How Fighting Insurance Companies Built a Trusted Law Firm

you need to have somebody like me on your side that knows what these guys do. They're their predators. I know all the dirty tactics that they use. Right? Well, forget, before I became a plane of attorney, I worked for the insurance companies. I know all their little things they do.

“I'm trying to make money and screw people over, right?”

Thankfully, I didn't work for them very long. I got a real bad taste in my mouth. Yeah. And realize that, you know what? This isn't the side that I want to be on. Christopher Burke is a dedicated, accomplished client-focused personal injury attorney, the founder of Burke injury lawyers, and a passionate advocate known for helping injury victims pursued justice while leading a firm built on integrity, compassion, and a family legacy of military

service in sacrifice. If you hire a lawyer, it shows that a lawyer can get you four to five times

what you can if you represent yourself. Yeah. Think about that for a second. Why is that?

It happens because the insurance companies are short-changing people that represent themselves. They're taking advantage of you. They take advantage of all these people. Oh, I'm so sorry. It was a bad crash. And I know you still have emergency room bills, but you're health insurance paid that. And, you know, here's a thousand bucks that we're real

“sorry. Wait a second. Hold on. Is this person healthy? Are they okay? Do they need more care?”

Medical bills, as we all know, ain't cheap anymore. It's not a thousand bucks. You know, this might be 10, 20, 30, a hundred thousand dollars, right? And insurance companies not going to tell you that. Hey, welcome everyone back to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host today, Jay Slyan. We have a really cool lawyer here in here today all the way from Las Vegas,

so he's joining us for a different kind of heat, but this is the lawyer that you want on your side.

Oh, always fighting for you. So introduce yourself with the name and tell us what's good.

Thanks, Jay. Christopher Burke. I own Burke injury lawyers. We're a personal injury law firm that litigates practices out of Nevada, Arizona, California, Hawaii, and recently Ohio.

“That's a lot of places. So you must have had to take in a lot of tests to get, you know,”

pass the bar in each of one of those states in my right. Interestingly, the first four, Nevada, Arizona, California, Nevada, Arizona, California, Hawaii, I had to take the bar exam in each one because really California is the one that doesn't accept reciprocity. So California doesn't like it when other lawyers like try to come practice in their state. Okay. So they don't give you reciprocity whereas they make you actually take the bar exam. So because of that, Nevada's like, well,

fine, dude, then same with us. Then we're not going to do it either. And then Arizona's like, yes, I mean, then Hawaii's like screw all you. Like you guys can take our exam, too. Yeah. So it's funny, right? Like most of the country is like they have what Ohio has, which is you can motion in. You have them do a background check on you five years in good standing, give the Supreme Court or the state bar, the new entrance check, and then you're in.

But not the the first four. But most lawyers don't want to do that. They maybe take one and then

they're one and done, right? So you'd do it four times. Lawyers hate the bar exam. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Not fun at all. If you would have told me when I started law school that I'd take four bar exams, yeah, I'd been like, you're crazy, dude. Yeah. But life has a funny way of working out. And you know what the end of the day? I have to say, kind of like a challenge. And why why did you jump over the pond all the way to Hawaii? Like that's that seems like, you know, why did you go over

there and do it? So that's actually a really interesting story. It had nothing to do with personal injury. Actually, it was a few years ago, I was helping people get out of time shares, right? That's a it's a big industry in the US. And a company that I was working for wanted me to help their Hawaii clients. We didn't have anybody in the firm, right? We had a few of us lawyers, but nobody was licensed out there. So I raised my hand. I said, you know what, I'll take another bar exam. Yeah.

So I have to say, though, it's, you know, if you're going to take a bar exam, do it in Honolulu. Yeah. Right? That was great. One thing that I, because we just finished filming the episode, and it was really, it was really touching, right, on so many different levels. But one thing

And so tell us about why is it fight for the little guy that I come? Well, when I, when I started out, when I, when I became an entrepreneur and went off on my own, I was trying to think of, you know, what's a catchy name? Yeah. What's going to get people? I couldn't come up with anything, right? And, you know, my wife, God lover, she's like, you know, just think of something that is the true you, like how you, like, you know, people are going to remember if it's you. So I started

“to think and I'm like, okay. And I'm like, what do I want to do? I'm like, you know what?”

I want to fight for the little guy. I've always wanted to fight for the little guy. I'll do that.

