Pat Iyer

Pat Iyer:

Welcome to Legal Nurse Podcast. This is your spot to get inspiration, tips, stories, and guidance to help you in your legal nurse consulting practice. I’m Pat Iyer, the host of Legal Nurse Podcast. Since 2016, we are among the top 5% of all podcasts in the world in terms of longevity in sharing information. consistently week after week with legal nurse consultants. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Welcome to Legal Nurse Podcast. I’m Pat Iyer. Today I have an opportunity to bring to you a plaintiff attorney Christopher DiBella who is located in Massachusetts as our guest as we get into the topic of personal injury cases and also how AI is impacting law firms. Christopher is a father and a an attorney and a hockey fan. Christopher, welcome to the show.

Chris DiBella:

Thank you so much for having me, Pat.

Pat Iyer:

I know that of the many professions that we can choose in our lifetime that you were drawn to law for a very specific incident that happened in your family. Can you tell our viewer a little bit about what motivated you to think about becoming an attorney?

Chris DiBella:

Sure. Uh, it’s a core memory that really hasn’t left me since the day it’s happened. Um, I I remember it. It’s funny sometimes I can’t remember what I ate for lunch this week. And um, you know, the details of this are ingrained in my mind as anything traumatic that’s happened in any of our lives. But I received a call. It was my birthday. And um it was somebody from downtown in the town I lived in calling saying that my brother who was riding a bicycle had been struck by a vehicle and that he was seriously injured. And uh I remember picking up the phone in the kitchen and having that conversation and the look on my father’s face when he kind of heard what was going on through my conversation. um and then threw the phone over to him. He got some details about the exact location, jumped in the car and sped downtown to where my brother was. Um and it we were only a few minutes away, so he was um on the scene pretty quickly, you know, and from that, you know, I grew up in a very blue-collar middle-ass family. My father worked in construction and my mother was a stay-at-home mom for many years and then uh became like a office assistant and um you know it was very difficult seeing how my family had to go through that, the different stressors that they were faced with with you know medical bills and you know watching my brother recover and and having to get through that process while also raising me and um you know just dealing with some of the permanent scarring and issues that my brother was left with. Um, so it it really motivated me and and also, you know, my father’s somebody that always looks at life and he, you know, he always taught me when I was younger that there’s always lessons going on around you. Could be from, you know, somebody working at your house, you know, look at what they do, ask them questions. Uh, we’re always learning. And what he learned from that experience was that a lot could have been done better by the law office that we were working with. and in terms of how they communicated with my parents, how they took on and shouldered some of the um stressors that my parents were going through. Um so those are those are a lot of things we try and implement in our firm with our clients today.

Pat Iyer:

When you say a lot could have been done better in terms of how the attorneys were helping your parents with the aftermath, is that what you mean?

Chris DiBella:

Yes, exactly. You know, from from things that seem like basic common sense, Pat, which is getting back to the clients, checking in with the clients, you know, telling them what they can expect at different stages so that they’re not getting overwhelmed because they receive something in the mail. Um, by redirecting certain communications away from the client to the law office. Um, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, but there’s a number of things that can be done early on to really set the client up for success in a very difficult time.

Pat Iyer:

And how is your brother now?

Chris DiBella:

He’s doing well. I mean, he he obviously has some long lasting scarring and issues of things that he’ll have to deal with. Um, but he has uh recovered about as well as we could have expected and hope for… but you know he was you know he was a young man and uh you know he was in high school and uh when he was riding his bike you know it was I remember still vividly waiting in the hallway at the hospital uh and going in to see him for the first time hooked up to all these machines and all this wiring and tubing and you know it, it’s a lot it’s a lot for I can only imagine looking back now being a parent myself what that must have been like for my parents because I know how traumatic it was for me. Uh but you realize how vulnerable and fleeting life can be in moments like that.

