Why In-House Lien Resolution Is Costing Your Clients a Fortune ft. Jason Lazarus

00:00:00 Jason Lazarus
The key thing to remember as a trial attorney is that you want to do what's best for your client and make sure that they are protected into the future, and that's really what it's about.

00:00:10 Tracy Liberatore
That's Jason Lazarus, founder and chairman of synergy, a company that helps personal injury law firms navigate complex settlement issues. He believes firms need to identify these issues early. Bring in the right experts and plan proactively so clients are protected long after the case as resolved.

00:00:28 Jason Lazarus
Depending on timing, you can foreclose someone's eligibility and that could create a malpractice exposure for the trial lawyer. So being proactive allows that client to better understand what's going on, helps the law firm understand what needs to be done.

00:00:46 Tracy Liberatore
In this episode, you will learn why settlement planning should begin before mediation, how liens and Medicare or Medicaid issues can put a client's recovery and benefits at risk, and why bringing in the right experts early can help protect both the injured client and the law firm. Welcome to Statutes and Stethoscopes, the show. For attorneys who know that winning a case is only part of the job, and that reading the medical record right matters just as much as what happens in the courtroom.

00:01:16 Tracy Liberatore
In each episode, I sit down with trial attorneys, forensic pathologist, and expert witnesses who have lived the work of turning a chart into a case. We move past the theory to examine how a record actually gets built, tested and defended. Because the chart never lies. I'm your host, Tracy Liberatore. Let's get into today's conversation. So, Jason, for those who may not know your work, give us a, you know, 2 to 3 minute version of who you are, what you do, how you found your way into this very specialized area of law.

00:01:48 Jason Lazarus
Yeah, it's quite a narrow niche. And really, I came to it from the personal injury practice of law, but I was on defense side. I was doing insurance defense work right out of law school, which I hated, and at some point decided, you know what? The rest of my life is not going to be spent this way. I want to help people and be part of the solution, instead of what I felt like was part of the problem.

00:02:16 Jason Lazarus
Not certainly. The defense has its place and, you know, they they need to be there. But for me, I just I had a calling and wanted to help people. And so I was trying to figure out, well, what do I do that will leverage my law degree, my experience on the defense side, understanding personal injury the way I did.

00:02:40 Jason Lazarus
And it kind of naturally took me to settlement consulting and from there just continue to develop my subject matter expertise. You know, when I started out, I didn't really realize the depth and how complicated these issues can be in a catastrophic personal injury situation. So, you know, over the years, I've just educated myself and become an expert in different areas.

00:03:08 Jason Lazarus
Went back and got now I'm an elder law to focus on some of the disability issues in my law practice, and became a subject matter expert in Medicare compliance and special needs trusts and Medicaid preservation planning, as well as the health care lien resolution aspect, which is such a niche and subspecialty of its own. And so it's been a bit of a winding road getting to to the ultimate destination.

00:03:39 Tracy Liberatore
Hey, if you're listening to today's conversation, chances are you're a lawyer with a case file full of medical records. You never trained to read a few thousand pages, no clinical background and a deadline that isn't moving. That's exactly why I built Med Legal Pro. We take the record review and the chronology off your desk, and we match you with medical experts who have been properly vetted.

00:04:03 Tracy Liberatore
So the chart comes back to you in a form you can actually try a case from. If that sounds like the file on your desk, scan the QR code on the screen, or click the link in the show notes and you'll hear back from us within 12 business hours. Now back to the conversation. And then I know, narrowing this down, but if you have somebody came to you and said, so what is your area of focus?

00:04:25 Tracy Liberatore
What is it that you do or what kind of a client I guess finds you? You know, what would that look like?

00:04:31 Jason Lazarus
It's a personal injury attorney. You know, I'm not working directly with the injured clients in the sense of I don't advertise. Hey, you've been injured. Come. Come see Jason. You know, the personal injury attorneys, when they're settling a complex case will come to me to. And my company to get assistance and help in navigating these issues, because. Yeah, as a trial lawyer, your specialty is securing justice for injury victims through trying cases or putting them into a posture to resolve.

