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 (00:42):
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to The Legal Truth Podcast. I'm your host, Pearl Carey, and I'm here with my co-host, Dirk Derrick. Thanks for being here, Dirk.
Dirk Derrick (00:49):
Glad to be.
Pearl Carey (00:49):
And today we're here to discuss the truth about getting the real value faster with the help of AI. So Dirk, my first question for you is, when you say getting real value faster, what does that actually mean for a client?
Dirk Derrick (01:02):
For the 38 years I've practiced now, I think every one of my clients, three things that they want. They want the real value of their claim, not what the insurance company may want to pay, but the real value. They want it as fast as possible. They'd rather not go through litigation. They don't want to go to court. They don't want to sue anybody. And they want a relationship with a lawyer. They can talk to a lawyer and get legal advice and not be pushed away from a lawyer. The real value faster has been a challenge with lawyers throughout the years. It was a challenge for us. For the first 30 years, the only way you determine real value is by taking a case all the way to trial and through the verdict. And I just told you that people don't want to go. They want it faster and they don't want to have to go to trial, but that's the leverage that the insurance company held on our clients and on the lawyers.
(01:52):
If you don't like what we're paying you, and usually it's 25, 30 cents on the dollar, go litigate and find out the real value from a jury. The real value as we define it is what a jury would give our client. If we presented the case like the jury wants to see it and hear it and present what they'd want to see in the best possible presentation model. But for the longest time, you had to wait until the end of litigation to do that. So real value is determined at the end of this process, that doesn't give you the speed that people are looking for. So another attorney model, some lawyers in the past, they can get you fast results, but it's not real value. So the only way to get real value in the past is to go through this long litigation process or take lesser value fast. Do you want it fast or do you want the real value?
(02:42):
We have used AI and our systems to mesh those, to try to get real value faster. And the real value is what would a jury give you? Give the client the information on what a jury, the range of verdict on your particular case faster. And every case is different. And what's been so hard about it is if a lawyer or a person on the street tells you the value of your case is blank, they're either, in the best possible way, they're just telling you that out of them not knowing because they don't know. Each case has its own value because each case is like a person that is different. You got different people, different issues, different facts, and different damages. In every case, 38 years, no two are the same. People don't know the value of a case until you know all the facts and then find out how a jury will respond to it, how 12 people in a county will respond to it.
(03:38):
And counties are different. You can pick a jury in Horry County and it's different than a jury in Georgetown County. So real value is what a jury in a particular county will do with the facts of that case. And that's been a tough nut to crack because for the longest time we felt that we had to go through the whole litigation to find out the real value. And there's no way to do that fast in the past, and our clients didn't want to go through the process.
Pearl Carey (04:04):
And so you built a reputation around using focus groups and jury research. Tell me a little bit more about how AI fits into that.
Dirk Derrick (04:10):
Yeah. What we're doing and everything we do at the firm, I mean, every hire, every process, every system, every decision we make has to go through the filter, will this help our clients get real value of their claim and will it help speed up the process? And we started eight years ago doing focus groups. And actually the jury research where we would do a case, give it to a focus group and find out what they wanted to see on that kind of case, how they evaluated it, who makes good jurors for that particular kind of case. So we started collecting that data. And we've now run, I think, close to 11,000 people through the service. And we use AI to give us the answers of, How do jurors want us to build this kind of case? What do they want to see? What do they tell us was important to them?
(05:01):
What evidence, who they want to hear it from, how they want it presented to them. So we're using AI to go through all this data we've collected to tell us how to build the case. So that helps us build the best case possible in our view in going before a jury. So in summary, we use individual focus group on a case, but we also use the big data that we've collected on all these cases, over 10 or 11,000 people on how to build the best case to help us get real value. That's how we use AI to determine real value. The speed part is what I'm most excited about in 2026. The two leverages that insurance companies have really held on our clients is uncertainty. And we can address uncertainty with the focus group jury research. We can let our clients know, here's what 25 people thought or 12 people thought or 250 people thought.