Pat Iyer:

I’ve worked on some cases involving people who were on bikes who were struck by vehicles. One that makes me think of immediately is a girl who was hit by a bus. She was riding a bike and she was hit from behind while she was staying on the side of the road and she had really significant injuries that affected her, fractured hips and bruising. There’s no comparison when you think about a bike and a bus or a bike and a car. There’s no protection when you’re on a bike whatsoever from an impact from another vehicle.

Chris DiBella:

You’re absolutely right and it and I feel like we live in a very scary time and you know I’m I’m I have three children, two of which are of driving age and one is coming very quickly and um there’s so many distractions now on the road path that didn’t exist back when you and I were younger and um you know having cell phones in the car um all different types of things that these technologies in the car what people are able to do while they’re driving these massive ton vehicles let alone bus. But it’s there’s a lot of distractions and there’s a lot of vulnerability from people on motorcycles, bicycles, let alone a smaller vehicle when you anything smaller than a bus. And there’s a lot of very big vehicles on the road that didn’t exist back, you know, a few decades ago. So, it’s it’s it’s a time that can be frustrating and I think people have to be ever vigilant because you don’t have to look very far. You know, if you get on the highway these days and you look to your left and you look to your right, you’re going to see people looking down at their phone, nd you just wonder, how are they on the road right next to me? But this is the new environment that we’re all living in and that our kids are growing up in. So, it’s there there needs to be a good amount of education and enforcement of different laws to make sure that people can stay safe out there.

Pat Iyer:

I smile because I think about a newspaper I saw many years ago. It it said at the top of the newspaper, “Not to be read while driving.” And I thought, was there some incident in which somebody was reading that particular newspaper and now it’s like the microwave packages that say caution will be hot?

Chris DiBella:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You’d like to think that it was self-explanatory, but…

Pat Iyer:

So, you went to law school. Obviously, there are many different specialties that lawyers can take on. you chose personal injury and and I’m assuming that it was in part because of what happened to your brother that you became more interested in that aspect of law. Is that true?

Chris DiBella:

It it definitely is true. Um, shortly after that, like I said, my father had worked in construction. So, he, you know, he’s he’d come home with several injuries throughout my life that I still remember vividly. I my mother sent me upstairs to wake him up one day. And you know, my father’s old school Italian, doesn’t go to the hospital. And um I went up to the bedroom one day and as a young boy, my mother said, “Go wake up your father. Breakfast is ready.” And when I went up there, I find out that he’d come home from work as he often did at, you know, early we hours of the morning, well after I’d gone to bed. And he had burns throughout his face and hands. And you know so there’s you know we’ve worked over the years with people with workplace accidents with um important um workplace conditions um you know so part of it was my father I think he also saw a better way and believe it or not despite being in construction he found a way to utilize his gifts in that field to give back and so helping people was a big part of how I was raised. You know, he built the the altar and some of the um the furniture at the church that I went to that I grew up with. And uh that’s what he did with his spare time. He went to you know, um helped cancer patients in different um church uh run functions. And you know, he wasn’t somebody that sat around and he went out was constantly helping people and he saw a good way to help people and give back through the law and specifically through what happened with my brother through injury law.

Pat Iyer:

I know that in law school, I’ve heard from many of my clients, there’s an emphasis on learning the law, but not necessarily as much of an emphasis on setting up a practice, starting a business, getting clients, learning what you need to know in order to be able to represent those people. How did you learn about the medical aspects of personal injury?