00:05:08 Jason Lazarus
Having to understand the complexities of the Medicare Secondary Payer Act. As one example, which is a massive piece of legislation, complexes, heck, and a lot of nuance. That's just one little aspect. Then you add on Medicaid, you add, when it comes to liens, harissa, Fiba, military, you know, there is a lot of things that ultimately personal injury lawyers are not experts in that they need experts.

00:05:39 Jason Lazarus
And that's that's how typically they come to me is have got this really challenging case, you know, can you help me?

00:05:47 Tracy Liberatore
Sure. So after basically after a settlement or something like that.

00:05:51 Jason Lazarus
Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's, you know, well before even I've got a case I'm consulting a lawyer on now where they're very early on, but it was a very catastrophic medical malpractice case where all four extremities wound up being amputated. And just, you know, the disability issues and the complexities around what needs to be done to plan for that recovery led the attorney to me, which in turn led me directly to the injured parties family to educate them and give them some guidance that they understand what to expect when they're getting ready to resolve that case.

00:06:34 Tracy Liberatore
Okay. So at what point do you think it would be a lawyer that would think, hey, this might be a good time for me to enlist the services of Jason.

00:06:41 Jason Lazarus
It really just depends on the case and the clients. You know, every every one of these situations is different. Generally, earlier on is better so that the client is more prepared and understands. For example, you know, if a client doesn't understand all of the disability related planning issues and then they get to settlement and then it all gets thrown at them at that time.

00:07:06 Jason Lazarus
Well, it's very stressful having, you know, the unfortunate experience myself of being through personal injury case. When you get to mediation, there's a lot of stress around what's the case going to settle for and thinking through all these things. If on top of that, what's introduced is, well, you know, to keep your government benefits, you need to set up a trust and all the money that you thought you were getting.

00:07:32 Jason Lazarus
No, it's going to go into a trust and the trust is going to pay for things for you. Well, that's hard to process all of that. So I try to educate trial attorneys on these issues in terms of being proactive and educating the client, because the client ultimately has to make an informed decision. That's part of the ethics around representation.

00:07:58 Jason Lazarus
So giving the client enough information in a way that they can digest it to make the right decisions is really critical.

00:08:05 Tracy Liberatore
Yeah. And so you since you brought it up, let's. I know we wanted to talk about a little bit about that your experience with this motor vehicle accident. So I want to tell us that story.

00:08:15 Jason Lazarus
I was struck by a car while cycling in 2016. So I at that time I was had been riding and racing since I was a teenager, thank God, in very good condition at that time because when I got struck by the vehicle, my face hit the a pillar of the truck, which caused what's called the four three fracture, which basically means I broke every bone in my face, fractured my jaw pretty severely, knocked out teeth, and broke my collarbone.

00:08:51 Jason Lazarus
Anyway, it landed me in the ICU and, you know, 21 days in the hospital on a ventilator for a good part of that because they were afraid they were going to lose my airway. So as bad as you want to experience without getting killed, you know, I mean, I was very lucky because it could have easily been a spinal cord injury or a really severe traumatic brain injury.

00:09:15 Jason Lazarus
But, you know, I, I went through whatever he injury victim typically goes through, which is got a visit from my personal injury attorney who thankfully I knew a lot of them, was a friend who came to visit me while I was still in the ICU. And that's that was the start of, you know, what was a year and a half to years of litigation, you know, unfortunately.

00:09:41 Jason Lazarus
That's just the way it goes for most, even though this was a pretty clear cut liability case, I was in a bike lane when I was struck and, you know, doing nothing wrong. And but, you know, still and we had to see my insurance company, my underinsured motorist coverage was what was really the only available coverage. The driver that hit me at $10,000 in coverage and my medical bills alone were, you know, almost $400,000.

00:10:12 Jason Lazarus
It opened my eyes to what everybody goes through when when they experience something like this. And of course, you know, having had at that point, about 15 years of experience working with people, I had a good understanding. But until you actually go through something like this yourself and experience every facet of it, you know, the the difficulties in the physical recovery, the mental aspects of, you know, the trauma and how that impacted everything.

00:10:44 Jason Lazarus
So, you know, in the end, I think it was one of the best things that's ever happened to me from the perspective of it gave me a good life reset. You know, it focuses you on really what's important. But to it gave me unique insights that I think has helped make sure that our services and what I do is as compassionate and as focused as it can be on the mission, which is helping the injured parties protect their net recovery.

