Personal Injury Law

We just created a new trial lawyer directory dedicated to those trial attorneys who actually try cases and win: Verdict Stars. There are three levels of membership 1) Emerald, 2) Blue Diamond and 3) Red Diamond.  Click the link to learn more.

I used to practice debtor-side bankruptcy law and would counsel people on a daily basis on the pros and cons of cash versus credit. Most people who came in my office thought that bankruptcy would hurt their credit, and that they needed a high credit score in order to buy a house and so forth. I would respond that it was the credit that usually got them into trouble in the first place. My advice was to focus on building your cash reserves first and the credit matters will take care of themselves.  

I used to practice bankruptcy law and also have experience with defamation cases. And so I thought it would be interesting to look into the recent personal Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Alex Jones just filed to try and reduce or avoid the historic jury verdicts which were recently handed down. Here is a YouTube video I just posted on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNytIoM2l14&t=33s

Here is an article on personal injury lawyer advertising I posted on Verdict Stars that I am reprinting here: Why are there so many personal injury lawyers? The most obvious reason why personal injury legal marketing is so competitive is because that is where the money is.  But with more and more lawyers (even insurance defense lawyers) doing occasional personal injury work, how do you stand out from the crowd? Let’s face it, there are a lot of lawyers. There are about 1.33 million licensed attorneys in the United States. This number has been growing each year until it started to decline slightly in 2020.  This may be due in part to the pandemic or possibly to current economic and job market prospects. There are also a lot of personal injury lawyers. There are rough estimates on the internet claiming that there are around 130,000 to 140,000 personal injury lawyers practicing in the United States.  Based on my own experience as a personal injury attorney, I think that number is low.  Especially if you consider many self-employed lawyers practice personal injury law as a supplement to their primary practice. If you simply search your hometown for “personal injury lawyers,” there are sure to be quite a few attorneys who pop up on Google maps, even if you practice in a small town. IBISWorld estimated the total addressable market (“TAM”) of the personal injury law industry to be $42.3 billion in 2021.  This same report shows growth in the market of 1.9% in 2022.  If you divide $42 billion by 140,000 lawyers, you get about $300,000 per lawyer each year. There are also a lot of civil cases filed each year. In 2001, the United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics compiled a report titled “Civil Trial Cases and Verdicts in Large Counties, 2001.”   Now while this report is more than 20 years old, it nevertheless contains some useful statistics. This report analyzed the outcomes of state court civil trials in the country’s 75 largest counties.  They found nearly 12,000 bench and jury trials resolved in these counties. The Bureau also estimated that there were between 300,000 to 500,000 personal injury cases filed annually.  They found that Plaintiffs won about 55% of the time and were awarded a total of $4 billion in damages.  These damages included both compensatory and punitive damages.  The median award was $33,000 for each plaintiff and the amounts ranged from a low of $10 to a high of $454 million. Tort cases comprised about 67% of the total number of trials.  The amounts awarded by juries was also interesting.   The report found that about 18% of plaintiffs won over $250,000 in total damages.  They also found that about 7% of plaintiffs were awarded $1 million or more. The median award for victorious plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases was $422,000.   About 33% of medical malpractice plaintiffs won $1 million or more at trial. How much do lawyers spend on personal injury marketing? A report from the American Tort Reform Association (I know, I know – a trial lawyer’s archnemesis) found plaintiffs lawyers spend nearly $1 billion annually on local television ads alone. They compared the amount furniture stores spend (about $590 million) on local TV advertising and what pizza restaurants spend (about $67 million) on local television ads to what attorneys spend.  Assuming their numbers are accurate, lawyers spend a lot on television ads comparatively speaking. One large Louisiana law firm claims on his website that he spends $25 million (possibly more) on marketing annually.  Morgan and Morgan, who is said to be the largest plaintiff’s firm in the country, spends $100 million annually on marketing.  Their marketing spend is across various channels such as TV, radio, online ads, cabs and billboards. These numbers are not hard to believe.  Simply turn on the television during the middle of the day and you are bound to see back-to-back personal injury law firm ads.  Travel to a city like Boston and turn on the nightly news, and you will almost certainly see a Morgan and Morgan TV ad at some point. Where do you spend your personal injury marketing budget? Chances are you’re like most plaintiff’s firms and do not have a multi-million-dollar annual marketing budget.  If you go by the conventional wisdom and spend 8% of your annual revenue on marketing, and let’s assume that works out to be $80,000 a year, how do you best spend that money?  Do you spend it all on television ads?  Do you do any radio ads?  Do you spend a portion on billboards and the rest on Google Adwords?  Or do you do a little of all those things? I was asking this same question recently and an entrepreneur who had started a legal marketing company focused on Spanish-speaking clients enlightened me – many clients research their options before choosing the lawyer they ultimately hire.  In other words, the person in need of legal representation does not simply hire a lawyer based on the first Google or TV ad that pops up.  They do some research first.  It also turns out nearly half of all potential clients research their legal issue online before hiring a lawyer according to JurisDigital. This should not be surprising.  After all, you most likely exhaustively research a product before you decide to purchase it – especially if it’s a major purchase.  But do regular people really research their car accident lawyer before they select one?  Turns out they do.  They may not simply hire the very first lawyer that appears on a Google Pay-Per-Click “truck accident lawyer” ad, for example. We know this is true by our own intuition and experience.  Most people want to know that they are hiring the best lawyer to help them with their injury case. A skilled personal injury lawyer makes all the difference. As a successful personal injury lawyer, you know the amount of time and energy you’ve spent to gain the skill and know-how to get maximum results on your cases.  You’ve probably seen unskilled lawyers who only dabble in personal injury law settle cases for pennies on the dollar.  Those

I wrote a Substack article on when and under what circumstances a minor can consent to medical care, including transgender “medicine.” https://davidkervin.substack.com/p/minor-consent-to-gender-affirming?r=b8szj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web