(06:01):
And it takes out uncertainty for our clients. We use the focus groups who also flip the leverage on time until insurance companies pay us. This is what a reasonable insurance company would do is pay us with these facts. It's unreasonable not to pay our client this money based on the true value versus what you want to pay. So that gives us this leverage, but we needed more for speed. Insurance companies and their attorneys have no incentive to do anything fast. If anyone knew the truth and do some studies, they will see that insurance companies make most of their money from investments. The longer they can hold onto their money, they're making money off that money. So they have no incentive to pay you fast. Their incentive is to drag it out and to be slow. We're now using AI to speed up all our processes.
(06:56):
It took a while for AI to get good enough and safe enough to use on legal matters. We still don't use it for anything to go to the court. We're not going to do a brief based upon it, but you can speed up your processes. And we have AI agents now to speed up processes. We have an AI agent that when we get an accident report, it can pull out information from the accident report and do a FOIA request to the police department to give us all the information they have on it, or to send for a deck page from an insurance company. All those things that you can speed up the building of the case and speed up the case as a whole. Litigation has always been slow. And people don't know this about litigation. Most people probably don't know about this, but a lawsuit is filed and then the defense has up to 60 days to answer with an answer.
(07:46):
And then you start a discovery process where we can ask them questions and ask for production of documents from them and they can do the same thing for us. So if we ask, they have 30 days to respond. If they don't respond, you write them a letter and say, "Hey, give us our discovery." They do the same thing for you. And that discovery process with the lawyers doing other things in their lives and handling other cases can be slow because you're going back and forth and back and forth and you have to stay on top of them to give us a discovery, give us a discovery. What AI has allowed us to do in house is they send us a discovery request. So it's speeding up the entire litigation process. And that really excites me because the speed of litigation has been a problem and we're the only side who's pushing speed. The other side is not, but AI is going to allow us to speed up all the processes so you don't have cases that's three and four years old. We're getting on it a lot faster.
(10:09):
And one thing I would add as far as another use of AI, we have a department called the Medical Liaison Department, and they talk to our clients and they also historically have reviewed every medical record that comes in, summarize it for the lawyers, and some of these medical records can be 1,000 pages long. So we had four or five team members in that department, and half of their job was reading medical records. We now have an AI product that when those medical records come in, it automatically puts them in chronological order, codes, the complaints, and it does an outline of all the medical treatment that has occurred. Those ladies who were doing that job, half of their job just disappeared so they can talk to our clients more and they can do more scheduling stuff with our clients and keeping up with the clients to find out what's going on with their treatment.
(11:02):
That's just a huge saving of time. You think about this, there's a lawyer who's handling the case, thousand pages of medical records come in. It's going to take medical liaison days to go through that. So those days that go through, our lawyer doesn't know what's in those medical records yet. They don't have the summary. In 10 minutes, the summary's in and it's in the file. If the lawyer looks in the file, they can read the chronology. And we've now put an agent in there that every time a new medical record comes into our office on that client, it automatically reruns the medical summary and puts that medical record in the chronology where it goes. So at any time we have an updated medical records that will show a lawyer exactly what we have so they can make quicker decisions to move the case and find out which doctors we need to depose and find the good and the bad in the medical records.
(11:59):
So it just speeds up everything. We have an agent now that summarizes everything in a file and we've got to run it every week, but every week there'll be a summary of everything that's coming in that file, whether it's depositions or pleadings or discovery, and a lawyer can look at it and know exactly where he or she is on a case just like that. AI has given us the ability to take all this information in the case and see it very clearly and plainly and to develop game plans based on what's come in and what we need to go get.
Pearl Carey (12:35):
And then that frees up more time for the attorney to talk to the clients and make sure that everything's on the right track and keep in touch with that personal connection as well.
