Episode 1330: What Insurance Companies Don’t Want You to Know with Brent Stewart

After an accident, one wrong move can weaken your case, cost you money, and make an already difficult situation even worse. In this episode of Sharkpreneur, Seth Greene interviews Brent Stewart, Lawyer at Stewart Law Offices, who explains why injured individuals should seek legal advice early, the risks of giving an insurance company a statement before speaking with an attorney, and how lawyers assess the broader financial and personal impact of an injury. Brent also discusses the importance of investigation, documentation, client relationships, and maintaining a family-oriented culture while growing a multi-office law firm. Key Takeaways: → Injuries can have financial consequences that extend far beyond the immediate medical bills. → Seeking legal advice early can help injured people avoid mistakes that may weaken their recovery. → The value of an injury case involves more than medical bills and can include lost wages, loss of enjoyment of life, and other damages. → Injured people have the burden of proving their injury and may need to participate actively in the legal process. → Thorough investigation can uncover evidence that significantly alters how an accident and injury are understood. Thirty-one years ago, Brent Stewart built Stewart Law Offices on a single conviction: when someone's life is turned upside down by injury or loss, they deserve an attorney who treats them like family. Over the past three decades, Brent has grown Stewart Law Offices into a thriving practice with a team of ten dedicated attorneys and seven office locations — each attorney committed to the same standard of care Brent built the firm on. And yet, Brent still shares his personal number. To him, every client deserves to know that if they ever need to hear directly from the man who built this firm, that door is always open. Connect With Brent: Website: https://www.stewartlawoffices.net/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StewartLawOffices Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stewartlawoffices/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stewart-law-offices-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-stewart-7341b910/ X: https://x.com/StewartLawLLC TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stewart_law_offices YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXsXVgzn84taqmH0F3vJ5Eg

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Shark Preneur Podcast with Kevin Harrington and Seth Green. Kevin Harrington is the inventor of the infomercial, one of the original sharks from the hit TV show Shark Tank, and has generated over $5 billion in TV and digital direct response sales. Seth Green is the world's first trusted authority on cutting-edge direct response marketing, a bestselling author, and the only three-time marketer of the year nominee. On the podcast, Kevin and Seth interview shark preneurs who share straight talk on what it takes to explode your business.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Forty-nine faces looked to him in triumph. Over the last 12 months, they had each taken turns and promoted his business for a week at a time, driving over $987,342 in revenue. What if you had a network of 50 centers of influence who promoted your business every week for a year? Grab your copy of the number one Amazon bestselling book, The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Business with a Podcast. It's 33% off the Amazon price by going to ultimatepodcastbook.com. Again, that website for 33% off the Amazon price is ultimatepodcastbook.com. Welcome to the podcast. This is your host Seth Green. Today, I've got the good fortune with Brent Stewart, the founder of Stewart Law Offices, who's got more than 30 years of legal experience that we're going to talk about in just a minute.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Brent, thanks so much for joining us.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Thank you. I enjoy your show, and if anybody's watching, I hope they give you some five-star reviews. I know that drives my business.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Greatly appreciate that. So, let's go back in time. What inspired you to go to law school and become a lawyer in the first place?

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Well, we had a cabin at Seneca Lake, and the next-door neighbor was a lawyer, and I cut his grass, and he ended up giving me a riding mower that helped me grow my grass-cutting business greatly. And from then on, I was like, I want to have a job that will allow me to help people, and maybe I will give a riding mower to somebody else and help another young kid's business. And from that point on, I just always wanted to be a lawyer, and I just made it happen.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Wow, that is quite a story. So, then, after law school, did you start Stewart Law right away? Did you work somewhere else? Tell us a little bit about the journey.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Well, my mom was a schoolteacher, and she had taught these kids the bordices, and they were kind of heavy-hitting trial lawyers. And so, they had offered me a clerkship after my second year of law school. And then, I went back to work in Wheeling, West Virginia for them. Wheeling did not have a lot of people my age, and so, my other boss, Dave Jividen, got me a job with the Guam Attorney General's Office. I was an assistant prosecutor in that office, and worked there for two years before going to Charleston, working there for a couple of years, and I started my firm in 1995.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  All right. And what were, when did you, what do you envision the firm becoming when you first opened your doors back in 95?