00:11:15 Jason Lazarus
That's synergy mission, and we do it through partnerships with personal injury firms, and our team understands the importance of that mission. I've used my own accident and we use examples of of cases for every all hands meaning we have each month to explain the mission moment so people understand how important the work they do each day is.

00:11:41 Tracy Liberatore
No, absolutely. And it's amazing how I found it interesting. You said one of the best things that happens to me, and I've had a lot of, we'll say, not wonderful things have happened to myself, but it's like, you know, you look back on it and there is a way to find how, geez, that really sucked going through it.

00:11:58 Tracy Liberatore
But how it impacted me now, where I'm at now, where I wouldn't have been here now, right? It's interesting. I always love to hear those stories because it's, you know, really reframing something that could have really went really badly into turning it into something positive, where you've actually now opened a company to help others that may be suffering from the same thing.

00:12:19 Tracy Liberatore
Right. It's amazing.

00:12:21 Jason Lazarus
Yeah. I wouldn't want anyone else to go through it, and I would have rather that not happened. But in the end, as I said, it was probably the best thing that's ever happened to me, just from multiple angles and perspectives.

00:12:36 Tracy Liberatore
Most trial lawyers measure their success by their settlement verdicts. You've sort of built a career around what happens after that check arrives. Why is this special needs settlement planning something attorneys need to be thinking about really, before mediation instead of afterwards? And we may have touched on this a little bit earlier, but it kind of maybe a little more in depth.

00:12:57 Jason Lazarus
The key thing to remember as a trial attorney is that you want to do what's best for your client and make sure that they are protected into the future. And that's really what it's about, is making sure, ultimately, that the recovery is put to work in a way that helps that plaintiff as much as possible. For most personal injury victims, the money that they're going to receive is not sufficient to take care of them well into the future, particularly catastrophic cases.

00:13:29 Jason Lazarus
You know, I mean, you can have live care plans that are $7,500 million. Well, you know, even the most catastrophic cases are not going to settle for anywhere near that kind of money. And so, for example, $5 million sounds like a lot of money. Well, if you have $100 million in future care, it's not that much. And so the planning that's done to make sure that they have access to government benefits, which can pay for the majority of care, then that $5 million can really work for that injured party to provide for things that the government assistance basics doesn't provide for, so helps them have a better quality of life, have better mobility equipment if

00:14:17 Jason Lazarus
they're, you know, mobility challenged or mobility disabilities, or, you know, if they're severely brain injured, there's more attendant care available because government assistance is only going to cover so much that money can be used to pay for those other things. So this type of planning creates a framework for the injured party that will take care of them for the rest of their lives.

00:14:44 Jason Lazarus
That that type of planning is key in catastrophic cases.

00:14:50 Tracy Liberatore
I think it's almost key for life. Right. I think we forget this too. But no, you're absolutely right, because these people are not going to be able to work and they are going to have their regular bills to pay. And I know, you know, we sit here and think, well, gee, 5 million sounds like a lot of money, but think about all of the famous athletes that we hear about that blow through it, right?

00:15:10 Tracy Liberatore
And I mean, I just think people regular day to day people working people that come into this large amount of money don't know what to do with it, don't know how to manage it. And it really is something that even I didn't start thinking about till much later in life is like, you know, living off of a large sum of money is really the way to have your financial freedom, you know, necessarily.

00:15:31 Tracy Liberatore
So it's interesting. I think it's a good point for all of us to sort of take in.

00:15:36 Jason Lazarus
Yeah, it's important for anyone really, not just someone, but it's.

00:15:41 Tracy Liberatore
Especially they don't have the capabilities of being able to go out and find work anymore. And so like, yeah, really being able to live out the rest of their life with some sort of support. And so and as another point for your, you know, the Medicare and Medicaid, I think a lot of attorneys maybe think, oh, well, maybe we'll just figure this out later.

00:16:01 Tracy Liberatore
But why do you think that is maybe more of a dangerous approach instead of hitting that up front?

