By Abigail Stanley

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the title of this blog is in reference to the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.

In the movie the four main characters are seeking out the great and powerful Oz to grant them wishes once they defeat the wicked witch: Dorothy needs help returning home to Kansas, the Tin Man desires a heart, the Lion, courage, and the Scarecrow, brains. After defeating the witch, the characters return to the great and powerful Oz to receive their wishes.

At this moment Dorothy’s dog, Toto, opens the curtain revealing just a common man who claimed to be a powerful wizard.

Today I am going to pull back the curtain for you.

For years I’ve watched nurses with far less experience and credibility claim to be the equivalent to the great and powerful Oz ready to grant nurses their wishes: leaving bedside nursing by finding great success working from home in the “easy” field of legal nurse consulting. And I’ve heard all sorts of horror stories.

These so called “great and powerful Oz’s” asking for THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of dollars in exchange for their wishes, pressuring nurses to take out loans, remortgage their homes, or take money out of their retirement accounts to pay for their mentorships and training programs.

I understand how hard it is to start out in legal nurse consulting because I’ve been there. I understand the appeal of turning your power over to a “wizard” who will grant you your wishes easily. But I’ve learned if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Before saying yes to a mentorship or training program, I urge you to:

1. Verify the owner is actually a Registered Nurse (another horror story, don’t ask).

2. Do a Google search – with the mentor’s name and/or training program with the word ‘review’ after it. If there are reviews out there, I urge you to sift through them. There will always be nurses out there saying “this program did nothing for me”…the truth with that statement is the business won’t work if you don’t. Keep sifting paying particular attention to the types of reviews showing the ethical nature of the mentorship or training program owner. There was one review I saw where the woman was so upset with her experience with a pretty popular program she bought a web domain just for her review!

3. Join various legal nurse groups online and ask your fellow LNC community about the mentor or training program you’re interested in. In these groups, be very wary of people that will only answer your questions through a private message. If they have something to say, why can’t the entire group know their answer? Could it be because their reputation precedes them?

4. Thoroughly review the mentor or training program’s website you’re interested in. What are the prices of their mentorship or training program? I personally would be very wary if the site does not list the exact price. Their goal is to get you on the phone and convince you as to why their expensive price tag is justified, with a “hard sell” tactic. Maybe their program is worth it. Maybe it isn’t. But do you really want to do business with someone that couldn’t be honest up front with their prices? Another horror story…I’ve seen people with fake PR articles online. These articles appear real, but they have NO AUTHOR. Don’t fall for this crap. And you must walk quickly away from guarantees! “You’ll leave bedside your first year making $250,000!” There are NO guarantees in this business. This is just another sales pitch…an unethical one at that!

5. Verify the person running the mentorship or training program CURRENTLY owns a legal nurse consulting company. I have been around long enough to see the legal industry change time and time again. If you are entering this arena now, don’t you want to know how to navigate the current arena you’re entering? It’s extremely important to learn from those who are both established in this industry and also currently running a legal nurse consulting company. 

Thoroughly review their personal legal nurse consulting company’s website. Do they have attorney testimonials listed on their website? This shows proof of their quality of work product. I’ve seen LNCs list attorney testimonials with “satisfied client” in place of the attorney’s name. Ask yourself, how much can you trust a person that doesn’t list names of their clients? Are these testimonials even real?  And if the attorney’s name is listed in a testimonial, Google the attorney. Is that attorney in a field of law that makes sense for an LNC to work in? (another horror story…word of advice – don’t use a family friend lawyer for a fake testimonial).

Ask them some very candid questions about their experience and credibility… 

- How long have you owned your own legal nursing business actively completing cases for law firms? This is a very different question than how long have you actively worked as a legal nurse consultant, as many LNCs subcontract for other LNCs. It's best to learn from LNCs that have learned the acquired skill of marketing to law firms for their own cases.

- How many attorney clients has their company worked with in total?

- How many cases has their company completed in total?

- Is their company national or local?

- How many nurse subcontractors have worked for them? Ask to speak
with one of their current or past nurse subcontractors. Get some feedback!

- Do they still work in the clinical setting in ANY capacity or is their legal
nursing business their full-time gig? If your goal is to leave bedside, and
they haven’t yet been able to do so, why are you asking for their advice to
something they haven’t been able to figure out for themselves?

At the conclusion of the movie, the Wizard of Oz presents the Tin Man with a clock, the Lion with medals, and the Scarecrow with a certificate. When it’s time to fulfill Dorothy’s wish of returning to Kansas, Oz fails, leaving Dorothy lost in the city of Oz. Down comes Glinda the good witch (in a bubble dog). Then comes one of the most powerful lines ever put into film,

“You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”

Now to pull back the curtain for you….

My goal with Legal Nurse Secrets is not to be your Oz, as there is no one that can grant you your wishes. My goal is to be your Glinda, showing you how powerful and capable you are.

You are a nurse!

Do you have any idea how powerful you are? You have knowledge (attorneys don’t have). And your incredible mind and compassion are both vitally needed in the legal industry.

My goal for Legal Nurse Secrets (alongside my co-founder, Catherine Spears, legal nurse legend!) is to share as many secrets as we can with legal nurses, giving back to the industry that’s given us so much.

In my previous blog “What Happens In Vegas…” I came up with my top 5 tips for in-person marketing at attorney conferences. These tips come after attending and exhibiting at over 50+ in person attorney conferences all across the country for the past 12+ years. While I will never claim to be the great and powerful Oz, I will continue to reveal all of the “legal nurse secrets” I’ve learned along the way…

Secrets I’ve learned:
-Working for the past decade+ in the ever-changing legal industry
-Completing over 25,000+ cases for some of the top plaintiff attorneys in the United States with expansion into Canada
-Running a 7+ figure legal nurse consulting company

I will teach you what to do and what NOT to do by sharing my legal nurse journey with you. The good, the bad, the ugly. My deepest hope is you can learn from both my successes and failures while finding true success far quicker than I was able to.

To continue the Wizard of Oz theme, I urge you to “follow your yellow brick road”, while remembering how powerful you are as you walk your path because I know for certain “dreams that you dare to dream really do come true”.