The 2024 Game Changers Summit has become known as a large-scale celebration of the accomplishments of the nation’s top law firm owners.

For the second consecutive year, Michael and Jessica Mogill took the stage throughout the two-day Summit to recognize the most committed Crisp Coach members for their incredible transformations and contributions this year.

Winners of these carefully vetted, highly prestigious Crisp Game Changer Awards at each level (ELITE, PREMIER, SELECT, and CrispX) were determined based on the factors that impact a successful business, an influential leader, and a true Firm of the Year: Visionary Leadership, Client Experience, Community Impact, and Firm Culture.

Although competition was fierce, one firm stood out in all four key areas and truly earned the title of CrispX Firm of the Year: Eric Chaffin and Roopal Luhana of Chaffin Luhana!

Meet Eric Chaffin & Roopal Luhana

Eric Chaffin‘s motivation to fight injustices was shaped from trauma at a young age.

At just five years old, Eric endured abuse that left him feeling powerless. “I felt helpless… It was only 7 years later when I was age 12, with the help of no one, that I spoke up and stopped the abuse. I carried it as a secret, until I was in my 40s, just before we joined Crisp.”

Driven by his deep-seated sense of justice born out of trauma, Eric pursued a career in law and has spent his life and career committed to correcting injustices and ensuring his clients feel seen, heard, and protected.

His early days as a federal prosecutor and then becoming a plaintiff lawyer were driven by this sense of justice, as was the pivotal decision to start his own firm with Roopal Luhana in 2009. To this day, Eric’s deep commitment to his mission is why Chaffin Luhana remains dedicated to representing survivors in both individual and industry-impacting litigations.

“Our guiding ethos, since the inception of our firm,” he shares, “is Doing Good by Doing Right.”

For Roopal Luhana, her upbringing and faith are at the core of who she is.

Raised in the Hindu faith, Roopal’s life has been deeply shaped by the values and principles instilled in her from an early age, providing a constant foundation for her journey.

“Hinduism focuses heavily on duty and dharma (your morality),” she explains. “Dharma is the universal law of righteousness: the path you take, how you’re going to live, and the rules for how you’re going to live your life.”

Roopal’s parents emphasized duty and dharma throughout her life, teaching her “to be good and do good in the world.”

“I think all children look for approval and positive acknowledgement from their parents,” Roopal reflects. “Anytime I did something good, like help a neighbor with groceries or show someone an act of kindness, my mom would recognize the effort, the goodness and praise me…which made me want to do it even more.”

This sense of doing good and right fed Roopal’s passion for fairness and justice.

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been driven to stand for what’s right and against those who cheated, abused, and wronged others,” she says. “Being a plaintiffs’ lawyer gives me the ability to live my dharma.”

Eric and Roopal left their prior firm to start their own because they recognized that it was not aligned with who they were as people and how they wanted to practice law: by Doing Good by Doing Right.

“Frankly, it’s the only way we know how to practice law: with intentionality, purpose, and for the greater good,” says Roopal. “We started our firm because we wanted to practice and work with folks where we did things the right way and consistent with our moral compass…Every day we work to create a level playing field, right wrongs, and seek justice and closure for our clients. We fight to hold wrongdoers accountable and create true corporate reform.”

Chaffin Luhana: A Year in Review

As founding members of the CrispX group, Eric and Roopal have amassed many applied tools and strategies from the membership that have shaped their firm today. In 2024, Chaffin Luhana has had a record year, generating notable growth in revenue, average case value, and PI case volume (including expanding into a few new markets) and even being named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies in the country this year.

Let’s look at the highlights that contributed to these accomplishments and earned Chaffin Luhana the CrispX Firm of the Year Award.

Visionary Leadership at Chaffin Luhana

Eric and Roopal have grown exponentially as leaders, and they credit Crisp as a powerful catalyst on that journey.

“We have learned so much from Crisp about leadership,” they say. “We learned, for example, that an effective and executable vision must be more than a paragraph supported by numerical targets. The vision is the true north of where we are taking the firm. The numbers are there to guide us and help us stay on track. The critical part of the vision is having a communicable story and plan of execution the entire firm can understand and embrace.”

As Chaffin Luhana has grown, the need for leadership structure beyond the two of them became abundantly clear to Eric and Roopal.

“To grow the practice and achieve our vision, we realized we could not do it alone. We also recognized that simply adding more people to manage was not scalable. We needed a competent, dependable leadership team, from top to bottom, capable of making sound decisions and running the business at all levels independently,” they elaborate. “It was essential for leaders to understand the vision, know how they and their teams support it, and be able to execute it effectively.”

The most difficult aspects of building a leadership team, according to the pair, is first hiring the right leaders, then taking a group of those capable leaders, each with their own distinct strengths, weaknesses, and styles, and melding them together into a cohesive and effective unit.

Combining Crisp systems and methodologies with unique assessments and questionnaires they developed themselves, Eric and Roopal developed a hiring funnel designed to bring in the right types of leaders for the team they strove to build. They then leveraged the expertise of those leaders to implement structured training programs for all levels of management within the firm.