00:16:06 Jason Lazarus
Depending on timing you, you can foreclose someone's eligibility. And that in and of itself could create a malpractice exposure for the trial lawyer. So, you know, being proactive and dealing with these issues in advance, one obviously makes sure that something is not missed or, you know, escapes the experts eye. But, you know, to being proactive allows that client to better understand what's going on, what needs to be done.

00:16:40 Jason Lazarus
Being proactive helps the law firm understand what needs to be done. And time is is not on your side. Once the case is in a posture to settle, meaning there's a rush typically at that point, because the client wants relief and they want access to the money. Well, if you start after the case is settled, then it becomes a bit of a time crunch, because there's there's time that it takes to do what's necessary to plan for someone that's disabled and on these types of benefits.

00:17:16 Jason Lazarus
And then you add on top dealing with the liens. And I mean, there's so many things that, you know, can cause a bottleneck at settlement. So being proactive about these issues helps to prevent that from occurring.

00:17:33 Tracy Liberatore
Is there anything else that, you know, after the settlement happens or after settlement is reached that we haven't discussed already, that you feel is important for many attorneys to know that maybe they might otherwise overlook.

00:17:44 Jason Lazarus
A tough question in the sense of there's a lot of things really, you know, to nail down a few things. I think being aware that there are things that, for example, Medicaid liens that can have a process, or Medicare conditional payments, for example, that have processes that are set by statute, that have time frames, that if you're not cognizant of that, that can that can be really problematic.

00:18:15 Jason Lazarus
If you don't plan for that, the client doesn't understand, hey, this may take a little bit of time. Once the case is in a posture for resolution to. So, you know, that's just one of, you know, a myriad of things. I, I've written a book on this subject. So I mean, it's not like it's it's succinct, typically speaking, but, you know, it also varies based on what the situation is, what the client, what type of benefits did they receive when they were injured, what type of health insurance plan were they covered by, or what plans?

00:18:53 Jason Lazarus
Because oftentimes people can be on a lot of different types of plans, or someone can when they're injured. Beyond Medicare Part A and part B, traditional Medicare, but then they transition a part C, which is private coverage, but Medicare dollars and some different issues that arise with that. So what's going on in the case is going to drive some of the the questions and issues.

00:19:22 Tracy Liberatore
And then as far as like say, Medicare, Medicaid, special needs trust, I think a lot of people or even attorneys hear these words. And it kind of is like overwhelming to think of these big things. It's almost I know we've said this specialty area, really, are there any some of the biggest misconceptions around these things, like the set asides and the payments and the eligibility, special needs, stress and all these things that you can talk about that maybe simplify anything for our guests, our listeners today.

00:19:51 Jason Lazarus
You know, I mean, it does sound like gobbling look, right. There's all these acronyms S and T, MSA, you know, conditional payments. And the key thing really is to understand 30,000ft level. You've got typically two primary medical programs that are government needs based assistance for entitlement, which is Medicaid and Medicare, SSI and SSDI. So Medicaid and SSI are for those that are disabled and indigent.

00:20:29 Jason Lazarus
So Medicaid is health care, SSI is Supplemental Security Income. That's just a monthly disability benefit. If someone's worked enough quarters, they'll have Medicare. And then if they become disabled, they get Social Security disability, SSDI benefits, which are Social Security benefits. Those are entitlements. They're not needs based. But then you're dealing with the Medicare Secondary Payer Act. So understanding just as a trial lawyer broadly, these classifications, understanding that they require some thoughtfulness in the way that case is resolved is really the key.

00:21:10 Jason Lazarus
And then, you know, if you want to do a deep dive, like I said, I've written a book on this. It's it's good to put you to sleep before you go to bed because it is so darn heavy and complex, you know, as, as a lawyer, having spent a fair bit of time with, with these laws, it it really is fairly complex but manageable if you know how to issue spot for trial lawyers.

00:21:38 Jason Lazarus
That's really it. I try to, you know, what I write and how I educate is how do you issue spot because that's key. And then you bring in experts like me or others. There's there's certainly many others in this field who can then help you navigate. That's the key is as a lawyer knowing, okay, I'm outside my my area of expertise.

00:22:02 Jason Lazarus
Right. Like, you know, as a trial lawyer, you typically aren't going to go and litigate a business dispute or, you know, you're not going to get into the legalities around AI or because there's, you know, any area of the law is it's impossible to know everything. So you really have to have on your speed dial people that understand some of these expert areas.