Yeah. Right? Fight for the little guy.com. And I looked it up and nobody had it. And I'm like, okay, this is perfect. Yeah. So in it embodies what we do and it kind of is, you know, one of our core values and one of our, you know, mission statements that we have. So it works on so many levels. You're based out of Vegas. Vegas seems like the land of injury lawyer billboards, right? You can't, you kind of can't escape them. And I guess for worse, right? The TV show,

better call Saul, right? He's an injury lawyer also. He got up there in the Saul good man, right? Right. With that whole kind of injury lawyer. And sometimes injury lawyers, they'll get a bad rap, right? But also when you're in a situation where, you know, something happens, you want the injury lawyers to be fighting for you and have that guy in your ring, right? Fighting against these insurance

“companies because it's, it's honestly the insurance companies are supposed to be the ones protecting”

you, but it seems like, you know, they're the ones trying to just protect themselves, right? And fight for themselves to hold back every penny that they can, you know? I know I covered a lot of points there, but talk to us about kind of the injury lawyer, how, how they're seen and the injury lawyer that we all want to be fighting for us. Every state's a little bit different on how they handle commercial speech, right? So other states may not allow so many billboards, but they may let the

lawyers direct solicit you after a crash, right? Your phones get ringing off the hook, you're getting males, like letters, all these things, hey, hire us, Nevada doesn't let you direct solicit,

but they do let you do billboards. So I always say like, what's your preference, right?

Would you rather just see a billboard when you're driving to work or when you'd rather have some law firm calling you or mailing you crap, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, the insurance companies and all of this, I think people forget. They have so many lawyers that work for them. I mean, you're talking crazy numbers. These are billion dollar companies, you know, and they're getting, you know, record profits, right? And that people still focus on who the guys that

that represent a little guy, right? Like, you know, we're not like some part of big corporate machine or something like that. Like, we're here, the people that do what I do, put out a shingle that are trying to get their clients justice. We represent individuals, individual cases, and we truly suggest this. The insurance companies, they're not seeking justice. They're trying

to save the bottom line, baby. Right? You're trying to make sure that the adjusters get the right

bonuses. If you hire a lawyer, it shows that, you know, a lawyer can get you four to five times what you can if you represent yourself. Yeah. Think about that for a second. Why is that? It happens because the insurance companies are short-changing people that represent themselves. They're taking advantage of you. Yeah. They take advantage of all these people. Oh, I'm so sorry. It was a bad crash. And I know you still have, you know, emergency room bills,

but you're health insurance paid that. And, you know, here's a thousand bucks. We're real sorry. Well, wait a second. Hold on. Is this person healthy? Are they okay? Do they need more care? Yeah. Do they got forbid? Do they need surgery? Do they need pain management? Like, you start racking it up, but it's like, okay, man, you know, medical, medical bills, as we all know ain't cheap anymore. It's not a thousand bucks. You know, it's, this might be 10,

20, 30, a hundred thousand dollars, right? And insurance companies not going to tell you that. Yeah. The insurance company, they're whole business model. Take premiums in from people. Pay claims out. Yeah. If they can make more money on the premium side, then what they pay out, that's their profit. Of course. If their whole business model is essentially predicated upon

“screwing people, you need to have somebody like me on your side that knows what these guys do.”

Yeah. They're predators. You're like the real Mr. Incredible, right? I don't know if you saw the Incredibles, but after he's not a superhero, he's actually working for an insurance company. And then on the side, he tells the people, actually, the way that you can get more money from the insurance company is this, this and that, which they didn't tell you, you know, and then eventually he gets fired from the insurance company, because they're telling everyone how to get money, right?

you're, you're leveling the playing field. Yeah. So the real Mr. Incredible in this story is

“is you fighting for the little guy. Why know their tricks? Yeah. I know all the dirty tactics that”

they use, right? Well, forget, before I became a plane of attorney, I worked for the insurance companies. I know all their little little things they do. You try to make money and screw people over, right? Thankfully, I didn't work for them very long. I got a real bad taste in my mouth. Yeah. And realize that, you know what? This isn't the side that I want to be on. I want to be on the side of good. I want to be on the side that helps people and I want to be on the side that makes

people hold. Many times the little guy, right? The average, the average person that gets injured or something happens, they don't know where to start, right? Because when we think lawyers, it's like, oh, my God, $1,000 per hour. Are you working on contingency a lot, then? How does your business

model work with that? I only work on contingency. All right. You never pay me anything out of your pocket

to begin with. Yeah. But you touched on something. I want to focus on is what happens right after an incident, right? Whether it's a car crash, whether you fall on a business, or whatever it is, you know, one of the best assets we have right now is that these stupid electronic things, right? These phones, right? But now they have amazing cameras on them. Hold that baby out. Start taking photos of the crash scene of your car, the other car. If you fall in and you're hurting

and you fell because an employee left a spill that didn't have a yellow sign up. Yeah. I know it's sucks and you're in a lot of pain or give your phone to your wife or somebody have them take photos

“of the scene. Yeah. All that's going to preserve what's going on. I'll tell you why it's important.”

