral ground game, let’s go for the value of cases and the quality of cases over the volume of cases.
And that’s good. But, again, it was just in a better sense, scary to me, right? It’s like, all right, we’re not going to compete on the budget standpoint of being able to keep up with the big marketers and keep up on the volume side. And at this point, we just don’t have that level of incoming referrals where I feel comfortable of putting all of our eggs in that basket.
If we diversify and we add these other practice areas, now that can supplement what we’re doing on with PI side and it allows me to take those cases and allow us to take the cases that we really want, right? In the ones that we may or may not sign up that is like, I really want to work this case up, but it’s a car wreck case, clear liability, there’s [00:43:00] insurance, there’s decent property. It’s one of those that is like, we can turn this pretty quickly.
That whole side and seeing how the PI industry has shifted and has really changed. That’s another big reason for wanting to shift and go to 3Summit Law over this two separate firms.
Jonathan Hawkins: You know better than I do, but it is super, super competitive everywhere, but especially Atlanta Metro, just one of the most competitive areas in the country. And the other funny thing is, you are in the middle of a law firm merger that others go through, except usually when they go through it, they’re bringing on another attorney or a team from another firm, and it’s all the same issues.
You got to integrate into the new system, make sure everybody fits into the new system. You create a new protocol, et cetera. The only difference here is that you’re on both sides of it, right?
Clayton Cain: Exactly.
Jonathan Hawkins: One half of yourself with the other half of the self. It’s pretty interesting. 3Summits Law, I tell everybody, I love a good trade name. What’s the genesis of that? Tell me about that.
Clayton Cain: Obviously, if you look at Cain Injury Law, [00:44:00] mountains are just something that I just have a love for. If you go onto our Cain Injury Law website and you click on our video, it’s that typical while you’re climbing a mountain and looking over everything. It’s funny because Mike Rafe, he has on his videos, he’ll poke fun at some people and one of his videos, he’s talking about all these videos and saw the lawyers getting up to the peak of the mountain and looking out and I’m like, that’s what we have.
But it is like mountains, I love the North Georgia mountains. I love the Blue Ridge mountains. The 3Summits Law logo comes from Cain Injury Law. That’s the same logo that we have at Cain Injury Law. But the name comes from, I wanted it initially to be 7Summits Law. So, one of my life goals is to complete the 7 summits, which is, you reach the peak of the highest summits on all 7 continents.
And so, it’s called the 7 summits. The idea was to build a firm around reaching the peak and overcoming the most difficult obstacles there is and reaching the peak of every single one of those difficult obstacles, and [00:45:00] difficult mountaintops, and everything like that. And it was initially going to be 7 summits, did some research in and there’s, oddly enough, another firm called Seven Summits Law.
And so, I was like, all right, we gotta shift there. We can’t call it the same thing. And as I started thinking, I knew that we didn’t want to be just a completely general practice. I knew that we didn’t want to be just the overall, Hey, we’re local general practice.
We’ll handle family law. We’ll handle wills and trusts. We still wanted to keep it niche, right? We still wanted to keep it specific in terms of, it’s not just one practice area. Because obviously, in law school and everything like that, they always tell you, pick your niche and stick to it and don’t stray from it.
We wanted to keep that idea, but do it in 3 separate ways. And I knew that I wanted those 3 to be the main 3 practice areas. And as I started thinking about it, I was like, what if we just take the 7 summits and we just make it 3 summits and then we can build that brand and say, okay, like you’re asking, what’s the purpose of it?
3Summits Law, we have our 3 practice areas. Those are the 3 main areas of focus. That’s how we separate it. And why [00:46:00] the name is 3Summits Law because we have those 3 practice areas. And even if you look at the logo, it has worked out that the logo is actually 3 summits in the logo, too.
So, we’re able to play on that and build it from a branding perspective and really utilize the name, the logo, and the 3 different practice areas to explain what we do.
Jonathan Hawkins: I like it, man. I think it’s really cool. But that leads me to the question. So, of the 7 summits, how many have you done so far?
Clayton Cain: Absolutely zero. I need to get going, man. I think about it all the time as I’ll sit there and look, and I’ll see something on Instagram or something. It took somebody, I think the average time to do one is 12 days or something like 14 days or something like that.
And I’m like, I’m sitting there looking at my calendar. I’m like, when the hell am I going to have 12 or 14 days to travel, to do it, and come back? I’m hoping that once we get everything rolling, and we can get everything rolling with some traction, and the ability to step away, and not work in the firm so much. I’ll be able to start tackling those.
Jonathan Hawkins: First thing I say, but I think you could turn this into a nice marketing [00:47:00] arc of a story. Pick one, and then you just document your journey, man. I think you could work this all into the 3 summits thing. So, you could do at least 3 of them, right?
Clayton Cain: I agree with that, man. I had that same thought. I’d be like, we can really build this thing up, have a little podcast going as we go. Yeah, that’d be great.
Jonathan Hawkins: So, then you can expense the trip too, right?
Clayton Cain: Yeah, exactly. It’s all for marketing.
Jonathan Hawkins: So, let’s circle back to the baseball real quick. So, I’ve talked to maybe, I’m trying to think, at least one other college athlete. And I’m always curious, college athletics is hard. You got to go to school, it is a grind, but you learn a lot, man.
