Dirk Derrick (00:00):
Welcome to The Legal Truth, the podcast created to provide you general legal information about South Carolina law, lawyers, and the legal process, and hopefully prevent you from being surprised by the unexpected. We will answer many of the questions I've been asked during the past 35 years about South Carolina personal injury claims and workers' compensation claims. We will also discuss existing laws and proposed changes in the law, and how they affect you. My name is Dirk Derrick. I'm the founder of the Derrick Law Firm, and I'm your host.
Voiceover (00:35):
Please see required ethics disclaimers in show notes.
Pearl Carey (00:43):
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to today's episode of The Legal Truth podcast. Today we're here to discuss determining and leveraging truth nationwide. I'm here with my co-host, Dirk Derrick. Thanks for being here, Dirk.
Dirk Derrick (00:53):
Glad to be.
Pearl Carey (00:54):
And my first question for you, Dirk, is what made you first start wanting to use focus groups?
Dirk Derrick (01:01):
To find out the truth about cases. It was to determine the truth about the value of cases, what juries wanted to hear, what presentation models work, how to build better cases, who made good jurors, who made bad jurors, particular cases. And I'd been practicing law for 30 years and always felt like the insurance companies had the leverage of time, money, uncertainty, as well as the stigma of litigation that they held over my client's heads and lawyer's heads. And they would always say, "You'd build a case, you'd make a demand."
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They'd say, "We're not paying that much. We'll pay you blank dollars. Either take it or litigate it for two years and a jury can tell us we're wrong."
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Then when you pass that along to your client, the client would say, "Well, is that a good offer or a bad offer?"
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And you would say, "Well, then we may be able to get more, but I can't guarantee it. Never know what a jury's going to do."
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And then the client would take the low offer. And I did not want to live under that. So in 2019, we'd go to new office, put a courtroom in it, and we started doing focus group jury research projects on cases to start determining if the insurance company was right, whether the value was much higher than what they were offering.
Pearl Carey (02:15):
So how has your focus group system particularly changed your trial preparation?
Dirk Derrick (02:20):
It's changed every element of it. We used to build cases based upon pleadings. Now we build cases based on what focus group jurors have told us they want to see and have to see. We used to do game plans based upon pleadings and the general understanding of law. Now we do game plans based upon what the focus group members have told us adds value and takes away value. We now negotiate with our eyes wide open as to the value of the case instead of guessing. Number one, we can't get the law out of your head once you get it in there. Number two, we know things about our clients, about defendants that can affect our valuing of the case that juries won't know. We may have a client that I'd say, "Man, this is a great client. I mean, I've got to know her over two years, solid person, blah, blah, blah."
(03:13):
And I can try to present that the best I can. That jury's going to have her on the stand for about 30 minutes. That's all they see of it. They will never know our clients the way we know. Same thing about negative aspects. An attorney can decrease in their mind the value of a case, because their client may have some problems. Those problems may be inadmissible, but it's still in that attorney's head. And sometimes those clients do a lot better than you think they would do, when you have a preconceived notion that they don't destroy the case. The overall thing is you just do not know how ordinary people who don't have a dog in the fight, who have never met these people, are going to respond to them in a courtroom without the focus group. You just don't know. And so, how we evaluate cases and when we decide to go to trial has been changed totally.
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I think one of the biggest things about this thing that I really like is before this jury research, it was me telling my client if they had problems with the case. So I'm representing my client, I'm fighting, I'm doing everything. And then they make an offer and I think it's problems in the case, and the client needs to take the money and I say, "Hey, I think you got problem, blah, blah, blah, blah."
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It's very easy for a client to say, "Whoa, I thought you were my lawyer. I thought you believed in me. I thought you believe in this case."
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And you say, "Well, I do. Why are you talking negative about it?"
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"Well, I'm trying to be honest with you, so you won't be surprised."
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"Well, is there any reason you don't want to try the case? Are you trying to take easy money?"
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There's opportunities to build distrust between the client and the attorney, when the attorney's trying to explain problems with the case. This removes it. We just show them the truth. We show them what other people think, what jurors are gonna think about the case and they do whatever they want to. We don't tell them what to do, whether to take the money or not. We are no longer the setters of expectation. I tell our attorneys, "Do not do it. Just get the facts, appraise it, let the clients know what the people say, and then we do whatever we want to. You no longer have to be the bad guy."
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Likewise, there's a stigma about litigation. Tort reform back in the '80s, the '90s, early 2000s, they demonized lawyers. They demonized people who brought lawsuits, and they demonized jurors who gave big verdicts. The sting of that campaign still lives, especially people my age, a little bit younger. And some of those people are clients and they come in, and they have a good claim and they say, "I don't want to file a lawsuit. I don't want to be one of those people. I'm not one of those people."
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And you have to explain to them, "If we can't file a lawsuit, we can't go get all the facts. And if I can't get the facts, I can't get you the real value."
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Okay, I can't go to court. So if they give you permission to go get the facts and then appraise it in front of a focus group, we see what you've gone through. We recognize that your claim is worth as much. It empowers that person. They no longer are concerned that they don't present a case and people don't want to look at them badly, and say, "Oh, they're just trying to get something for nothing."
