Ep 69: How We Craft Demand Letters (Part 3)

Music. Welcome to the catastrophic comeback podcast with American Injury Lawyer Clark speaks helping you find hope, purpose and joy after a catastrophic injury.

What back? What is your background that allows you to have the skills and the experience to be able to effectively write this. Jeff has talked about these. All this information has to be condensed into two pages. It reminds me of a quote I think that's an attributable to Abraham Lincoln. He says, I'm sorry that this letter was so long I didn't have time to make it shorter, right? In other words, a shorter letter is sometimes much more a shorter communication, especially in this day and age, is much more important and impactful than maybe something that's just long, that's longer. So

what are the what are the what's your background first, and then tell me how that plays into what you

do. Well, have a degree in journalism from Appalachian State. I've written a lot of sports articles for various publications, mostly online, and then I've been doing this for several years now. But I think having that background in journalism, not just having the experience writing, but writing different kinds of being trained in, you know, hard news writing, as opposed to more long form, as you mentioned, and a demand letter, I would compare to kind of a hard news article, is what we called in a journalism where it's what

is that? Where you have to cite your sources? Well, it's,

it's just what happened. It's not 5000 words on rambling about every every type of way something could be spun basically, and every opinion like you mentioned, it is get to the point. Say, what happened? Say, the details that are relevant and that are key. But you know, like Jeff mentioned, don't make this a 10 page letter. I mean, they're going to go through the files and look at all of the, you know, 50 pages or hundreds of pages of records. This is one to two pages, summarize the key issues and prevent it, present it in a in a professional manner. And I think that they will really appreciate that.

Okay, so when you're when you're when you're what do you do to try to approach so one of the things that I find that's important in doing this type of work is is to individualize a client, is to try to put myself in that client's shoes. And we, and we do that a lot. We do that a lot with our when we're thinking about a case we sort of collaborated on the case yesterday that I'm thinking about, and it was a case where somebody was very seriously injured in a in a in a in a case in the in the defenses is trying to minimize the impact of the case and impact of the injury, and trying to and trying to dispute liability and trying to make it our guy's fault. And we, we really stopped and slowed down and kind of spent time, you know, putting ourselves, ourselves in that person's position, you know, we kind of for the action that led to the injury, you know, backing up and slowing down, and kind of going through the physical movements that he might have made preceding the injury, and then also subsequently, with respect to the treatment, the surgeries and the even in terms of How he interacted with his family and his caring for his elderly father. After, after this kinds of injuries, what are some of the things? I mean, how important is, or how do you put yourself in a client's position when you're when you're writing a demand in order to be able to tell the full story about how a person was injured and how it's affected their lives and their family. I

think a lot of that goes back to the attorneys who document a lot of that information, kind of the before and after. Unfortunately, a lot of clients due to medical issues have difficulty sleeping, are struggling to work or just to perform normal daily activities, standing up, sitting down, playing with their kids, fixing dinner, cleaning the house. These are everyday issues that I. Are necessary to document. Again, it's the human side of the case. It's not just these files. And there, you know, it is detailed language and it's technical language, but there is a human component, you're right, that's very important to document. It's the key to the case. And I think the attorneys do a really good job of documenting a lot of that on the front end, so that when it gets to me, I've got a lot of that information, and I'm able to include that throughout the letter,

Jeff. Let me ask you this in a catastrophic injury, a catastrophic accident, where someone is, where you where someone dies, or when someone has a permanent life altering injury, fire, paralysis, loss of a limb, something really serious. How are those demands different, and how is the process of telling the client's story different in those contexts than in the traditional context.

Well, so there are similarities. It's different levels. You know, somebody that's hurt their back and neck, they can't pick up their two year old, their single mother, they can pick up their two year old for three months, you know, because until they're back and naked better. That's something that Cooper's trying to capture in these letters from the evidence that we're gathering, and highlight those things in a catastrophic case, it's, you know this, our client couldn't, can't ever pick up her two year old again, not for two or three months, but forever, you know. And and that is a life changing incident. You know, it's one thing to get somebody to come watch your two year old or help you with things for a couple of months. It's another thing for the next 20 years until they or 18 years, or whatever, until they become an adult, you're not going to be able to be able to really do anything to help them. Because, you know, if you're a quadriplegic, you can't move. If you're severely burned, you can't, you know, do certain things if you've got, you know, multiple fractures and had to have a fusion surgery in your back. You can't pick up more than five pounds, more than a milk jug for the rest of your life. And so, you know, we're trying to get these clients the best treatment we can, and get them as well as we can. But there are circumstances where people's injuries are just catastrophic, and they're just they're just terrible. And so what we're trying to do is help them, physically, financially, emotionally, to to recover as well as they can. And so you know, when you're looking at a catastrophic injury, you're looking at something that is devastating on a global scale to this person and to their family, and sometimes for generations. Because if you take, you know, let's say, a father or mother who have children, or maybe grandchildren, and now they're a quadriplegic, that's going to affect economically, emotionally in a number of different ways. That's going to affect not only their kids, but their kids and their kids generations, for generations.

