A Niche Without a Niche: How Carey Beyer Turned Dog Bite Law Into a Career-Defining Reputation

Carey Beyer is a partner at O'Connor and Partners, a New York personal injury firm built around car accidents, construction and worksite injuries, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse, and product liability. He is also an accomplished appellate lawyer admitted to argue before the US Supreme Court, and he has argued in front of every level of the New York Courts of Appeal. But Carey built his public reputation somewhere else entirely: dog bite and animal attack law. Even though it makes up a small slice of his actual caseload, that niche became the platform that built his name, his referral network, and his firm's broader reputation. In this conversation, Carey walks Rob through where that reputation started, a dog bite case he lost at trial almost a decade ago and fought all the way through the appellate courts. That loss led him to write the amicus brief in Flanders v. Goodfellow, the New York Court of Appeals case that unanimously overturned twenty years of dog injury law. He breaks down his theory of "a niche without a niche," why young attorneys should plant as many professional seeds as possible instead of narrowing too early, and how showing up for local bar associations, writing, and speaking built credibility that no ad budget could buy. Carey and Rob also get into food poisoning and mass tort litigation, the events Carey built to bring young attorneys back into their local bar associations, and why chasing Google Ads is a losing game for most personal injury firms. If you are trying to build a name for yourself or your firm without competing dollar for dollar with the big spenders, this conversation lays out exactly how it is done.