Trial Lawyer View Podcast | PI Practice, Operations & Growth

Trial Lawyer View Podcast

Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world.New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST. Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact

  1. 1d ago ·  Video

    The Truth About Case Value Nobody Talks About | Ep. 103

    Plaintiff lawyers: Dirk Derrick explains how a structured focus group system flips negotiating leverage and drives dramatically higher settlements. Derrick ran 198 personal injury cases through his focus group process and settled them at 2.7 times the pre-focus-group offer, adding nearly $33 million in total value. Sharing deliberation footage with the defense and pressing hard deadlines removes the uncertainty insurers rely on. His firm built a dataset of over 28,000 focus group participants across 107 data points, now powering AI tools for jury selection. He also covers how smaller plaintiff shops can apply the same approach without a large budget. Disclaimer: “The information discussed in this podcast is provided to the general public and does not in any manner constitute an attorney‐client relationship between Derrick Law Firm Injury Lawyers and the listener. While the information in this podcast is about legal issues, it is not intended as legal advice or as a substitute for the particularized advice of your own counsel in your state. Anyone seeking specific legal advice or assistance should retain an attorney.” LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirk-derrick/ Website (Bio): https://www.derricklawfirm.com/bio/dirk-j-derrick.cfm Best Lawyers Profile: https://www.bestlawyers.com/lawyers/dirk-j-derrick/222183 Super Lawyers Profile: https://profiles.superlawyers.com/south-carolina/conway/lawyer/dirk-j-derrick/15d35078-7a80-4f48-ad45-efbbc5519a80.html National Trial Lawyers Profile: https://thenationaltriallawyers.org/members/dirk-derrick/ Avvo Profile: https://www.avvo.com/attorneys/29577-sc-dirk-derrick-1948743/reviews.html Martindale Profile: https://www.martindale.com/attorney/dirk-julius-derrick-161191523/ #PlaintiffLawyer #TrialLawyer #FocusGroupStrategy #PersonalInjurySettlement #DirrickDerrick Chapters: 00:00:00 - Coming up... 00:01:09 - What changed in 2015 that pushed Dirk to run his first major focus group 00:04:17 - How sharing deliberation footage with the defense actually moved the needle 00:09:19 - The ROI of focus groups: what the data across 198 cases actually shows 00:12:41 - Which of the four leverages actually moves the other side 00:15:03 - Can focus group data overwrite insurer valuation systems like Colossus 00:20:13 - When juror data contradicts what experienced trial lawyers have always believed 00:22:26 - What the data tells lawyers who are not running focus groups on their cases 00:29:47 - How Dirk scaled from solo practitioner to 33 attorneys and what broke first 00:36:26 - How AI is being used on juror data and inside litigation workflows 00:41:30 - What a small firm can do on a shoestring budget to start finding real case value 00:46:08 - Why Dirk turned his internal competitive edge into a service for other lawyers 00:49:03 - What the next three to five years look like for personal injury lawyers who do and do not adopt AI Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek. https://www.apodcastgeek.com Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations. Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact Watch on YouTube If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek

  2. Oct 26 ·  Video

    Why Most Referred Med Mal Cases Are Doomed Before They Start ft. Matthew Slingbaum | Ep. 102

    Medical malpractice strategy for trial lawyers: Matthew Slingbaum explains how he evaluates, builds, and funds cases from intake to verdict. Founding Partner at Slingbaum Law, Slingbaum has recovered hundreds of millions in malpractice and nursing home litigation, and in this conversation with host Jason Lazarus he breaks down why bad outcomes rarely equal negligence, how causation kills most referred cases, why serious cases can require six figures in hard costs before trial, and how Florida's wrongful death law shapes what a plaintiff's lawyer can realistically win. Slingbaum traces a specific case loss to a single deposition moment: his client, injured during physical therapy, identified the wrong physical therapist as the person who caused the harm, and that therapist was not working that day. The case collapsed. From that point forward, Slingbaum built a multi-session deposition preparation protocol for every client. He also explains that serious medical malpractice cases routinely require six-figure hard costs before trial, covering medical experts, expert depositions, treating physician time, economists, and life care planners. Sovereign immunity compounds the economics: cases at state-entity hospitals can yield a maximum recovery of $200,000, even when a client's documented damages exceed several million dollars. Slingbaum's Master of Public Health, completed alongside physicians and nurses in a hybrid night program, gave him an expert network across medical specialties and an independent method for reading scientific literature, so his evaluations are not entirely dependent on retained experts. That independence also shapes his AI guardrails: the technology is useful for surfacing a specific lab trend inside a massive record set, but handwritten notes and scanned images are routinely misread or skipped, and a single missed sentence can determine whether a case proceeds. His larger point is that empathy for what a client has actually lost, not clinical analysis alone, is what drives thorough investigation and ultimately affects how the defense values a case at resolution. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-slingbaum-1a5a07a3/ Website: https://slingbaumlaw.com/ Florida Bar Directory: https://www.floridabar.org/directories/find-mbr/profile/?num=195979 Justia Lawyer Directory: https://lawyers.justia.com/lawyer/matthew-phillip-slingbaum-537886 Avvo Profile: https://www.avvo.com/attorneys/33301-fl-matthew-slingbaum-1288961.html Resource: https://www.practicepanther.com/blog/how-attorney-matthew-slingbaum-turned-a-sports-injury-into-a-thriving-practice/ #MedicalMalpractice #TrialLawyerView #MedMalStrategy #FloridaWrongfulDeath #MatthewSlingbaum Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations. Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact Watch on YouTube If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek

    Why Most Referred Med Mal Cases Are Doomed Before They Start ft. Matthew Slingbaum | Ep. 102
  3. Oct 12 ·  Video

    Why Settling Too Often Puts You on the Carrier's Safe List Now ft. Ryan Wechsler | Ep. 101

    Personal injury attorneys who treat settlement volume as a reputation strategy will find insurance carriers have already profiled them as safe bets. Ryan Wechsler, co-founder of Wechsler & Wechsler, spent years on the defense side watching firms circulate internal emails rating plaintiff lawyers by how often and how quickly they settled, and he explains how those carrier metrics directly suppress case value. His defense-side origin story gives plaintiff attorneys a concrete look at what forces carriers to bring real money: a documented willingness to take cases to verdict, built case by case from intake forward, not from ad spend up. In August 2025, Wechsler left his partnership to co-found Wechsler & Wechsler with his wife, also an attorney, who manages administrative operations while he handles litigation. Within under a year, the firm grew to 250 to 300 cases, 100 in active litigation, and nearly 10 employees. Wechsler credits that pace to a strict division of labor: his wife absorbed HR, software, billing, and firm infrastructure so he could remain a full-time litigator. He also describes a same-day all-hands meeting where he gathered intake specialists and trial paralegals together to reinforce that decisions made at step one directly affect outcomes at the end of a case. Wechsler's experience officiating Division 1 men's college basketball runs parallel to how he handles courtroom pressure, and he explains why learning to communicate with Type A coaches trained him to hold his ground with demanding judges. He draws a clear line on AI use as well: after plugging it into too many parts of the firm too early, he pulled back and now applies it selectively to legal research, brief writing, and condensing complex multi-year medical record histories into usable chronologies. Both lessons, knowing where your discipline transfers and knowing where a tool stops adding value, connect back to his core argument that reputation is built through deliberate preparation, not volume. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-wechsler-07333b52/ Wechsler & Wechsler, P.A. : https://www.wexinjurylaw.com Facebook (Wechsler & Wechsler, P.A.): https://www.facebook.com/wexinjurylaw/ #PlaintiffAttorney #PersonalInjuryLaw #HowCarriersProfilePlaintiffLawyers #TrialReputation #TrialLawyerView Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations. Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact Watch on YouTube If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek

    Why Settling Too Often Puts You on the Carrier's Safe List Now ft. Ryan Wechsler | Ep. 101
  4. Sep 28 ·  Video

    Why Switching Your PI Case Management System Costs You More Money ft. Shim Hirsh | Ep. 100

    Personal injury firm owners struggling with case management will learn why swapping their CMS solves nothing. Shim Hirsh, who managed operations across 100,000+ active cases at Morgan & Morgan and now leads Betterworks, explains that the real revenue bleed happens in the interaction layer and shadow processes built around the software. He diagnosed one New York firm losing $2.5 million per year, roughly 25% of total revenue, through a broken intake conversion process that no new platform would have caught. His framework starts with a one-minute data visibility test any firm owner can run today. Hirsh draws a direct line between data opacity and operational failure across two case studies. A New York firm's intake pipeline was converting below 50% because no one had separated qualified injury callers from unqualified ones inside the same data view, a fix that required no new software. A separate firm was sitting on cases for 120 days before building a complete picture of coverage, providers, and police reports — what Hirsh calls "intake 2.0" — simply because the collection steps were undocumented. On AI, he cites an MIT study finding 95% of participant companies could not connect AI spend to measurable ROI, and notes Uber's COO admitted burning the company's entire 2026 token budget by April with no traceable return. Hirsh gives firm owners a practical vendor evaluation sequence: ask first how the demo tool actually ingested its inputs, then whether outputs can be tailored to your specific jurisdictions and case types, and finally demand proof of ROI from existing clients before signing anything. He argues the harder organizational challenge is the "interpretation and orchestration layer", deciding where AI output lands inside a firm's existing systems, who gets notified, and what action gets triggered, and estimates his team spends roughly 75% of every engagement on that layer rather than on the underlying intelligence. For any firm already treating technology adoption as a discipline rather than a purchase, that framing redefines what questions to ask before a single contract is signed. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shimhirsh Betterworks: https://www.betterworks.com/about #PersonalInjuryLaw #LegalOperations #LawFirmIntakeStrategy #CaseManagementSoftware #ShimHirsh Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations. Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact Watch on YouTube If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek

    Why Switching Your PI Case Management System Costs You More Money ft. Shim Hirsh | Ep. 100
  5. Sep 14 ·  Video

    Why a Bigger Referral Network Increases Your Malpractice Risk ft. Chris F.N. Rose | Ep. 99

    PI firm owners who want more referral revenue need to hear why building a bigger referral network quietly destroys profitability and client outcomes. Chris Rose, founder of LegalFlare and builder of the most comprehensive U.S. database of referral fee rules of professional conduct, argues that chasing more partners is the exact behavior that creates accountability gaps, malpractice exposure, and cases that arrive already expired. He intercepted a batch of statute-of-limitations-dead cases a referring firm was offloading before they became liability bombs, and that experience crystallized his framework: one deeply vetted, fully accountable referral partner outperforms a broad network every time, and the compliance data backs it up. Rose built LegalFlare on a contingency fee model specifically because competing referral platforms charge upfront, and he wanted to align incentives the way plaintiff firms operate. When he tested several referral networks by submitting cases with his own phone number as the client contact, roughly one-third of receiving firms never attempted to reach the client, which confirmed his suspicion that marketplace vetting was inadequate. He later onboarded a large firm that passed every pre-check, transferred five cases to them, then discovered their internal systems were so porous that he escalated to weekly status calls and ultimately arranged a second transfer to pull those clients to safer hands. Rose offers a two-step diagnostic any PI firm can apply immediately: first, determine whether the referral department is problem-aware by auditing conversion rates and identifying who actually owns the process. Second, confirm whether written fee-split agreements and signed client consent-to-associate documents exist for every active referral relationship, because bar opinions and court cases show that disputes almost always trace back to missing paperwork rather than bad intentions. For firms that discover gaps at both levels, Rose's recommendation is direct: stop treating referral management as a paralegal side task and hand the entire function to a single accountable partner whose malpractice coverage attaches to every file. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-f-n-rose-esq-661866158/ Website: https://legalflare.com/chris-rose/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristopherLeeRose1111/ Resource: https://juvoleads.com/podcast/chris-rose-finding-gold-in-every-declined-case/ #PersonalInjuryLaw #LegalReferrals #PILawFirmGrowth #ReferralFeeCompliance #LegalFlare Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations. Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact Watch on YouTube If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek

    Why a Bigger Referral Network Increases Your Malpractice Risk ft. Chris F.N. Rose | Ep. 99
  6. Aug 24 ·  Video

    Why Waiting to Build Your Brand Quietly Costs You Market Share ft. Kyle Wright | Ep. 98

    Personal injury lawyers building a trial reputation learn from Kyle Wright how self-funding a personal brand generates 40% of caseload through attorney referrals. Wright, a partner at Wisehart Wright Trial Lawyers and holder of the first two six-figure verdicts in Sandusky County history, built his Make It Right brand from personal income inside a multi-practice firm without partner conflict. The specific failure he corrects is waiting for dominance before investing in visibility, a delay that quietly hands market share to national firms. His fix is concrete: $35,000 annually in personal training, a trial record that forces referrals, and a brand strategy funded before the firm ever ratified it. Wright secured a $5.7 million pre-suit policy-limit settlement for a paralyzed minor by moving fast: he preserved surveillance video from a neighboring building that confirmed the driver crossed the center line, eliminating liability disputes early, then layered in a life care plan, a day-in-the-life video, and expert reports before filing anything. That preparation signaled the carrier that litigation was ready to launch, and the limits were paid without a complaint ever being filed. On the verdict side, Sandusky County had no six-figure verdict in its history until Wright won a half-million-dollar verdict a couple of years ago, then added a second six-figure verdict roughly a month before this recording. The pattern connecting those outcomes is a training budget treated as overhead, not a luxury. Wright allocates $15,000 per attorney annually for continuing education and sends associates to programs like Trial by Human in California, because the return compounds when every lawyer on a file can independently drive case value. He also builds staff into every workflow change before rolling out new software, a lesson learned after paying for tools that collapsed without buy-in. For any firm weighing whether to invest in people or process first, Wright's answer is both simultaneously, because efficiency gains only convert to better client results when the humans running the system have already been trained to use them. Connect with Kyle: LinkedIn Wisehart Wright Trial Lawyers Facebook Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations. Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact Watch on YouTube If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek

    Why Waiting to Build Your Brand Quietly Costs You Market Share ft. Kyle Wright | Ep. 98
  7. Aug 10 ·  Video