Well, so, so one of the things that I think about when you describe that is that the difference in the process from a catastrophic cases for other types of cases is, you know, we want to condense it and we want to make it a short summary in your traditional case, because those adjusters might have hundreds of cases they got to get through, and They're just simply not going to read 20 page letter detailing all these different things, and so we have to be much more efficient about our communication style. My experience with catastrophic cases is all that goes out the window. You have different adjusters who focus exclusively on catastrophic cases. You have many times different insurance defense lawyers, most of those are going to go into litigation if they're not already in litigation, and so that those those demand letters, in my experience, are much, much more detailed, much longer include detailed and complex descriptions of the legal theories which are going to support the I guess an ordinary demand would include the legal theory as well. But in terms of an industrial accident, references to our expert reports, references to the specific evidence that we have that shows why it is the fall. Result of the company, the the safety department, safety department, the safety manager, the the corporation who prioritizes profits over people. So we So, so those, those letters, those demand letters, in my experience, are much longer, much more detailed, much more comprehensive. And in fact, we sort of use those in my my experiences, roadmaps, not just for the adjusters, but also for us to be able to to be able to plan our our trial out from the moment those letters are

generated, yeah, I remember us giving an opening statement in an industrial accident, a construction accident, where, in the you know, going from a multiple page demand letter that gave extenuating injuries, this client was injured so badly that just to read the list of injuries for that client off of the demand letter, took close to 10 minutes, which is hard to fathom, but it literally took almost 10 minutes just To read was page after page after page, hundreds of various injuries to this one person that we documented, and all that was laid out in the demand letter. And if you got a catastrophic case, there's no way to summarize a catastrophic case in two pages. You know, we're doing that for brevity sake, because these adjusters are, you know, on on most cases, because they're not going to read it if it's much longer. But in a catastrophic case, it's going, like you mentioned, it's going to a different adjuster who's more experienced, maybe an attorney, and they will take the time to read those because that's what they do. They handle catastrophic cases. And so you have particular adjusters that experience doing that. And so you know, you really need an experienced attorney on the other side that has done catastrophic cases to be able to be successful in those against these adjusters that do it all the time, these insurance defense attorneys who

thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time you.

Music. Welcome to the catastrophic comeback podcast with American Injury Lawyer Clark speaks helping you find hope, purpose and joy after a catastrophic injury.

What back? What is your background that allows you to have the skills and the experience to be able to effectively write this. Jeff has talked about these. All this information has to be condensed into two pages. It reminds me of a quote I think that's an attributable to Abraham Lincoln. He says, I'm sorry that this letter was so long I didn't have time to make it shorter, right? In other words, a shorter letter is sometimes much more a shorter communication, especially in this day and age, is much more important and impactful than maybe something that's just long, that's longer. So

what are the what are the what's your background first, and then tell me how that plays into what you

do. Well, have a degree in journalism from Appalachian State. I've written a lot of sports articles for various publications, mostly online, and then I've been doing this for several years now. But I think having that background in journalism, not just having the experience writing, but writing different kinds of being trained in, you know, hard news writing, as opposed to more long form, as you mentioned, and a demand letter, I would compare to kind of a hard news article, is what we called in a journalism where it's what

is that? Where you have to cite your sources? Well, it's,

it's just what happened. It's not 5000 words on rambling about every every type of way something could be spun basically, and every opinion like you mentioned, it is get to the point. Say, what happened? Say, the details that are relevant and that are key. But you know, like Jeff mentioned, don't make this a 10 page letter. I mean, they're going to go through the files and look at all of the, you know, 50 pages or hundreds of pages of records. This is one to two pages, summarize the key issues and prevent it, present it in a in a professional manner. And I think that they will really appreciate that.

Okay, so when you're when you're when you're what do you do to try to approach so one of the things that I find that's important in doing this type of work is is to individualize a client, is to try to put myself in that client's shoes. And we, and we do that a lot. We do that a lot with our when we're thinking about a case we sort of collaborated on the case yesterday that I'm thinking about, and it was a case where somebody was very seriously injured in a in a in a in a case in the in the defenses is trying to minimize the impact of the case and impact of the injury, and trying to and trying to dispute liability and trying to make it our guy's fault. And we, we really stopped and slowed down and kind of spent time, you know, putting ourselves, ourselves in that person's position, you know, we kind of for the action that led to the injury, you know, backing up and slowing down, and kind of going through the physical movements that he might have made preceding the injury, and then also subsequently, with respect to the treatment, the surgeries and the even in terms of How he interacted with his family and his caring for his elderly father. After, after this kinds of injuries, what are some of the things? I mean, how important is, or how do you put yourself in a client's position when you're when you're writing a demand in order to be able to tell the full story about how a person was injured and how it's affected their lives and their family. I