Chris DiBella:

That’s a great question, Pat. And uh I think there’s a lot of layers to it, especially where you started initially about they don’t teach hanging a shingle and what it’s like to run your own practice in law school because they don’t maybe now I mean I’ve been out over 20 years now, but maybe it’s gotten a little bit better. I happen to benefit from the fact that I also have my MBA and I’ve taken some of that business acumen into running my practice which a lot of attorneys don’t have the benefit of. In terms specifically to your question related to the medical aspects um you know that is something that you know you very much learn as you go. You know I’m as I said with my father we’re always learning um you know every new case that would come through the door, you know certain cases when you first get started present with very similar injuries you know could be a standard soft tissue motor vehicle with some whiplash concussion radicular symptoms down uh through your leg because of nerve impingement, things like that. You know, you’d see and and you know, and and I don’t know, I can’t really speak for all attorneys, but when I get a case, I would dive into it, you know, so I’d learn as much as I humanly could. We throughout our law office have medical journals, um all types of medical uh documentation things, resources that we can draw from in the firm. And so some of them, you know, are are fairly, you know, straightforward. You know, a broken bone, um, you know, different bulging discs and things like that. You know, you can you can read through. But we I’ve also throughout my career had the benefit of working with a ton of different experts in a lot of fields, deposing lots of doctors. And in preparation for all of those, I’m doing a lot of medical research. I’m also being prepped by my own medical experts and learning um about the case, about the injuries, about how to ask questions. You know, so it’s been a combination of reading thousands and thousands of pages of medical records on my own. Seeking out medical resources that I you know for the lay person that I could educate myself on and while also utilizing experts and and quite frankly you know there’s a lot I’ve benefited from you know my my roommate in college is an ER doctor, several of my aunts were nurses, my grandmother was a nurse. So I’ve never been without close resources that were close by for me to tap into when I had real questions. But obviously the the the more and more you get into it, the more you know. But obviously there’s always a limit to that. I am not a doctor. I’m not a nurse. And so we’re always relying on experts and consultants and um people that do this day in and day out you know for for greater detail.

Pat Iyer:

And in the 20 years that you’ve been practicing law, you’ve seen medical records transition from handwritten records to electronic medical records. What aspects of working with medical records today do you find frustrating?

Chris DiBella:

A lot. You know, we’ll start off by just obtaining them is one of the biggest chores we have in our profession. obtaining medical records and bills should be far more streamlined than it is. It takes sometimes months for providers to get that and some are better than others and some are more streamlined and you know everybody now you know a lot of this stuff is done digitally, because everything is stored digitally it should be much easier than it is and much faster to obtain these records. That’s the first part. Another issue that we see very frequently in the legal world, right? Because most people they go to the doctors, they probably never even see their medical records. They go, they went, they got treatment and they never had a reason to really delve in the actual record that was made. A lot of times we’re seeing inaccurate medical records. We’re seeing notes that were from a different client. We’re seeing things that were just not said from our client that were literally maybe that’s just what they are summarizing that they hear from similar clients. Just plain wrong information related more towards the you know how the client got there or things that could affect the liability of the case. So I’m not talking as much about treatment and diagnosis as I am them commenting about how a fall occurred or you know and things that become very relevant where they say, you know almost shifting the blame to the patient, when there was a hole that maybe was the cause of that fall and and it may not be top of mind for them because they don’t they’re not wearing their legal hat. But when some of those factors are reported inaccurately, they could be, you know, very difficult for us to rebuild through witnesses and pictures and things that otherwise we wouldn’t have to. Other than that, you know, there’s, you know, I I feel like certain places are better than others. You know some go into much greater detail, and some are just checking boxes, you know and putting the bare minimum in there. So probably a lack of consistency amongst providers is something that we run into. You know, but those are just a few I’d say.

Pat Iyer:

You know, when you talk about the accuracy, I think about sitting in John’s Hopkins last Thursday with my husband’s gerontologist and the resident came in and said, “We use an AI program to create our notes.” I asked him about the title. He called it the bridge. He said it will listen to our conversation and it will create a note about what we said in this visit. I haven’t had reason to go in and into my husband’s chart to look at the accuracy. I know that words that sound alike can be spelled differently, but I’m wondering if AI will eliminate some of what you’ve found frustrating. If my husband said I fell into a hole that wasn’t adequately barricaded, AI should pick up his description as opposed to the interpretation of the physician who’s listening to that.