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Well, things have changed a lot, like advertising, etc. Like, I kind of thought I was going to ride it out on magnets and Yellow Pages, and that has now gone totally amok. But I had pictured an individual firm with two or three lawyers, kind of what I had started with in West Virginia, but the whole thing has changed. The whole industry has changed, and I think it's harder to stay a firm if you decide to stay that small. I think there's some benefit in growing. I'm not sure how big of a growth a law firm should get to, but I know that it had to be more than just one firm.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  That makes a lot of sense. And were you focused, when you opened your doors, were you focused on personal injury, workers' comp, med mal?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Yes, that is, that has been my focus since my first job, and I think mostly I just enjoyed doing it because of helping people. My mom and dad were teachers and counselors and lived paycheck from paycheck. In a car wreck, while it doesn't affect everybody, if they don't have the one car to get to work, they can't make it to work, and they can't pay their bills. And I just saw how those people help people in those kind of situations, even when somebody considered a small wreck, it could have great repercussions.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You've said that an injury case isn't just a case, it's someone's life and family livelihood. When did you really first come to understand that?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Well, with that first job, like, I would just see people that, if it's an, even if you're not injured, and it's just your car, and you have one car, and that car is an older car that you don't even owe money on, but if they underpay you $500 or $600 and you can't get another car, you can't get to work. And all those little things snowball into a much bigger loss. And so, somebody there that helps you up front, willing to pay the cost to get it moving, is very important, and it's always just felt good to be that person.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  When someone is seriously injured, they're often scared, overwhelmed, they're not thinking clearly, like, what's the first thing they should do?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Well, I'm actually writing a book on that of when you need a personal injury lawyer, and I just think that, I think people are afraid that they look litigious by calling a lawyer right away. But I think you have to understand that when you get in one of these situations, you're dealing with a big business or an insurance company, and insurance companies are probably the most litigious things out there. So, lawyers offer free consultations, doctors don't, plumbers don't, nobody else does but us. So, I think it just makes sense to call, even if you don't want to use a lawyer, at least call for the free consultation. It's not going to hurt you.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  What is the most common mistake people make after an accident?

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Giving a statement to the insurance company before talking to a lawyer. That statement, the insurance companies are nice, but you need to understand the questions that go into those statements have been developed from years and years of lawyers and other interviews, and a lot of litigious people drafting those not to make it so you get more money, but to pick out the weaknesses in your case, and then later, it'll be used to cross-examine you if you say anything different in your deposition.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Is, you mentioned talking to an attorney right away. Is there such a thing as waiting too long to get legal advice?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  I think that it's always better to get it at some point, even if you've waited a long time, but the quicker you talk, even if you don't hire them, and they give you some advice of how to do the statement, or, hey, listen, I know that your neck hurts, but you've had some pre-existing conditions, here's how you deal with the doctors, because you don't want to get too far down the road with a bunch of mistakes. Can you still get a recovery? Yes, but those little mistakes will kind of hammer it away at the best result possible.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  What should people understand about the relationship between them, the injured person, and their insurance company?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Well, if it's the injured person and their insurance company, that eventually, even if you go after what's underinsured, which is your insurance company. Originally, when you get in the wreck, you go after liability, the other person's coverage. But if you get to the point where you go after your coverage, your company that you paid monthly to protect you will hire a lawyer to go against you. So, they love you while you're paying, but they may not love you as much when they have to pay out.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  That makes a lot of sense. What's something insurance companies do that surprises people who've never been through a personal injury claim?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  I think people are surprised of where, well, I'm recently working on a case, and I'm surprised on how insurance companies will cut back and try to save a couple thousand dollars here or there when it's really not necessary. Thinking through it, though, I believe that insurance companies deal with large numbers. So, if they can cut back a couple hundred dollars on a car, which seems like nothing, but as I said, could affect somebody's livelihood, if that's how a million, 200 times a million is a lot of money. So, I think it's surprising on how they try to cut back on little things that you wouldn't think make a difference, but they do because it's all bottom line.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  How do you then determine what a case is, what you think a case is really worth?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Well, there's lots of different ways to determine what a case is worth, and a lot of times, it's what it's worth to that person at that time. If someone's in a hurry and has to get something done, then the worth of it is the amount of time and effort they let you put into it. So, I think you have to look at it in a bunch of different directions as to, if we go forward, and it's worth, it might be worth more, but the cost of getting there might not justify it in the end, or the people might lose more by waiting to get that extra money. So, I think worth is kind of determined with a bunch of other factors, and it can change day by day, honestly.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Is the amount of medical bills the same thing as the value of somebody's injury?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  No, the medical bills are kind of the baseline of where it should start. That is, they should at least cover your medical bills. Of course, that is governed by what the insurance company call full coverage. Full coverage is just the mandatory minimum that each person must have. In South Carolina, it's only 25 per person, 50 per accident. So, if you have $26,000 in medicals, you're already $1,000 behind, and then you'd have to go into your underinsured. So, no, they have to take into account lost wages, loss of enjoyment of life, consortium claims if you're married, but the bills are the baseline, in my opinion.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  What is the hardest part about representing someone whose life has been completely disrupted by an injury?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  I think it's that they don't understand the process. A lot of people get really upset when they get into litigation because they're having to answer questions on have they been arrested? Have they had any psychological counseling? How was your marriage? And they're thinking, well, I was hurt. I was ran over by a car. I was on my bike and did nothing wrong. So why am I answering all these questions? Well, I think people have to understand that the burden is on you to prove your injury. The person that ran you over has nothing to prove. They can sit there and say nothing. You may get no money. It is your burden and it's going to be a bit of work on your part, even though you're injured.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  I did not know that. What's a case that changed the way you look at the profession?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Well, I had a case one time where a lady was on a scooter. She was kind of known to the areas having some problems with drugs or alcohol. She coincidentally had in the back of her scooter, a six pack of beer and she was driving down the road, a semi illegally passed her and hit her. When they hit her, the beer exploded. So she smelled like beer. The police came instantly said, hey, you're at fault. Take her into the hospital. Give her a ticket for a DUI at the hospital. She was smart enough to call us right away. We investigated it. And while we were looking at pictures of the scene, we found a guy that had a name tag from a company that was doing landscaping. We contacted them and