think a lot of that goes back to the attorneys who document a lot of that information, kind of the before and after. Unfortunately, a lot of clients due to medical issues have difficulty sleeping, are struggling to work or just to perform normal daily activities, standing up, sitting down, playing with their kids, fixing dinner, cleaning the house. These are everyday issues that I. Are necessary to document. Again, it's the human side of the case. It's not just these files. And there, you know, it is detailed language and it's technical language, but there is a human component, you're right, that's very important to document. It's the key to the case. And I think the attorneys do a really good job of documenting a lot of that on the front end, so that when it gets to me, I've got a lot of that information, and I'm able to include that throughout the letter,

Jeff. Let me ask you this in a catastrophic injury, a catastrophic accident, where someone is, where you where someone dies, or when someone has a permanent life altering injury, fire, paralysis, loss of a limb, something really serious. How are those demands different, and how is the process of telling the client's story different in those contexts than in the traditional context.

Well, so there are similarities. It's different levels. You know, somebody that's hurt their back and neck, they can't pick up their two year old, their single mother, they can pick up their two year old for three months, you know, because until they're back and naked better. That's something that Cooper's trying to capture in these letters from the evidence that we're gathering, and highlight those things in a catastrophic case, it's, you know this, our client couldn't, can't ever pick up her two year old again, not for two or three months, but forever, you know. And and that is a life changing incident. You know, it's one thing to get somebody to come watch your two year old or help you with things for a couple of months. It's another thing for the next 20 years until they or 18 years, or whatever, until they become an adult, you're not going to be able to be able to really do anything to help them. Because, you know, if you're a quadriplegic, you can't move. If you're severely burned, you can't, you know, do certain things if you've got, you know, multiple fractures and had to have a fusion surgery in your back. You can't pick up more than five pounds, more than a milk jug for the rest of your life. And so, you know, we're trying to get these clients the best treatment we can, and get them as well as we can. But there are circumstances where people's injuries are just catastrophic, and they're just they're just terrible. And so what we're trying to do is help them, physically, financially, emotionally, to to recover as well as they can. And so you know, when you're looking at a catastrophic injury, you're looking at something that is devastating on a global scale to this person and to their family, and sometimes for generations. Because if you take, you know, let's say, a father or mother who have children, or maybe grandchildren, and now they're a quadriplegic, that's going to affect economically, emotionally in a number of different ways. That's going to affect not only their kids, but their kids and their kids generations, for generations.

Well, so, so one of the things that I think about when you describe that is that the difference in the process from a catastrophic cases for other types of cases is, you know, we want to condense it and we want to make it a short summary in your traditional case, because those adjusters might have hundreds of cases they got to get through, and They're just simply not going to read 20 page letter detailing all these different things, and so we have to be much more efficient about our communication style. My experience with catastrophic cases is all that goes out the window. You have different adjusters who focus exclusively on catastrophic cases. You have many times different insurance defense lawyers, most of those are going to go into litigation if they're not already in litigation, and so that those those demand letters, in my experience, are much, much more detailed, much longer include detailed and complex descriptions of the legal theories which are going to support the I guess an ordinary demand would include the legal theory as well. But in terms of an industrial accident, references to our expert reports, references to the specific evidence that we have that shows why it is the fall. Result of the company, the the safety department, safety department, the safety manager, the the corporation who prioritizes profits over people. So we So, so those, those letters, those demand letters, in my experience, are much longer, much more detailed, much more comprehensive. And in fact, we sort of use those in my my experiences, roadmaps, not just for the adjusters, but also for us to be able to to be able to plan our our trial out from the moment those letters are

generated, yeah, I remember us giving an opening statement in an industrial accident, a construction accident, where, in the you know, going from a multiple page demand letter that gave extenuating injuries, this client was injured so badly that just to read the list of injuries for that client off of the demand letter, took close to 10 minutes, which is hard to fathom, but it literally took almost 10 minutes just To read was page after page after page, hundreds of various injuries to this one person that we documented, and all that was laid out in the demand letter. And if you got a catastrophic case, there's no way to summarize a catastrophic case in two pages. You know, we're doing that for brevity sake, because these adjusters are, you know, on on most cases, because they're not going to read it if it's much longer. But in a catastrophic case, it's going, like you mentioned, it's going to a different adjuster who's more experienced, maybe an attorney, and they will take the time to read those because that's what they do. They handle catastrophic cases. And so you have particular adjusters that experience doing that. And so you know, you really need an experienced attorney on the other side that has done catastrophic cases to be able to be successful in those against these adjusters that do it all the time, these insurance defense attorneys who

thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time you.