CASE LOADED.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: Profile of law firm Crumley & Associates PC - Company Profile - Statistical Data Included

In Bob Crumley's firm, the law speaks volume.

Say you're driving to work in Greensboro. The car in front suddenly stops. The car behind doesn't. The impact whips your head back. The next afternoon you're in bed, neck braced, feeling lousy, flipping channels. Suddenly there's the neatly goateed Bob Crumley, staring earnestly at you through his glasses.

"If you've been hurt in an accident," he says, "we can help." Flip the channel, and there he is again. "Insurance adjusters aren't on your side. We can help you get the money you deserve."

Maybe you find this come-on crass. Maybe you won't call the 800-number on the screen. But plenty of other accident victims will. They call every time an ad runs, helps explain how Crumley got so big so fast. In just a decade, Crumley, 43, has grown his Asheboro firm, Crumley & Associates PC, into the largest personal-injury specialist in the Triad, with four offices, 13 lawyers, 62 staff members and some 1,200 active cases.

Crumley's success is matched by his cockiness. To other lawyers toiling in the field of small personal-injury cases, he offers only three choices: join him, copy him or get out of the way. "The lawyers who say that what we are doing is assembly-line law--God bless 'em. Their practices will be supplanted by guys like me someday."

He sees his tale as a triumph of business strategy over legal tradition. And he's taking it further than even iconoclasts such as Winston-Salem lawyer Michael Lewis -- the first personal-injury specialist to run television ads in the Triad -- are willing to consider. Crumley and Lewis agreed to merge their firms last year, but when Crumley took over operations and tried to ramp up growth, Lewis pulled out. Now they are preparing to compete head to head.

Crumley's ascent, some lawyers say, is a sign of where personal-injury law is headed. And a few dread the prospect. "One of the biggest complaints about the legal profession is whether it is any longer a profession," says Robert F. Baker of Spears Barnes Baker Wainio & Scruggs LLP in Durham. He is a past president of the North Carolina Bar Association and served on a bar committee that worked on early ground rules for lawyer advertising. "Crumley is a prime example of turning a profession into a business. ... To some lawyers, particularly the older ones, they still want it as a profession, not a business. But it is probably more of a business today, sadly."

To Crumley, the key is building volume, using mass marketing to generate cases and a production line to process the flow. Crumley rarely touches a case and hasn't seen a courtroom in two years. His lawyers carry about 100 cases each -- an impossibly heavy load in most firms. But they don't actually handle much of the work. They supervise teams of case workers, who do most tasks. A typical firm might have one or two support staff for every lawyer -- Crumley's runs about five to one. His goal is to create a far-reaching network of offices fed by his marketing machine, each one grinding out a steady stream of quick settlements of a few thousand dollars each, with the firm keeping a third.

In his quest to expand, Crumley last October persuaded Lewis to merge his older but slightly smaller firm, Winston-Salem based Lewis & Daggett Attorneys at Law PA, with his. Lewis became chairman, Crumley, CEO, with the headquarters in Greensboro under Crumley's control. The merger -- creating a firm with 19 lawyers, 48 case managers and 32 other staffers -- made Triad lawyers take notice. "It was a large event when they merged. Everybody paid attention," says Paul Coates of Pinto Coates Kyre & Brown PLLC...