“Our leadership training curriculum, managed by our Operations Manager and Professional Development Specialist, includes training on the various assessments, interviewing skills, how to train, and how to coach team members,” they explain. “We also have senior leaders coach and mentor more junior leaders and each other. This results in a structured, consistent, yet personalized leadership development experience.”

Chaffin Luhana is now led by a full C-suite leadership team and an incredible team blending backgrounds from legal services, hospitality, sales, and technology.

“We have legal expertise and business expertise where it is most needed and most effective,” report Eric and Roopal. “The response has been positive. Engagement is high and we can not only help individuals understand what we do, but why we do it. Team and department leads can better balance the legal and business decisions to optimize outcomes for our clients and the firm.”

Next, bridging any communication gaps between their top-level vision and the team they’ve assembled to help execute it has also been instrumental to Chaffin Luhana’s success.

The firm conducts annual and quarterly strategy planning meetings to ensure the whole leadership team is on the same page and the organization remains on track toward the defined vision and desired outcomes. Additional touchpoints are achieved at weekly leadership meetings to track, discuss, and adjust strategies as needed — and the alignment only trickles down from there.

“We come away from these meetings with a confirmed, or modified, plan of execution to keep us headed in the right direction,” explain Eric and Roopal. “The results of these meetings are shared with the entire firm during our quarterly State of the Firm meetings as well as cascading meetings and assignments throughout the organization.”

With clarity and commitment, the pair have set their firm’s leadership team up for success with support from their CrispX membership.

“Much of the leadership training we received at Crisp has cascaded across our teams,” they share. “We committed to developing a structure that leveraged each leader’s strengths and skills to drive personal and professional success for the leader and for the team.”

Client Experience at Chaffin Luhana

Eric and Roopal’s top priority has always been to deliver a 5-star client experience, emphasizing personal connection and effective communication.

“In the past, we have faced significant challenges in developing a personal connection with clients, particularly as the world shifted towards remote interactions, a trend accelerated by the pandemic,” Eric and Roopal reflect. “Physical distance has made it harder to build trust and rapport, which is crucial when clients are navigating unfamiliar processes like filing a claim.”

To bridge those gaps, Chaffin Luhana has adopted advanced tech tools, including AI-produced personalized client videos, dedicated Salesforce developers and administrators to build automated workflows, and other initiatives to reduce manual tasks and free up the team to focus on providing world-class service and a one-on-one level.

Working directly with Crisp as well as the introduction to Joey Coleman through their CrispX membership provided has opened Eric and Roopal’s eyes to new ways of understanding their clients’ experience at every stage of their claim.

“Through [Joey’s] insights, we were able to identify critical points where clients need additional support,” say Eric and Roopal. “We recognized that by proactively addressing these moments, we could significantly improve the client’s confidence and comfort with the process.”

To achieve this, the firm implemented several communication strategies and tailored resources to keep their clients informed and reassured throughout their journey, knowing exactly what to expect as they progress through the Chaffin Luhana process.

The pair has also learned the importance of differentiating themselves from the competition and the value of creating a personal connection with their clients. They have implemented personalized touchpoints throughout their client journey and even after settlement to set themselves apart, and their clients are grateful, consistently expressing how valued and appreciated they feel, rather than just another case.

“We want each client to feel like a VIP…and we understand that small gestures can make a significant impact,” say Eric and Roopal. “These efforts have helped us create a unique and memorable client experience that sets us apart and shows our clients that we genuinely care about them.”

Community Impact at Chaffin Luhana

Being a positive presence in the community has always been important to Chaffin Luhana, as they have lived by their ethos of Doing Good by Doing Right since day one. However, since joining Crisp, the firm has not only expanded their community initiatives, but also leaned into their powerful mission both in their actions and in their advertising. After all, those values are Chaffin Luhana’s brand.

“Two significant community initiatives we did because of Crisp include our 10,000 Sandwiches drive during the pandemic and partnering with Steelers Running Back Najee Harris,” Eric and Roopal share.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the duo saw a pressing need in the Pittsburgh community. At the same time, Crisp Founder & CEO Michael Mogill was stepping up in big ways to support the Crisp community and encourage firm owners to show up with strength during uncertain times.

“We were inspired by the leadership and resiliency that Michael Mogill showed, and once we made sure our firm and team were taken care of, we shifted to helping our community,” Eric and Roopal explain. “Over a short period, we organized with a local news radio announcer and bakery in Pittsburgh and a deli meat producer in NYC, and organized an event that included social distancing to give away 10,000 sandwiches to the elderly, children, and others in need in Pittsburgh.”

But Chaffin Luhana Foundation’s work doesn’t stop there. The organization also hosts turkey giveaways in their community every Thanksgiving season, sponsors scholarships for students in the Greater Pittsburgh Area, and many other initiatives.