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So for those people, when they see these jurors acknowledging the value of their claim, it empowers them to let you go forward and go get it. They see that they're not going to be demonized by bringing the claim. That's how I believe the value is added value we've added over the last seven years. A lot of it showing our clients and them saying, "Okay, okay, I'll go forward with you."
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If they feel that about my case, I'll go forward with it and they let you go further and get the real value. As far as getting cases ready for trial, another way that it's really changed is before I did focus groups, I'd look at summons and complaint, I look at the answer and I'll see what we claim that they denied. I'll see what their defenses are and I'll try to build evidence based upon that. And I felt like if I built the evidence to win the defenses and win our claims, if I had better evidence than them, I'd have win the case.
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So A, it shows you what they latched onto, the good jurors, but it really, really showed us what I call the rabbit holes. If you have a bad juror in the room, and when we say bad jurors, somebody who doesn't want to follow the law or doesn't want to give much money for damages.
Pearl Carey (07:24):
Or adhere to-
Dirk Derrick (07:25):
Adhere, that's right.
Pearl Carey (07:26):
... the rules of the group.
Dirk Derrick (07:28):
And if the judge tells them you have to live by the facts and the law that I give you, and it's somebody who doesn't want. They want to go outside of the box of evidence and the law, and for their own personal biases or beliefs, they want to not give money.
Pearl Carey (07:44):
Or come up with hypotheticals that aren't.
Dirk Derrick (07:45):
Oh, yeah. So it starts off with, I don't believe the plaintiff, can't trust the plaintiff. The plaintiff's crying, she's trying to play up to our sympathy. Now some of that is the tort reform in them. They're trying to trick us, be one of those juries that give a bunch of money. I'm not doing it. If the plaintiff is not emotional, very stoic. I saw the plaintiff. There's nothing wrong with her. She said up there, she wasn't holding her neck. If the plaintiff during the testimony ever rubbed the neck or moved a certain way, she's trying to trick us and make us think that she's hurt by moving a certain way. Didn't matter what the plaintiff did. Then they attack everything and they throw things against a wall. I don't believe people should get money for pain and suffering.
Pearl Carey (08:24):
Yeah, for sure. So lots of things. So tell me a little bit about your long-term plan for focus groups. I know that we talked about taking it nationwide. What are some of the other things that you believe will happen with focus groups as we continue on?
Dirk Derrick (08:34):
Yeah. The goal is to help people across the country, no matter who's representing them. And it's just to show them what the truth is and give them the ability to leverage that truth, to flip the leverages on the insurance company. We do that right now on individual focus groups for attorneys across the country. Most of those attorneys are trial lawyers who are trying big cases and they've done focus groups before on those big cases. So we're helping those attorneys with that system. The people who are not using it at scale yet are people like us, who want to use it on a lot of cases. So our goal is to make it affordable for attorneys throughout the country, not just the ones doing the multimillion dollar cases, but the attorneys who are representing ordinary people in mid-range and large cases and not necessarily, and as well as huge cases, but there's a lot of law firms that 90% of their cases aren't huge cases.
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So we're determined to help clients across the board, and not just a client with a catastrophic case, and, before I retire, have leverage spread across the country that help just ordinary people against the insurance industry.
Pearl Carey (09:47):
Right. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Dirk, for joining me and telling me about the future of focus groups and how this can help empower plaintiffs across the nation. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in for another episode of The Legal Truth podcast. We really hope that you learned something from this episode.
Voiceover (10:09):
Thank you for joining us on The Legal Truth podcast. If you have questions that you would like answered on a future episode, please send them to thelegaltruth@derricklawfirm.com. If you would like to speak to us directly, call us at 843-248-7486. If you find the podcast valuable, please leave us a five-star review and share the legal truth with your neighbor, friend, or family member who is seeking reliable information about a South Carolina personal injury or workers' compensation claim. Dirk J. Derrick of the Derrick Law Firm Injury Lawyers is responsible for the production of this podcast, located at 901 North Main Street, Conway, South Carolina. Derrick Law Firm Injury Lawyers has included the information on this podcast as a service to the general public. Use of this podcast and any related materials does not in any manner constitute an attorney-client relationship between Derrick Law Firm Injury Lawyers and the user.
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While the information on this podcast is about legal issues, it is not intended as legal advice and should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your particular state. Anyone seeking specific legal advice or assistance should retain an attorney. Any prior results mentioned do not guarantee a similar outcome. The content reflects the personal views and opinions of the participants in the podcast and are not intended as endorsements of any views or products. This podcast could contain inaccuracies. The information contained in this podcast does not constitute legal advice and is not guaranteed to be correct, complete, or up-to-date as laws continue to change. In this podcast, you'll hear information about focus groups. Please note that not all of the firm's cases are presented to a focus group. Additionally, when speaking about juries or jurors in relation to a focus group, we are speaking of focus group participants and not actual trial juries or jurors.