Chris DiBella:

You know, it’s a concern I have both in the medical and legal field quite frankly because AI is a great tool. We use it. But it it does not eliminate the need for human review and editing. And unfortunately, as at least I can speak to the legal field, we’ve seen it. It’s in the papers every day. I’m sure it occurs in Florida on a regular basis. Attorneys are drafting pleadings and court documents that the judges and court staff are relying on that have inaccurate court citations. AI right now is unfortunately subject to hallucinations. They will also um summarize things or misinterpret things that are said. So if a doctor is not if if he’s just taking 100% of what that the AI is doing its job and doing it better without actually going back in to review it, that could be problematic, at least initially, I don’t know where it’s going to go from here, but I can tell you it’s a problem in the legal profession. Several attorneys have been admonished and cited and fined um for these certain issues. I think it has the potential you know AI the purpose of it is to reduce monotonous tasks and and create more efficiencies and I think, it can do that right, it can save us and and the medical field hours and hours of putting these notes together. You know, I have a lot of friends that work in the medical field that will go home and have another three or four hours of work once they get home compiling their notes. So, could it reduce that? Sure. But it should not eliminate a set of eyes from someone that was actually there conducting the medical work and making sure that it’s accurate. So you know, we we changed from being uh drafters of this content to editors and reviewers and and that’s an important step that shouldn’t be missed.

Pat Iyer:

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I remember when that first case came out of the two attorneys who were representing somebody who was banged in the knee during an international flight and they cited cases that didn’t exist that they got from ChatGPT. I thought that the word of that being so highly publicized would discourage the practice, but it it has just it resulted in hundreds of attorneys getting caught in that same black hole of relying on non-existent cases and not checking to make sure that they actually existed.

Chris DiBella:

You you’re very right and it’s tough because it’s it is such an alluring tool. I mean these things can be amazing, right? If you want to hear uh your favorite song as if it was drafted in the voice of Elvis Presley and it wasn’t an Elvis song, it’ll do that. It’s amazing what it can do and it could draft you a pleading in the legal field that just sounds amazing at face value. But if you are not diving into the citations and the arguments behind it and making sure that it they match. You know but it’s enticing right a lot of attorneys just like the medical field were were working under very strict timelines with very heavy case loads and if you want to find a shortcut it definitely is one, but it’s not one that I would take because for new lawyers out there that are you know I didn’t grow up in the world of you know these these kids coming through college and high school and into law school nowadays, you know, a lot of their content and their world has surrounded by AI and they’re growing up within it. So, you just they have to make sure that if they’re going to use it, they’re using it appropriately because it could be very detrimental to their career, to their clients. Um, you know, but it does have amazing opportunities there. But it just has to be used with caution.

Pat Iyer:

You have to use your hi or your human intelligence with AI.

Chris DiBella:

That’s a very good point. I like that.

Barbara Leven:

I’m Barbara Leven, past president of the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants, and I am here with Pat Iyer who is also a past president of the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants. She has also been running these conferences, the LNC success conferences since 2020. And together we have our upcoming 13th LNC success conference which is April 23, 24, 25, 2026. Now, Pat will be presenting a program on mastering the deposition strategy, and I’d love to have you talk about your session and how this applies to the legal nurse consultants who are serving or inquiring about becoming a legal nurse consultant expert.

Pat Iyer:

Thank you, Barbara. There are a lot of challenges with being an expert witness. A lot of rewards as well. One of the challenges relates to being deposed by the opposing council and being grilled on your opinions. This session is specifically for expert witnesses who want to know what kinds of strategies attorneys use, how to prepare for them, how to master those tricky questions, and how to keep their confidence throughout this process. As you know, Barbara, as an expert, if you start showing your nervousness and anxiety during a deposition, it’s like waving a little red flag in front of the attorney who wants to go in and take advantage of what they perceive as a weakness. So I’ll share with our attendees first of all some strategies and then we’ll do a little demonstration with a actual deposition transcript in which you’ll have a chance to see how this plays out in real time.