Dirk Derrick (12:41):
It allows us to talk to them. It allows us to move the case faster. You're not waiting on a team member to give you the summary of the medical records. It's amazing how much information and how fast you can get that information now. And people wouldn't know this, but if a lawyer's handling 20 or 40 cases, there's a lot of facts going on in those cases. And a lot of times before a lawyer could make a decision on what's the next step, how we need to do, they need to go back and do a summary of that case and look at everything in the case and then make a game plan and go attack it.
(13:15):
But then after he's taking other depositions and other things come in, to make the next step, he has to go back and look at the case again three weeks from now and see what else has come in. That is now at their fingertips, now where they can go make a decision about the case and the next deposition to be taken or the next action that needs to be taken immediately, that speeds everything up for our clients.
Pearl Carey (13:36):
It frees up a lot of time. Yeah.
Dirk Derrick (13:37):
Yep.
Pearl Carey (13:38):
Absolutely. So now that we've touched on how AI can help speed up the process of litigation or some of the work that the attorneys and medical liaisons do, how can AI assist in jury selection processes?
Dirk Derrick (13:49):
We use AI in jury selection by looking at the results of all the focus groups we've done. When we do a focus group, people sign up to serve on our focus group. They give us data points. They give us demographics, life experiences and beliefs. They then come in and watch a focus group and give us their personal decisions, reach a verdict with other people in the jury, and then talk to us afterwards. So not only are they telling us how to build the best case and how they evaluate this case, but we're able to see who makes good jurors and who makes bad jurors on particular types of cases. If I was to come in and serve on our focus group, they may determine that Dirk's a real good juror when it comes to paying a fair value, but he's a real bad juror if the liability is questionable.
(14:41):
And that's how everybody is. You can take somebody... There's very few who are just great across the board, but we're able to look at it and say, "For this type of incident, this is a good juror for us and this is a bad juror for us." Coming up with actual damages on how much they don't award someone for actual damages, here's the good jurors and here's the bad juror. When it's a punitive damage case where they're looking at the conduct of the defendant to determine whether or not they don't punish that person for reckless conduct, here's the good jurors and here's bad jurors. We now have a database of 25,000 people who have signed up, but 11,000 people who have decided cases. We can look at the historical big data on all those people to determine who's good jurors and bad jurors on those issues.
(15:26):
And the way we use that is if we have a case, those elements of a case, it's the liability element. Liability element is, whose fault was it? There's some jurors who want to put more fault on the plaintiff, person we're representing, or less fault on the plaintiff. Well, if it's a questionable liability case, we want to pick jurors who have historically, the types of people who have historically said, "No, the plaintiff didn't do anything wrong in that situation or the plaintiff did very little, most of the fault falls on the defendant. And we know who those people are, and that's who we want to pick on that case because the most important thing is to win the case. Now, if we have a real strong case where there's no question, the defendant was the only person responsible for this, they violated the law. Absolutely, plaintiff did nothing wrong.
(16:14):
We don't have to pick a liability juror. We can look at the damages. We can look at what types of jurors have given fair, actual damages, and even punitive damages to punish that conduct, and that's the kind of person we want to pick for that kind of jury if the case goes to court. All that information's in our database, and I've watched most of these jurors, so I've learned some kind of commonality or some truths about jurors, but without AI, we've never had the ability to suck up the conclusions immediately, to get that feedback immediately out of that big data set. It allows us to take that big data and give us information we can respond to very quick.
Pearl Carey (16:59):
Absolutely. And previously, it probably would've taken ages for an attorney to comb through all of that information.
Dirk Derrick (17:05):
Yeah. We had Domo with machine learning, but machine learning, you still had to filter. You had to do that kind of stuff. AI allows us to get those conclusions out faster.
Pearl Carey (17:14):
So now that we have all of these AI processes, how can that help impact the overall timeline of a personal injury case?