If you fall like a business, a store, those guys are going to clean the scene up, put the yellow sign out, and then take photos. Yeah. It's one of the things they do. Don't let them do that. You got to be smarter, right? At the end of the day, I know it's it sounds dirty and underhanded, but this is what people do nowadays. So I guess your top tips would be filmed and document. Oh, right. Document everything. Yeah. And then also probably install one of those cameras

on your dashboard cams, right? Dashboard cams. Like I'm sure that would have solved a lot of headaches that you had, right? If they just had that dashboard cam. You did funny you mentioned that. I literally like, not this past Christmas, but two Christmas is ago. I gave my family members dash cams. I was like, you know what? I'm like, at the end of the day, it's probably better than, you know,

some sweater they're never going to wear. Yeah. But it's it's so easy. Those dash cams now,

you just put them in, plug them in, and you're good to go. It's a dash cam today, but when you need it, it could be a million dollars tomorrow. You know, so I just gave you a million bucks. Don't think of it as a dash cam. Absolutely. And also think of it this way, too. If someone tries to make a claim that's not truthful, right? If they try to say an accident was your fault, but it isn't. Yeah. Dash cam helps you right there. So you may not get a million bucks off the

dash cam, but you may save it from somebody making a claim against you. Yeah. So I highly recommend that. So are those like the car jumpers or would it like, does that exist a lot? Because you

“only see that in the movies? Like, oh, my neck, my back. Doing this for 22 years, I think that most of”

the time people have legitimate injuries and claims. You're always going to have some, you know,

scumbag, it's going to abuse the process and, you know, do whatever. But honestly, like my clients, we put them through a pretty rigorous intake, so we can kind of sniff out the ones that are really not hurt or like are trying to make a claim and abuse the system. But those people are are very few and far between. A lot of times in injury, injury lawyers, right? They'll talk to you, they'll sniff out your case and then they'll be like, ah, we can't get

enough money from this case, you know, you're not for us, right? You know, and that's the little guy problem. Talk to us about about that and the problem with that. Well, I would say this, right, is that, you know, generally speaking, if anybody was the victim of negligence, right, where somebody was hit by another driver that, and it was the other drivers fault or, or they have another type of injury claim where they, where they actually have an injury, right? The hardest claims that I have to

turn down that I feel very bad and this just happened to me the other week is somebody kind of got screwed on a car crash where it wasn't their fault and the police report wasn't really well documented, but he told me the story and I'm like, oh, that's clearly not your fault, but he wasn't hurt and he's like, well, it goes, well, maybe I should just make a claim just, you know, just so I can have you as my lawyer and I said, well, don't do that. I mean, I mean, like,

we're not going to, we're not going to make up stuff, right? We don't do that, but I felt bad for the guy because he felt like he was getting to a situation where he couldn't find an attorney to help him because there wasn't any money in it, right? And then at the end of the day, I kind of see both sides because lawyers have, we only have 40 day work week. I mean, come on, if you're, if you're an entrepreneur,

only have so many hours and those hours that you work, you have to be making a profit. You have to

making cases that actually make money for your firm. So don't get me wrong. I wish there was a way that we could figure out how to help people that had property damage claims where they could still have access to good lawyers and, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe that's something where we could get law students involved for like an internship or something or yeah, I don't know, but it just seems to me like, you know, whenever there's a case where the insurance can save money,

they will. Yeah. And it's, it's often to the detriment of the little guy. Now you said something that a lot of lawyers would think, oh my god, no way, right? But you're talking about, you know, all of your clients get your phone number and then they get time to actually have access to you, right? Yeah. A lot of lawyers would think you're crazy. No, I know, and you know what, when we were doing the segment earlier, I was actually getting a text message from one of my clients. He's a,