• 10:49Speaker 02

  they were like, no, no, no, this lady was driving perfectly fine. The, they tried to illegally pass her. That's what caused the wreck. We then got her blood records right away because her injury was serious enough that they took her blood. No alcohol in her blood and it turned everything around where I think if no lawyer was involved, she would have got a DUI. She would have had nobody to help her fight it. She ended up having severe injuries to her leg and ended up losing the leg. None of those would have been able to be paid for. She'd have been in a terrible situation. And I think that's one of the ones that taught me, things aren't as they appear and everybody deserves an investigation into something like that.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Wow, that's incredible. What's the difference between winning a case and helping people?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Well, I guess, I guess everybody depends on the bottom line. So I guess winning a case in some points is making it proper so that you can help pay for your kids to go to school, pay your staff. But helping people may be totally different. Just getting a policy that's not big and getting the bills cut back. So they get something left in their pocket could be helping a person because often the bills come over the policy and there are more liens on the file than not. And so while you're not going to make a ton of money, while I would cut my bill back to make sure my clients get more than me, it's a lot of work for maybe not what covers the actual costs, but it's helping people get something in their pocket from a terrible event.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  How do clients find you?

• 12:18Speaker 02

  They can, well, now they can 866 Stewart. They can call. They can Google that. They can Google StewartLawOffices.net. Hopefully they can say, give me an attorney in Rock Hill and I will come up on AI. But that's something new that we're working on. So I'm not sure how that's even working yet or who's getting called. But Stewart Law Offices, I'm Brent Stewart. If you call and ask for me specifically, you can get me. So just reach out.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  You have built a multi-office firm while maintaining a family culture. What's your secret to doing both?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  I think that the difference is, I'm not saying I'm not going to change this right now, is we have staffed every office. We have people in every office and no one office is so big that people don't know each other. Everybody knows everybody. When you have five or six people in an office, they all have to talk because somebody has to go to lunch to keep the doors open. And it allows us to, if somebody's coming in late, somebody can come in early to balance it. So we work together, which makes us a family. And most of the people I hire are very thought, very thoughtful to helping people. They're not defense oriented. They don't want to work for the other side. They like what they're doing and they like helping people.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  You've helped so many people. What's your biggest challenge now?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Wow. My, my biggest challenge is figuring out how to go forward without losing the very basics that started the firm. I think that everything's turning into a Walmart now. Firms keep getting bigger and bigger. I'm not sure where that stops so that you can compete with the larger firms, because if you're too small, I think they can get rid of you. If you're too big, you lose the ability to help people without worrying about your bottom line. So I think my biggest problem is how to grow and remain relevant, but remain profitable enough to stay in business.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Brent, you've spent more than 30 years representing people at some of the worst moments in their lives. What have you learned about people and about yourself that you could never have learned from like a law book?

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Well, I think that most people aren't looking to get rich from these cases. And I think that the insurance companies have done a great job of getting out there and making people look like they're trying to get something for nothing. They've done a great job of making the attorneys look like we're greedy, when the bottom line is, we're just trying to help people. And they've done a great job of advertising and making us look bad. But I think what I've learned is most people just really want to get back on their feet. And if they really had a choice, they would rather not be injured than getting any amount of money.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Of course. Well, your passion is obvious. We greatly appreciate your time. We know it's very valuable. One more time for our folks watching or listening, who might be in the South Carolina area, where is the best place for them to go to learn more?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  www.stewartlawoffices.net. Pull up my webpage. You can see us. You can also Google 866 Stewart. That's a phone number that goes straight to the firm. And it also, we have 866stewart.com. So you can also Google that.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  All right. This has been Seth Green with Brent Stewart. Brent, thanks so much for joining us.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Thank you. I had a great time. I appreciate it.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Great interview. Thank you, everybody for watching or listening. We will talk to you or see you next time.

• 15:39Speaker 03

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