Dirk Derrick (17:20):
What we're trying to do is learn all the facts, remove all uncertainty. If you don't remove the uncertainty, the insurance company will rely on that uncertainty not to pay you the real value. So if we can speed up all these processes we're talking about, remove uncertainties and get all the facts, we can then do the focus group on it, show everybody who's involved what the real value of this case is. AI solutions have sped up that part. It has freed up our lawyers from doing the task of digging through stuff to taking more depositions and getting the information out of the other side faster. The faster we can do that, the faster we can give it to appraisers, with the jury research, the faster we can leverage their outcome, what they tell us to encourage or force the insurance companies to pay us the real value faster. And if they don't, we don't feel confident that when we go to court, we know who to put on the jury and we know what kind of presentation to make to the people that end up on the jury.
Pearl Carey (18:23):
So from a client's perspective, what would you say is the benefit of these AI processes?
Dirk Derrick (18:29):
Real value faster. I mean, it's what they want and it's really trying to combine the truth from the community, the focus group, and the speed that AI gives you to give them real value faster. And I think it's something that's been missing in our industry. I think our clients really appreciate it. I mean, when you can show them... Understand in the past, first 30 years I've practiced, we did big focus groups, but we couldn't afford to do all of, as many cases as we do now. If you have an injury, first thing that may happen is the insurance company may call you before you hire anybody and offer you, "Hey, we'll pay your medical bills and give you $2,000." And that may be 10 cents on the dollar, what that claim is worth. And there's some people who jump on it because they don't know any better.
(19:16):
And then they go to a lawyer, lawyer gets medical bills, lost wages, and send in medical bills, lost wages, insurance companies say, "We'll pay you blank, maybe 30 cents on the dollar." And your lawyer says, "Hey, they've offered you blank dollars." And you say, "Well, is that a good settlement? Should I take it?" And for the first 30 years, people are looking at me and say, "Dirk, is that a good offer?" And we can't tell people yes or no. You can say, "Yes or no, that's what they pay for this type of injury." But that has nothing to do with the real value of the case. The real value of the case is what a jury's going to do, not what an insurance company's going to voluntarily pay you to get you out of their hair and not be worried about the real value of the case.
(20:00):
So I think when we started doing this where I no longer have to tell a client, "Well, you never know what a jury's going to do." That's a poor answer to give somebody who's paying you money to build their case and give them valuable information. I believe the best thing for our clients out of this is I can show them data. I can show them what 12 people or 24 people or 250 people. Think about the facts and the issues and the damages in their case so they can make an informed decision as to whether or not they want to settle the case or go try the case. If they want to go try the case, we have now put in all this time to get all this big data to where we think we know the way to present it best to the jury that's selected.
Pearl Carey (20:47):
So it helps mitigate that gray area and that unknown quantity in a situation.
Dirk Derrick (20:51):
Absolutely. It removes that leverage of uncertainty that the insurance company dangles over them and say, "Well, you never know what a jury's going to do. You better take this money. This is sure money." We can greatly decrease it. We can never predict or say, "This is absolutely going to happen." But I can say 95% of these jurors say you win the case and 50% of these jurors are between this value and this value. There's some low outliers, there's some higher outliers, but here goes where the range is as far as the true value.
(21:20):
And the truth is, when we started doing this, we started doing it in 2019. By the end of 2024, our average case value had gone up 150%. So by knowing the truth about the value, we were able to increase the average recovery by 150%. That's because we're able to show our clients the data and let them make decisions and hold out for more money. And it allows us to show the insurance company too, "Hey, here's what these people think in Horry County, or this is what these people think in Georgetown County, you need to pay us." So knowing the truth about the value is very helpful for clients. I think they really appreciate it.
Pearl Carey (22:02):
Where do you see this heading and how do you see this continuing to aid clients?
Dirk Derrick (22:06):
Well, I am an AI nerd. You know that.
Pearl Carey (22:09):
Yes.