he's a Vietnam Warvat. He lives in the middle of the desert outside of King Minerazona and he's having a real hard time because he needs physical therapy. And I felt bad because I knew I had to, you know, work with you to get a done, but, you know, he's somebody that, you know, he doesn't have family and he needs, he's depending on me. So whenever we took a break, I'm like, you know what, I got to help him because at the end of the day, nobody else is going to help him. And luckily with

my staff, we were able to find somebody. Yeah. Even even in rural Arizona, we were able to find a physical therapist that was, was good. It was going to help this, this vet out. And, you know, those moments like that, you know, it really feels good, but it's just, it goes to show you, right? Like anybody can be a victim in this case. And you know what, when, when you're the person that the back pain doesn't stop, right? The shoulder pain doesn't stop. And the insurance

company's like, oh, you weren't hurt that bad. It wasn't that bad of a crash. Yeah. When that's you, or your family, or your loved one, your grandma, you get pissed off, right? Because they're like, they're saying, you're lying. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's BS. Like at the end of the day, if you're the victim of, because someone else was, you know, you know, how it is nowadays in 2026,

“I think most of these crashes happen because people are on their phones. I think they're”

texting. I think they're face-booking. I think they're, uh, Instagramming. I think they're doing whatever they're doing, but they're not watching the road, right? And, you know, now we're getting into technology that's pretty cool. We can actually download the person's phone and find out what they were doing at the time of the crash. If you know when the crash happened, right? Yeah.

And go back and you can try and figure out, now it's not always applicable in every case, but,

you know, as we get over, we we get more and more, you know, advanced in technology, this stuff is opening up. And hopefully, we can get to a point where people just put the damn phones down and like, I saw that you've got some kids, right? Yeah, teenager boys. Are they of driving ages? No. No, the oldest ones, 14, um, the younger ones, 12. So I got a couple of years. We, in fact, we were, my older one, we were just talking about that as we were on the way to the

studio over here today. And I was like, you know, when you're 16, my insurance is going to skyrocket because why would my, why would your insurance skyrocket for me? And I'm like, well, because you're a new driver son and, you know, you guys are the worst drivers. Yeah, yeah. He didn't understand that. And he's like, I'm not me dad. I'm, I'm going to be a good driver. I'm like, well, that may be so.

“And I hope it is the case. But, um, the insurance companies don't look at it. Like, yeah, honestly,”

in two years, the waste stuff is going, you know, they're probably maybe now want to drive because they'll be like, Dad, I'm driving. That's like the old school way. I'm just going to have my autonomous driver, right? That's going to be the old school way, right? You know, it's funny. We were on the way over here. And I saw a down in the, down in the, some of the roads in here in South Beach that there's, uh, there's Waymo's. Oh, there's all over the place. Yeah,

it's crazy. I know in Vegas, we have the, what's it called? Zook? Zooks? Yep. Yeah. Right. Is that Amazon cars? I forget. I don't know. But on the website, the prototype Zook cars, then pretty fly, man. That kind of cool. I went in one with my son, my younger son, the other day because we went down, um, we went down to the, to the Las Vegas trip as a local. I rarely ever go to the Las Vegas trip. I understand. But we went down. He wanted to see some Avengers

thing or something. And so we're down there and we're walking around and he goes, Dad, can we get a Zook? I'm like, sure. So I downloaded the app. We got the Zook and I have to admit, it was,

“it was pretty interesting. I think the, the little Zook voice talks to you and, and then it's”

it's, it's seemingly very careful, although as a lawyer, I get worried that it's going to drill

somebody. Well, yeah, if you haven't had your first autonomous car accident yet, right? Because,

you know, in the future, they're like, I don't want to drive, right? I just want to be scrolling on my phone talking to my friends, right? You know, that's, you know, who knows how to drive stick these days, right? Like, I saw, uh, there was someone, a video at a gas station where these kids were trying to steal a car. They went into the car and then they realized it was stick and

Even though that you're right, that, you know, the driverless car thing and then, you know, you've dipped a stick shift. What is that? But all these kids nowadays, man, they, they want an e-scooter or they want an e-bike. And you know, it's funny. I noticed when I was down here, um, in South Beach, I don't know if you guys have a log in, or something, but I don't see a lot of e-scooters or e-bikes

“that you can rent like live. Yeah, no, they don't have the rental lines. They banned those, right?”

Oh wow. But personal ones, right? E-bikes, e-scooters, e-scoot, they're all over the place, right? So the law is, if it's under a 750 watt motor, then it's classified as a bike, right? Because 750 watt motor is can only go up to a maximum speed, I believe, of like 22 miles per hour. Is that why there's all the city bikes? Is that what those are? City bikes? Uh, those aren't e-bikes. I don't know if those are just bikes.