You can attend the conference by going to the link right below this video which is lnc.tips/april2026. The conference is taking place all day April 23, 24, and most of the day April 25. We’d love to have you join us. We look forward to seeing you.

Pat Iyer:

I wanted to focus just for a few minutes on the aspects of working with plaintiffs and the information that appears in a medical record. You’ve given us some great examples of misinformation. I know that it can be challenging when you are representing plaintiffs who are asked to follow certain treatment patterns and they can’t or they won’t. Tell our viewer a little bit about the impact of negative information that appears in medical records and how that affects a case or how it can affect a case.

Chris DiBella:

You know, so I think what you mean by negative information, you’re talking about like a gap in treatment where a client’s not following up with the u proper expectations set by the doctor and that is um there’s probably nothing more damaging. Maybe there is, but it this is one of the biggest case killers, right? Because you know certain injuries and pain and suffering is going to derive from the course of treatment. Certain things you can’t I can hold up an X-ray and show that the bone is broken. And whether you go back to the doctor four times cuz you’re in pain or just wants to get the cast on, wants to get the cast off, there’s an X-ray that shows that the bone is broken. If you’re going because you’re having massive ridicular symptoms, you know, um soft tissue issues, whiplash, concussive symptoms, those are very difficult to show up on any um CT scan or X-rays and and they and they differ dramatically as you know from one client to another. One person may have a concussion and feel great the next day and the next person uh may be out for 6 months, have light sensitivity, nausea, and and a ton of other symptoms. And if that is not being reported on a regular basis to the doctor, if you are not following their treatment protocol, then there’s going to be it’s going to be taken advantage of by the insurance companies and the defense council because they see a gap in treatment as well they really weren’t as injured as they thought. Maybe that gap was because they were they felt better. On top of that, there could be an intervening issue, right? If what’s to say if the gap is long enough that you didn’t injure or reinjure yourself or exacerbate the injury with another activity unrelated to the initial cause.

So, if if somebody went to the gym and reheard their back or they were doing workout back gardening and threw out their back and that that’s what the initial injury was. Well, you know, they’re going to say the bigger that gap, something else could have contributed towards it. So, anything, and I I advise all of my clients, a let’s limit the amount of information we put out on social media. A lot of us live on social media today, and we’re just giving it’s it’s chalk full of information that can be used against us and we don’t even realize it. Right, Pat? I don’t know if you go to the gym, but you know, I have a lot of clients that go to the gym, they work out, they go for walks, then they get injured then and their usual routine is always, “Let me go talk about I’m at the gym. I’m documenting another thing I do in my life.” Now, maybe this time since the accident, they only went to the gym to use the sauna, the steam room, the ice bath, something for those those pains. They’re but they’re not actually doing an aerobics class and not working out. But just those things out there allows an insurance company or defense council to take that out of context and say, “Well, oh, he’s he’s out there hiking. He’s out there um working out again.” So all of these things that he’s now trying to say to a jury or to an insurance company is embellishment. It’s not as bad as he said he was, or else he wouldn’t be at the gym. So the more that we can as attorneys be in control of the narrative and what is being heard and creating the right context around what’s happening the better off we’ll be. But gaps in treatment are a major killer of um they should always follow the doctor’s protocol. It’s there for a reason. And it also shows a very reliable predictable plan of treatment that usually leads to the best outcomes.