And so, I’m curious, what sort of lessons maybe have carried over from your collegiate baseball days to running a firm, running a business?
Clayton Cain: College athletics and actually, by the time, are you referring to Natanya?
Jonathan Hawkins: Yep. Yep.
Clayton Cain: Yeah. We’ve talked about a lot. With her and Durant being attacking me being in Georgia. We’ve had those conversations a lot about college athletics and how it molds you into, it teaches you those values, [00:48:00] right?
Again, you go from high school where everything’s done for you. You don’t have that responsibility to the day that you show up in the SEC or ACC. You don’t have that opportunity to get your feet wet. You don’t have that opportunity to get accurate, to get acclimated to this new life that you’re in.
And I’ve seen so many incredible baseball players and just athletes in general get lost in that mix. Because it’s one of those things where if you don’t have the ability to adapt and to be self-sufficient, and be that self-motivated driver, you’re gonna get lost in that. And you’re gonna get lost because it is so demanding.
The early morning workouts, making sure you watch your diet. You’re making sure that you stay on top of your academics. Make sure you stay on top of not going out to the bars every night. The values that sports in general play and have played in my ability to start a firm, to operate a firm, we instill a lot of those values.
And so, I always like to say, I have a coaching mindset [00:49:00] because that is something that I wanted to do. And so, the coaching mindset that I bring to our everyday practice, and what we do it’s like a practice.
We have a schedule. We have that practice bulletin board where we have the schedule saying, all right, here’s our priorities. Here’s what we’re going to hit. Let’s make sure that we’re knocking this out. Let’s make sure that we’re paying attention to this. Let’s utilize our ability to connect as a team. Teamwork is one of our biggest core values.
Community, obviously, giving back, preparation is something that I’m very big on, because I think that preparation is one of the biggest things in sports and business that sets you up for success. If you’re not the most prepared in the room, if you’re not the most prepared on the field, it’s going to be a long day.
You don’t have to be the most talented. You don’t have to throw it the hardest or hit it the farthest or whatever it may be. If you’re not the most prepared in the room, then you’re going to struggle. And so, I think those values that I’ve learned from sports and from collegiate sports, implementing that into what we’re [00:50:00] doing on a business front, those are some of the things that I’ve taken from the sports background and from playing college sports that I’ve been able to instill.
Again, I try to voice that with the staff as well saying, Hey, listen, this is what we’re going to instill. And again, trying to find those people that have that same mindset, always thought the athlete mindset.
So, if I’m interviewing somebody, that’s a question that I always ask is, did you grow up playing sports? Again, I’m not even necessarily worried if it’s college sports. Did you grow up playing youth sports, high school sports, or anything like that? Because if they did, then I know that they’re going to have that type of mentality, that somebody that grew up not playing sports may not have. But I think it is important to have those values and focus on those values. And that’s I think how we’ve been able to get to where we’re at.
Jonathan Hawkins: The other thing too, we’ll stick with baseball. You have two games in a row where you’re 0 for 4, two days in a row, maybe 2, or 3 strikeouts both days. And you’re like, Oh my god, am I ever going to get out of this? And then all of a sudden, you go 3 for 4, 2 home runs, it’s [00:51:00] like the next day, it’s a new day.
Clayton Cain: You got to have a short memory. And again, baseball is a great example because you’re playing almost every day, right? You’re playing a lot. There’s a lot of games, football, you got to wait a week before you can get back out there, and baseball, you’re going to get back out there the next day or the day after.
You got to have a short memory in everything you do. And just like in what we do. Take a trial, for example, we go out and lose a trial, we can’t let that affect us. I think I saw, who was it that put on LinkedIn? I think it was Darl Champion. They unfortunately lost a trial and all you can do is learn from it, and learn where those mistakes were made, and prepare yourself for the next time, right? And not get discouraged, and not get down, and say, that’s the end of the road there.
I suck. I’m not any good or anything like that. Let’s learn from it. Let’s figure out where those mistakes were. Let’s figure out what we did wrong. Let’s figure out what we can do better in the future. And let’s make sure not to make those mistakes again. Because again, they’re going to happen.
It’s inevitable. You’re gonna screw up. You’re gonna ask the wrong question. You’re gonna get an expert that says the wrong thing, even though you’ve prepared them. Or your client’s going to [00:52:00] say the wrong thing, even though you’ve prepared them for hours and days before their deposition.
It’s gonna happen. It’s just all about learning from those mistakes and having that short memory and staying resilient and being able to step back up there and get after it again.
Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Clayton, we’ve been going at it for a while. I want to ask you one more question before we wrap up. You’ve gone through the experiment of having the two different firms, you’ve pivoted to add the practice areas, you’ve got the two different firms, you’ve decided to bring them back together and merge them.
As you’re looking out over the next 10, to 15 years, what’s your vision for 3Summits Law?
Clayton Cain: Yeah. So, I think, the vision right now is to one, be the firm in our community that best serves our community, right? We have a lot of great firms around here, but I want to be the firm that everybody knows and builds that reputation to say, Hey, for these three practice areas, that’s who you go to.
