KING JAMES' VERSION: HEFTY MARKETING AND HEAVY VOLUME HAVE HELPED MAKE JAMES SCOTT FARRIN A LEADER AMONG NORTH CAROLINA PLAINTIFFS' LAWYERS.

• Author: Barkin, Dan

Anyone attending a Durham Bulls game in a recent summer couldn't miss the James Scott Farrin sign on the Diamond View II building overlooking the ballpark. Television watchers probably know the name also because he is the dominant personal injury advertiser across North Carolina. But the mere presence of a Farrin law firm in Durham--or anywhere--was improbable.

He was fired from his first job as a lawyer. Less than five years into his career, he almost talked himself into leaving the profession. Defending big-business clients didn't excite him.

In the mid-1990s, he discovered a passion for helping the proverbial "little guys" fight corporations and their insurance company allies. Then, he learned he had a flair for marketing and running a high-volume practice.

Jim Farrin and a paralegal morphed into the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin, a legal powerhouse that has recovered a billion dollars for 43,000 clients in 22 years, not counting the $1.25 billion settlement he helped secure for black farmers in a class-action lawsuit in 2010.

Beyond its brassy marketing, Farrin's key has been building an organized, technologically advanced system that manages personal injury, workers' compensation, eminent domain and other cases generated by hundreds of phone calls every week. In addition to his 46 lawyers, his team consists of 170 paralegals, intake specialists, investigators and other non-lawyers who manage the myriad tedious, critical tasks that convert cases to cash. He can take clients that other law firms pass on.

At many personal injury firms, paralegals and even lawyers take calls, interrupting their primary work. Farrin's intake department of 15 specialists works on an internally developed computer system that brings up a specific screen based on if it's a workers' comp or a personal injury phone number the client just saw on their TV screen in Charlotte or Greensboro.

"In general, lawyers are lousy businesspeople," says Don Beskind, a Duke University law professor who taught Farrin 30 years ago. "I think Jim is a businessperson who saw law as a business opportunity. I do think he respects the law and understands the law. But if that opportunity hadn't been available, he would have found something else. He's a hardworking, thoughtful, clever entrepreneur. I think his talent has been the management."

Farrin and a top executive, David Chamberlin, start every day poring over metrics generated by the firm's software: How many calls came in yesterday? How many calls turned into clients? How is business compared with a year ago?

The calls are broken down by market: How many from Charlotte? Are the phones ringing from Greenville?

"We run everything based on data," says Chamberlin, who joined in 2007 to handle human resources and administration. Back then, the firm had 88 employees, including about two dozen lawyers. After a couple of years, Farrin asked him to take over marketing. Chamberlin doesn't view himself as particularly creative, which suited Farrin. "He wanted someone analytical to watch over the data."

Farrin's firm ranks 23rd in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly's list of the top 30 law firms by number of lawyers. Nearly all the firms primarily represent corporate clients and have operated for decades. Farrin's firm dates to 1997, and he has to constantly bring in new clients. Most people don't get injured a lot. While Farrin owns most of the professional corporation, 14 other lawyers hold shares.

NO PLAN

Jim Farrin was born in 1962, the first of five children of Stanford University graduates James and Marianne Farrin. His father worked for Colgate-Palmolive Co. and other global brands, living in nine countries over 17 years. Farrin grew tired of the itinerant existence and spent his last two years of high school at his father's alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. At Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., he majored in philosophy and met his future wife, Bailey Johnston.

With no plans after graduation, Farrin waited tables in Greenwich, Conn., and later telemarketed beepers and...