Rivals – Law – Gordon McKernan Vs. Dudley DeBosier

Gordon McKernan makes no bones about it. He’s out to be the No. 1 personal injury attorney around.

“We try to dominate the market,” says McKernan matter-of-factly. “I’m a very competitive person. I’d honestly like to have every single accident case that happens.”

“G,” as he is known on his billboards, TV commercials and print ads, already has more than his fair share of local wreck and slip-and-fall cases. But he also has some equally aggressive competitors—namely, the firm of Dudley and DeBosier, which took over the business in 2009 that used to belong to the undisputed king of local personal injury lawyers, “E. Eric” Guirard, until he was disbarred.

“We’re all extremely competitive,” says Chad Dudley of his partners. “We compete with ourselves but we don’t necessarily pay attention to what other people in the market are doing. If you only worry about what everyone else is doing, you can only be as good as everyone else.”

Dudley and Steven DeBosier say they’re not in competition with McKernan—and vice versa—the name of the game in personal injury law is branding, and the idea is to establish yourself as the name, the face and the jingle truck drivers think of first when their rigs skid off the road.

To that end, these attorneys spend copious amounts on advertising and trying to make sure they’re better known than the competition.

“Branding is as important as anything we do,” McKernan says. “Even if we’re doing a great job for people, we’re going to be very limited if we’re not marketing ourselves.”

Dudley and DeBosier agree that marketing is a reality in their field today, though they say they prefer to generate their own positive PR through referrals and word-of-mouth than with traditional ad campaigns.

“You can advertise on TV, but if you want cases for a long time, you have to treat people right,” says DeBosier. “If you treat people right, when they walk out the door they tell their family and friends.”

So how does competition factor into the way these attorneys do business?

McKernan believes it makes them better.

“It makes us innovate,” he says. “I know there are things that I have done that have forced other lawyers to replicate or duplicate; someone gets a great idea, and other people try to see if they can do the same thing.”

Dudley and DeBosier have a slightly different take on that.

“We’ve thought about competition and whether we want to dominate the market, but at the end of the day, what does that do for us?” says Dudley. “We’ve thought about where we want to be in five or 10 years, and we’d rather have the most respect than the most cases.”