Pat Iyer:

That’s a great example and it makes me think about a a story that I read last week about two people who are called streamers whose business it is to live stream their lives to their followers. And these two guys were on a Royal Caribbean cruise. They got into a fight. Of course, other people were live streaming the fight of the live streamers and sending that out and the the cruise liner said, “Your whole group is leaving. We’re getting to Honduras. We’re putting all of you off of this ship because we don’t want your kind here.” So, I started reading about live streamers and realized this this preoccupation with telling the world about your life. It’s not something that is familiar to me. It’s this living reality show that you’re capable of doing as long as you have a phone with a video attachment. So, if you’re representing younger people who are used to sharing their lives constantly with the assumption that we’re all going to be interested in you and what’s going on, I could see how those transmissions, whether they’re on social media or in some other method, could be used as evidence against a person. It’s all there and once it’s out it’s it’s almost impossible to remove from social media.

Chris DiBella:

It it is very much so. And I think that a lot of people don’t know the impacts of the information that you put out and and how long it’s out there and that you know just because you deleted it on your end doesn’t mean it’s gone. And you know, we’re learning that uh sometimes we use it to our advantage uh in cases because kids that are younger that are doing inappropriate things, and you know, I just had a case where a group of teenagers endangered and injured a client of mine and they captured it and posted online. And you would think, you know, kids are smarter than that, but they’re not. That’s one. and and two, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Karen Reed case, which is was a very national case here, but the text messages going back and forth between investigators and law enforcement was is very widely known and publicized. But what’s happening now through civil cases that are ongoing is they’re finding out that one of the main investigators in there did probably didn’t even realize that all of his communications had been backed up to the iCloud. So there’s now I want to say my recollection was about 13 years worth of text messages and now tons of other cases he’s worked on are being looked at and called into question based on texts that go back 5, 8, 10 years ago because he didn’t realize that that had all been kept in a cloud somewhere and now is discoverable. So, the the amount of things that people don’t realize are discoverable in a case like this through social media, um they just don’t they don’t realize the impact that it can have and it’s we’re much better off. But on some I will be honest in some ways, Pat, I’ve had a um I’ve had a case where a client was hit and dragged and and the person left the scene. And thank God that from all we could capture in the city camera was kind of the make and model of the car, the guesstimate as to the color. But we couldn’t make out the license plate. There was a decal on it that you could make out. And thankfully due to the fact that there must have been a dozen Ring video home video cameras in the pathway from the accident all the way to that person’s house, we’re able to, you know, retrace the steps back. But um it’s a scary time because so in in certain ways it can be very helpful. In other ways it could be very detrimental. But what I tell when I lecture at law schools and and grammar schools to younger children, this is the most watched generation. They can’t go outside of any business, gas station, municipal building, most homes nowadays without being on camera, which is something that I don’t think most people realize. You know, just from if you were to go to the store but to the local uh laundromat, you probably if if you were to really track it, you might pass 30, 40 cameras on your way there and back. You know, people think of cameras and being caught on camera just, oh, I I expect it when I’m at the casino and I can see a bunch. I might even expect it at Walmart, uh, because you can see all the the eyes in the sky, so to speak. You don’t expect it in a public place and you it’s really there’s very few places that are not being filmed nowadays.

Pat Iyer:

We have a lot of international listeners for this podcast and one of our key countries is England and I know that they are way ahead of us in terms of having cameras posted on roads on buildings, you know, their major cities are completely covered up with cameras that, you know, can be pulled to get footage for events that they that the law enforcement wants to track.

Chris DiBella:

Yeah. I I mean, it’s it’s been um it’s been game changers in different cases of mine. I can think of a a recent case in which a um the initial insurance position was to deny liability because of the circumstances and ordinarily if it wasn’t for my client I would say they were right but you know I had a client that was very trustworthy and I believed, but it was still we had a very uphill battle because based on the nature of who would have had the right away and things that you wouldn’t have thought that was accurate but then we just happened to have a city camera that captured this vehicle that was coming around a bend that wouldn’t made them not visible from my client pulling out. And we were able to reconstruct the speed that this person was going based on the distance that it traveled in the scope of the amount of time in the video and in gross excess of what that road required and convince the insurance company to change their position. But those are tools that I haven’t always had and without which they would have never changed their position and realized that they had exposure. So it’s it has certainly helped in a lot of ways but it is scary for you know the young kids growing up these days and and just being kids and realizing that uh every aspect of their life is being memorialized.