Those are just bikes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, either way, if you're going to, if you're going to get on e-scooters, you're going to get an e-bike, whatever, where are helmet? I mean, out, please, everybody out there like, God, like, you know, because at the end of the day, when you have a car versus e-scooter, or car versus e-bike, car wins every time. Every time. Every time. Like, the e-scooters not going to win. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Protect that one brain. Have you seen a rise in

e-scooter accident? Oh, yeah. Over there. Oh, man, I've had to say it, but check out, you know, your social media, your local news, it seems like every day. Yeah. In a big metropolitan area, there's awful stories about kids getting hurt catastrophically or killed. Hmm. So, I mean, and you know what? Maybe Mike, you know, like my son, the 14-year-old, because he really wants an e-bike, right? And I said, buddy, it's not that I don't trust you. It's the other drivers.

What in Vegas, it's insane. Because I, I, I, I used to be no man, and I'm e-biking, actually,

all over the place. I've never had a car since high school. Wow. Either living in very

metropolitan places where I can walk down the street, get groceries, or I'm doing everything by e-bike, right? And it's so convenient. And people think, oh, I need a car for this. I need a car for that, but you, you really don't, right? And I get why your kids would want the e-bike, but in Vegas, right? Yeah. Yeah. The driving over there is completely different. The roads are

“completely different. That was actually the worst place I've ever been to e-bike, you know?”

Yeah. Because of the roads and the drivers, right? Yeah. Here in South Beach, it's completely different, right? It's way more chill and relaxed, right? A little bit different over the, over the water in like, brickle area. It's a little bit more hectic, right? But yeah, I could see how in Vegas, a lot of scooter accidents, right? Because it's, it's crazy over there. Well, don't forget, you know, in Vegas, you're talking about basically a 24 hour city. Yep. And you're talking

about people are on the road at all times, whether it's tourists, whether it's locals that are going to work as a member, if you're a local, you could work down the strip in any one of those places. And you could be morning shift, you could be swing shift, you could be graveyard,

you're constantly going. People are always partying. There's a tremendous, I, I sadly, a

tremendous number of, of intoxicated drivers. We also have a bunch of tourists, drivers, right? Yeah. On Rental cars. And they may not know all of our traffic laws and ordinances. Yeah. There's also people that are driving from the strip, all either on the 15 right there. It's right by the airport, the Las Vegas strip, which is just madness when it comes to vehicles. And then people going either out towards the dams or they're going out near Henderson and Boulder City,

to go see the Hoover Dam, or they're going out in Summerland, right? For sports contests, soccer, hockey, red rock canyon. I mean, it's, it's all times of the day. So you have this in people forget Vegas is a valley, right? It's one big valley, mountains on every side. And then you have all

“these grid, the grid is great for, you know, it's actually really intelligently designed, I think.”

And we actually have an outer belt that works on, on, on many levels. Yeah. But when you have that many people, that many tourists, that many, you know, drivers, it's just, it's really, it strains the system, and you have tons of accidents. Well, let's bring it back to you. What was the thing that you're most excited about in terms of your firm? You know, I mean, recently we just tapped into the Ohio markets. That'll be our new state. What about AI also? Are you utilizing AI?

At all. I mean, other than what we did previously, right, which was like kind of, you know, did the, the Google AI a little bit, chat, GPT for a little bit of just, you know, research and to stuff. You know, there's a lot of lawyers to get in trouble for using it, and they have

the site's fake cases. We've never done that. I will never do that. Yeah. But we just switched

over to our client management software system that incorporates that has an AI component to it. And we can ask our AI component on our client management software like, hey, for all the medical records for Bob Smith from 2022 to 2026. Look at all the records. Are we missing any medical bills

bills were missing, so that we always have complete demands. How do actually we know how people can

“find you? Yeah. Fight for the little guy dot com, right? Right. We have two websites. You have”

fight for the little guy dot com. And you're going to love this one. Better call Burke.

Hey. Yeah. Right. It's all Burke, man. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for

“joining us here in South Beach. And thank you guys for joining us again. And we can't wait for”

the next episode. But I also can't wait for your episode because we've touched on a lot of good

stuff. Your story of growing up. Your inspiration for why you became a lawyer and everything just

“so interested in exciting. So yeah, tune into the episode. And thanks again. So cheers guys.”

Thanks everybody.