Dirk Derrick (22:10):
We've been following AI for three years, started going to conferences three years ago. I think it's going to change the world. It's already changing the world. I think a lot of the world doesn't realize how much it's going to change in the next 12 months, 18 months. But what we're doing and using it is going to give our clients more information and continue to speed up the process. I do not want someone who's injured to have to make a decision, "Do I go pick fast money or go pick real money that's going to take me three years?" We're trying to get speed and real value at the same law firm. I think it will continue to do that. It's going to continue to speed up. It's funny, I was talking to actually a representative of an insurance company this past week and talking about AI and talking about defense lawyers not using it yet.
(23:02):
Defense lawyers, if you don't know, if people don't know, plaintiff attorneys, we get paid on a contingency fee basically. If we don't win, we don't make any money. If we don't win, you don't owe us any money for cost, we eat the cost and we don't make any money. Defense attorneys get paid by the hour or by the case. They have no incentive to spend less hours on the case. They have no incentive. We have incentive to get our clients the real value as fast as possible. They have incentive financially, "Why we going to rush?" I've not met a defense attorney yet real excited about AI and speeding everything up. But I was talking to a representative from the insurance company and I said, "How long are you going to let them do that?" And he said, "It won't be long." Because there's no way that the insurance industry's going to pay them an hourly rate and it can be done in two minutes.
(23:52):
Summarize a deposition. We summarize depositions now in five seconds. They don't pay a lawyer to look at a deposition and give them a summary and a writeup on how somebody did it in a deposition. So it's going to be interesting to see on the defense side how their whole model is getting ready to change. I mean, their whole model for years has been an hourly rate. We've never been on an hourly rate. It's going to change that part for them more so than us. Now, and what I want everybody to know is that AI is not running our practice. We have humans overlooking everything. It has not gotten good enough to where you can trust it completely. So if it's summarized medical records, the liaisons look over it. If it summarizes discovery, answers, our paralegals look over it. If it summarizes depositions, our lawyers look over it.
(24:43):
If it gives an outline or a deposition that needs to be taken, our lawyers go in and change whatever they want to change. It gives us a draft of a demand letter. Our lawyers go in and look at it, see if they want to add stuff and make sure that the data's right. AI is not good enough to just turn it over. You got to have humans to look at it, but it can give you the first draft of things so much faster. And again, I think I said earlier, we don't file no briefs, you don't send anything to the judge with the legal research with AI. There's some lawyers who've got in trouble. There's law firms who've got in trouble. We do not do that. We pay for services so we can go look at the law and humans look at the law. We don't leave that to AI.
Pearl Carey (25:26):
Absolutely.
Dirk Derrick (25:28):
And going forward, here's what I believe, I believe by the end of 2026, there's going to be law firms who are using AI and there's going to be law firms who aren't. And I believe that the ones who aren't are going to get left behind. If I can do everything 50% faster, I don't think there's a whole lot of... I think potential clients will want to come to somebody who's going to be able to do it faster while still getting the real value of the claim. But I think it's going to speed up. I'm excited about how it's speeding it up. That's always been a leverage that the insurance companies' had. So I think anything we can do to speed up the process and give our clients the information on the real value empowers our clients to let us go get the real value.
(26:06):
If our clients, if you get offered money and it's not the real value, and you say, "Well, here goes what this focus group says. They're not offering the real value." And they say, "Well, how long will it take you to go get the real value?" I say, "Well, we’re going to try to flip it on them. If not, we'll get ready for trial." "How long is that going to be?" "Well, that's a year down the road." That incentivizes our clients to say, "Well, I'd rather just take the money." But if we can make it, we’re going to do it faster now, you have to wait less time, it will empower our clients to allow us to go get the real value.
Pearl Carey (26:36):
Absolutely. It just provides them with more knowledge so they can make an educated choice on what to do.
Dirk Derrick (26:40):
That's right.
Pearl Carey (26:41):
Well, thank you so much, Dirk, for joining me on this episode of The Legal Truth to discuss getting the real value faster with AI. And thank you so much to our audience for tuning in to another episode of The Legal Truth. I'm your co-host, Pearl Carey, and I'm here with Dirk Derrick, and we will see you on the next episode.
Voiceover (27:02):
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.
(27:55):
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.