Pat Iyer:

I like the way you put that. I wanted to wrap up with a couple more questions. One of them is clearly legal nurse consultants are interested in helping attorneys using their nursing and medical knowledge and they are using a variety of strategies to get the attention of attorneys. As an attorney, what would you find to be appealing if a legal nurse consultant were marketing to you?

Chris DiBella:

That’s a great question and you know we do a lot of marketing ourselves so we’re always kind of in tune to what vendors do to get our attention, what we do to get other people’s attention. I think you know one of the things I tell my staff is persistence is key. Don’t take a a nonresponse as a no. A lot of people often will just think uh that I haven’t heard back they must not be interested. And the reality is Pat that we all are very busy. we’ve been inundated with more emails and and regular mail and we there’s so many different places to get information that I think until they’ve heard from somebody and this is what I tell my staff until you’ve heard stop bothering me you got to assume that it went into their junk mail or maybe they just they got it at a time where they’re busy and and let’s get to the top of their inbox again. So that that’s just one marketing 101 approach that I would say. But you know from a from a law firm perspective I think that being flexible having a flexible pay scale is important, because you know we have to do it. We have cases that range from the the few thousand to the millions of dollars and some of their role is important in both, but obviously um the cost structure is easily justifiable in one area versus another. So it doesn’t mean that they have to offer the same level of service. But if they have a more brief um level of service that they can provide to lower end cases that can also still provide value, I think that is important. I think, you know, being responsive is very important because again, when just like anything, I tell the same thing to my staff when people are searching for an attorney, it’s the old, you know, you remember Yellow Pages, right? Um, I used to I remember I used to advertise in yellow pages and the theory was if they picked up and called you and you didn’t answer, they flipped to the next page. Well, it’s the same thing I think for legal nurses is that, you know, they have to be responsive if someone’s reaching out. Because you have to assume that they were in that need at that moment. And if you’re not responsive, then they’re moving on to the next consultant. And then that’s an approach we take even our in our own business is that we need to be available 247 and uh making sure that we have systems in place for that. But even just flexibility I mean obviously it’s important to align you know practice areas where you know there’s a lot of different types of services legal nurses nurses can provide. So I think having a great deal of that information available I, you know, a lot of times my staff will make it tough to get through to me directly and they’ll say, “Well, send it to his email.” So if I can get in a very easily digestible format because, you know, again, I I know this from our own experience in marketing. People shut off if something’s too overwhelming. You know, using graphics and bar charts and things that draw the eye in and and you know, and get their attention and then you can get into depth once you’ve gotten a response. But, you know, follow up by email. You know try and break through that barrier with something more unique. You know get get a hook out there um that really draws the eye uh because there again there’s a lot of distractions, but but being flexible with when they’re able to communicate with us being flexible on cost for different types of cases. I think those are very important strategies.

Pat Iyer:

Well, thank you. I appreciate all those concrete pieces of advice.

Chris DiBella:

My pleasure.

Pat Iyer:

What would be the best way for our listeners to find out more about you and your services?

Chris DiBella:

Sure. You know, quite simply, they could visit me at uh my website which is dibellalawoffice.com or everycaseispersonal.com. Uh, you can call us at 855 DiBella. You can also email us at contact@dibellalawoffice.com um if they want to learn a little bit more about me and my background and and how we operate, we also have a book that I’ve published is called the injury handbook that can be found on Amazon. We also will provide a free copy if you want to reach out to us um at that contact email. Happy to get you a free copy. We have it in PDF in English and Spanish. And we also host a podcast as well. Not uh in in the same vein as yours, but we we try to interview um business leaders and and talk about their unique path in their own industry. And that’s um that can be found on all the usual Spotify, Apple podcast, and it’s called Let’s Get Personal.

