Dillon M. White, Messerli Kramer

Dillon White didn’t set out to be an influencer, or to use his social media platforms to help his clients and his law firm, but he’s taking full advantage of it.

In 2020, White and his wife were coaching the Woodbury High School speech and debate team when he bet a student he could get more followers than her in 30 days if she’d leave her phone and get back to practice for a competition.

“By day 29, I had a video that went viral with 20 million views,” said the Messerli Kramer attorney and director of business development.

Leaning into social media reawakened the creative side of White, a Northwestern University journalism graduate, who before becoming a lawyer owned a marketing firm and spent several years as a screenwriter.

Today, “DadChats” has more than six million followers across platforms. White primarily posts about his family, but when the need arises, he also posts about work. That’s how his biggest case to date came about.

A New York firm he was working with on another case clued him into a growing mass tort action against Pfizer regarding brain tumors and the birth control Depo-Provera, and he felt he could help spread the word with a post about it. One video and 24 hours later, White heard from more than 150 women who had been affected.

White contacted his longtime friend Paul Dworak of Storms Dworak LLC to see if he’d be interested in working together. They now have one of the largest numbers of filed cases in the MDL in the country.

As for the use of social media in law? White knows it’s the future – the firm’s new location will feature a YouTube and podcast studio – and he is grateful the firm’s leadership trusts him to lead the way using new marketing tools.

“I think they know that if we don’t do it, someone else will,” he said. “In 5-8 years someone will be doing it better than I am.”

White thinks the key to his success is that he isn’t doing it to find clients. He primarily does it to entertain, but for many people without access to a trusted lawyer, he’s the first person they contact for help.