    The Cash Trap Killing Boutique PI Firms Before They Scale Up ft. Austin Kurtz and Brian Riley | Ep. 97

    PI firm founders scaling a boutique injury practice learn how Austin Kurtz and Brian Riley built $300K in fees within four months at KRLG Injury Lawyers. Most small firm founders hold out for the big cases, assuming those headline settlements will carry the business, but Austin and Brian found that model leaves firms cash-poor while waiting. By engineering hyper-refined systems around small and mid-size cases — Calendly links baked into every intake, near-shore paralegals handling volume with precision, and a speed-first mandate that treats payment delay as a client harm — KRLG generates daily policy-limit settlements that fund operations while the larger cases mature. Austin and Brian officially launched KRLG in March 2024, starting out of shared office space at Bob Simon's downtown Phoenix location before scaling to a team of 12-plus attorneys and 25-plus near-shore paralegals through Solvo within two years. Both founders took out HELOC loans as a financial backstop and negotiated amicable case splits from their prior firms, including Morgan and Morgan for Brian, to seed an early pipeline. On the technology side, they run a heavily customized Filevine stack, use Supio for AI-assisted medical record review, and track settlements firm-wide through a live Vestaboard that alerts the entire office each time a case resolves. They also hired two ABOTA lawyers within the three months prior to recording to mentor younger attorneys. Attorneys thinking about co-founding a firm will hear a frank account of how partnership structure actually holds together under pressure: Austin and Brian avoided assigning rigid role boundaries, instead filling gaps as they appeared and formalizing a proper operating agreement only after early settlements revealed how quickly informal arrangements break down. Their approach to earning defense counsel trust, staying responsive on discovery and sending well-reasoned demands rather than adversarial correspondence, has generated referrals directly from opposing attorneys who later needed personal injury representation. Austin's time training under Tab Turner on products liability across 14 states and Brian's high-volume background handling policy-limit cases gave them complementary instincts that now define how the firm evaluates and works cases from intake through resolution. Connect with Brian and Austin: LinkedIn (Brian) LinkedIn (Austin) KRLG Injury Lawyers Facebook (KRLG) Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations. Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact Watch on YouTube If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek

    The Cash Trap Killing Boutique PI Firms Before They Scale Up ft. Austin Kurtz and Brian Riley | Ep. 97
  8. Jul 27 ·  Video

    Why Bad PI Records Sink Cases Before Trial Even Gets Started ft. Dr. Brett Chance | Ep. 96

    PI documentation mistakes that sink legitimate injury cases: case managers and paralegals who inherit poorly built files will learn from Dr. Brett Chance, CEO of One Wellness Rx, why carrier AI scores record structure rather than actual injury severity, and how his objective data rescue protocol, using flexion extension views and functional capacity tools, can reintroduce measurable consequence evidence even one to two years post-accident. Dr. Chance's standardized workup identifies a rateable whole-person impairment condition by visit three, giving attorneys the injury language, not just pain language, needed to defend a file against degenerative coding and pre-existing condition arguments. Dr. Chance draws a hard line between acute traumatic ICD-10 S codes and degenerative M codes, explaining that when a chart opens with degenerative or pain-only language such as cervicalgia or nonspecific low back pain, carrier platforms including Colossus and Injury IQ read the file as a chronic condition and begin building a pre-existing condition defense automatically. He describes "cluster diagnosing" as a red flag algorithm trigger, meaning stacked redundant codes without matching CPT procedures or exam progression. Outcome assessment tools, specifically the Oswestry Low Back Pain Scale and the Headache Disability Index, alongside loss of enjoyment of life (LOE) and duties under duress (DUD) markers, are weighted heavily by carrier evaluation systems because chronic disability exposure is what those platforms are actively trying to quantify and limit. Attorneys reviewing an inherited file should ask four sequential questions: did the chart preserve acute trauma language in the opening visits; did the provider identify the specific tissue involved, whether ligamentous, disc, or neurological; did diagnosis codes evolve logically across re-examinations rather than repeating identically; and does the mid-case prognosis align with functional findings? Flexion extension views, also called Davy series trauma protocols, are the missing objective layer in most motor vehicle workups because they measure spinal biomechanics and ligamentous instability in ways a standard MRI or CT cannot, making them essential for connecting documented injury consequences back to the original traumatic event. Connect with Dr. Brett Chance: LinkedIn Winter Park Chiro Facebook (Winter Park Chiro) Learn more about Synergy’s approach to healthcare lien resolution and firm operations. Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world. New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.  Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact Watch on YouTube If this episode gave you a useful perspective or sparked an idea for your firm, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, or sharing it with a colleague. This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek

    Why Bad PI Records Sink Cases Before Trial Even Gets Started ft. Dr. Brett Chance | Ep. 96

Ratings & Reviews

3.7
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world.New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST. Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact

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