Pat Iyer:

Nice. You’re reaching out to your audience in many different ways.

Chris DiBella:

We’re trying. You know, it’s a consumers are consuming information on so many different ways. You know, it’s when we were younger, it was just turn on the TV and if you had a commercial or a billboard, you could get most of the audience. But nowadays, you know, people don’t get their news from the regular news outlets and they’re on social media and they listen to podcasts and it’s you know, and I I think you know, I I give you a lot of credit. You know, I know from hosting my own podcast is it’s not easy. You know, the the right host makes it look easy. And having done it myself, you made it look a lot easier than it is, but keeping the information flowing and getting to that next question and transitioning between topics, it’s a it’s a hard job and you did it very well, Pat.

Pat Iyer:

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for being a guest and for sharing your passion. I’m glad that you found a niche that has helped you with your purpose and clearly you have lots of experience representing people. I would imagine also that you’ve had a few occasions where somebody has walked into your office and you’ve said, “No, the story’s not adding up right. We can’t take your case on.” Sometimes the medical facts are not there. Sometimes it it just doesn’t hang together. Has that indeed happened to you? I should ask you that.

Chris DiBella:

Many times. Sometimes we, you know, as you get um more experienced, sometimes you catch ones at the earliest stages before you sign them up. And sometimes you have to learn that the hard way after you’re reviewing uh initial medical records and and seeing statements that were made, looking at toxicology reports, looking at police reports um and you’re learning that maybe you didn’t learn the full story. And you know, so sometimes, you know, we we have a a pretty good intake team and we’re able to capture a lot of that and ask the right questions. But you know and sometimes it’s just a lack of knowledge on behalf of the client as to um what facts are important in determining liability and them not really knowing that certain things they did might have played a role in the accident as well. We have something called comparative negligence in Massachusetts. And what that means is that you can be at fault as the victim and still recover, but you can’t be more at fault than the person you’re going against. So, you know, sometimes when the scales get tipped and and that our client is more is 51% at fault, uh, and doesn’t have a case, even though there is substantial fault on the other side, um, you know, it could be prohibitive to bringing a case.

Pat Iyer:

I have a feeling we could explore all these nuances for the rest of the day and we won’t. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us and sharing your perspective as an attorney. This will be very helpful to the legal nurse consultants who are listening to this podcast and answer some of the questions that they may have in their minds about the practice of personal injury. Thank you so much, Chris.

Pat Iyer:

Thank you so much for having me, Pat. It’s a pleasure.

Pat Iyer:

And for you who’s been listening to this podcast or watching it on our YouTube channel, which is Legal Nurse Business, thank you for spending time with us, hang on just a few more minutes to find out who’s coming up next on the show. And be sure to go to podcast.legalnurbus.com for past episodes of our show.

Episode of 687 of Legal Nurse Podcast shows you how to build consistent case flow through strategic networking. Drawing from the book Networking for Legal Nurse Consultants, which I wrote, Barbara Leven and I share practical guidance on where to network, how to position yourself in the right rooms, what to say to attorneys, and how to follow up in ways that turn introductions into paid work. The program goes beyond generic advice and focuses on helping LNC’s frame their services in outcome-driven language that resonates with attorneys who want clarity and strategy and results, not just summaries and chronologies. You will learn how to choose conferences intentionally, strengthen your LinkedIn presence, communicate your value with confidence, and build relationships that generate referrals and repeat business. This session provides a structured approach to marketing, visibility, and positioning so you can move from hoping for cases to building a predictable pipeline. Coming up next on Legal Nurse Podcast. Thank you for being part of the Legal Nurse Podcast audience. I’m delighted that you’ve joined us for this episode. Be sure to go to legal nurse business.com and get your free reports. Look around the website, pick up some tools that will be useful for you in your legal nurse consulting practice, and be sure to join us for the next episode.