“We wanted to have greater impact and drive greater awareness,” Eric and Roopal continue. “Through CrispX, we learned how to work with a sports agent to partner with NFL players. We were able to develop a relationship between the Chaffin Luhana Foundation and Najee Harris, which entailed Harris participating in the giveaways and helping us promote the Foundation work. As a result, we drove more media attention, awareness, and support for our causes and the communities than ever before.”

Chaffin Luhana’s community work leads and inspires the people they serve, shining as a beacon of hope and a testament to the goodness impacting our society, even during dark times.

“We previously lacked the ambition to support initiatives like 10,000 Sandwiches on a large scale,” Eric and Roopal admit. “Crisp inspired us to think bigger and take on such impactful projects.”

Firm Culture at Chaffin Luhana

The leaders of Chaffin Luhana understand that their firm can only grow if the team driving it grows as well.

“Our strength lies in our team, and as a human capital firm, it is our greatest resource for supporting our clients and achieving a positive impact for them,” they say. “Culture we know drives performance and success, and from Crisp we have learned to focus on hiring, training, and developing high-growth mindset team members across our organization.”

Recognizing that the people they bring in through hiring are the ones who will participate in and shape Chaffin Luhana’s culture, Eric and Roopal have invested heavily in implementing strategies and concepts learned through their CrispX membership.

“Over the past 12 months, we’ve leveraged our Crisp involvement to significantly enhance our firm culture,” they explain. “A major focus has been revamping our hiring practices by adapting the Crisp hiring funnel to our specific needs. We hired a recruiter and trained our team leads to hire based on our core values, coaching them on effective interviewing techniques and the use of high-growth questions. This comprehensive approach not only improves our candidate selection but also gives potential hires insight into our culture from the start.”

Their efforts have been so successful that both partners have even taken the stage at Crisp HQ to lead hands-on Intensives to teach these methods to other Crisp Coach members of all levels.

Eric and Roopal have taken the cultural investment several steps further than the recruiting stage, developing a standardized, structured onboarding program for all new hires.

“Our firm’s culture is one of our greatest strengths, but maintaining a collaborative environment becomes more challenging when expansion happens quickly and can lead to a sense of detachment,” they say. “That’s why all team members, at every level, spend their first week with our Professional Development Specialist, diving deep into our mission, values, culture, and goals as a firm, in addition to their role-specific training. We’ve found this to be a truly effective tool in fostering a sense of culture, ownership of the mission, and ensuring we’re all rowing in the same direction, even as our team expands across the country.”

Even once those new A-players are hired and onboarded effectively, Chaffin Luhana continues to invest in their growth and development. The firm also intentionally sets each team member up for success with clear expectations and measures of how they each make a tangible impact — all in congruence with the firm’s ethos of Doing Good by Doing Right.

“Attendance at Crisp Intensives and workshops taught us how to correctly identify, define, and implement meaningful key performance indicators and scorecards,” Eric and Roopal report. “Leveraging tools from our Crisp experience, we’ve fostered a culture and organization that embraces metrics and data. We like to say we are driven by our passion to help our clients, but guided by our data so we can do it more effectively on their behalf.”

Further, investments in growth and development at Chaffin Luhana come in many forms, from firm-led initiatives unique to each department, to sponsoring attendance at industry events and training opportunities, to leaning on the expertise of numerous resources available only as part of the Crisp ecosystem.

“Our team members’ experiences with Crisp have been inspirational, leading to increased enthusiasm and knowledge-sharing within the organization,” Eric and Roopal elaborate. “This ongoing education helps maintain a dynamic and growth-oriented culture and allows us to focus on continuous learning and improvement.”

These combined efforts have strengthened Chaffin Luhana’s firm culture in immeasurable ways. They have standardized and improved their hiring processes to attract only the best, enhanced the professional growth of their team members, and ultimately are developing a deeply engaged, skilled, and aligned workforce to carry out their mission.

Final Thoughts from Chaffin Luhana

As is often the case with truly life-changing partnerships, Chaffin Luhana’s involvement with Crisp has had meaningful impacts both personally and professionally for both partners.

On the business side, Eric and Roopal say Chaffin Luhana looks nothing like it did before 2019 when they joined CrispX.

“We have the same core values and ethos, but our vision, leadership, operations, culture, and team have fundamentally changed for the better,” they say, continuing that Crisp has made them both stronger leaders and put their firm on the cutting edge of the rapidly changing legal industry.

On the personal side, the impact is even greater, though more difficult to capture in words.

“Crisp has impacted me personally in many ways and in various areas of my life,” says Eric. “Some of my closest friends are CrispX members. The relationships, coaching, and workshops have helped me become a better person and leader, and have inspired me to build my firm as a business so that I can live the life I want.”

As Eric Chaffin and Roopal Luhana continue to build a firm that will have a lasting positive impact that lives by their powerful ethos of Doing Good by Doing Right, we have no doubt they will continue to operate as true Firms of the Year well beyond 2024. It is our honor and privilege to walk beside them on this journey.