00:22:30 Jason Lazarus
That's, you know, why my company synergy, we've got hundreds of people that have deep subrogation experience coming from working for recovery contractors, because you need to have that expertise and understanding to be able to negotiate and get the best results. And when you're negotiating and resolving a lean. So, you know, having that that team of experts standing behind you as a trial lawyer is really what is going to make ultimately your practice as protected as it possibly can, because that's really the key thing is, is not making an error that causes malpractice exposure.

00:23:11 Jason Lazarus
It's risk mitigation.

00:23:12 Tracy Liberatore
No. Absolutely. Yeah. And on that note, I guess what is the biggest mistake that you see that attorneys make when you're dealing with them that end up costing their clients significant money?

00:23:23 Jason Lazarus
When it comes to liens, it's not understanding the leverage points that typically will get the best reduction for the injured party, or not understanding the processes or the law. You know, for example, with Medicare, there is a standard reduction formula. But there are these processes that we use that you can get Medicare to issue a refund after they've received payment for the final demand.

00:23:57 Jason Lazarus
That is a, you know, a way of making sure that the client gets more net whole dollars from their recovery. So not understanding that those mechanisms is, you know, a big issue for trial lawyers, if they're if they don't understand it and they shouldn't have to or really understand those nuances, as we discussed. And certainly, you know, even paralegals or people within the law firm are not going to have that subject matter expertise.

00:24:33 Jason Lazarus
You really need folks that understand the inside baseball of that all when it comes to Medicaid and Medicare. It's not knowing what you don't know. And the, you know, letting the client walk out the door without proper counseling and advice on their legal options to preserve government benefits, for example, that that certainly exposes you to a malpractice claim because there are quantifiable damages that you can quantify the loss of those government benefits, what that means to that personal injury victim.

00:25:10 Jason Lazarus
And, you know, on the just the management side of the recovery, it's very common to allow personal injury victims to walk out the door without the right kind of guidance and counseling and experts to give them optionality so that they can make the best decision about their futures. I call it a transition from litigation, a life you're the injury victim has been dealing with this litigation, which can be all consuming.

00:25:38 Jason Lazarus
I know for me it was very difficult juggling all that with working and trying to, you know, recover from my injuries. So, you know, without getting this kind of guidance, you've even flicked it another injury really on that person. Because if the planning hasn't been done correctly or they don't understand that they've got these options, then that client hasn't hasn't been given the best possible representation, ultimately critical money, you know, because as we said, most injured parties are not receiving full compensation for their injuries.

00:26:21 Jason Lazarus
They're getting, you know, some some fraction of the total damages that they've suffered because the case settled, you know, because there's only policy limits available, say there's only 100 grand available, but they've got millions of dollars in damages. Well, they're limited to the 100 grand or, you know, sometimes there's liability issues or causation issues, whatever it may be, that causes a case to sell for a fraction of what full value is.

00:26:48 Tracy Liberatore
Sure. No. Absolutely. So can you share a story with us where one of your proper settlement planning had dramatically changed someone future? Is there any case that you've worked on, or something that stands out in your mind that you'd like to share?

00:27:01 Jason Lazarus
Great question. There's there's a lot of them. I think what stands out in my mind is just this more broad concept of hearing from clients say, you know, the planning that was done has meant everything in terms of being able to live the rest of their life the way they want to live, or having that team around them because of the planning that was done that lets them experience life in a way that is fitting for, you know, what they wanted ultimately.

00:27:42 Jason Lazarus
And you know, that to me is is such a beautiful thing and is the end goal of this type of work is to make sure that that injured party can live with dignity in a way that they want, having the things they need as a result of what they've suffered. So because some of these cases are just so devastating to to see what people have been through and knowing that you get to play a part in helping to protect them, whether it's, you know, making sure there's more money in the pot for them, finding liens or the planning surrounding this, you know, is is really a great, great feeling to to experience.

00:28:38 Tracy Liberatore
I don't know if we'd have much of a conversation or show if we didn't talk about AI at this point, right.

00:28:46 Tracy Liberatore
So in your expertise in your field, I mean, we know medicine law. I mean, this is like the hot topic now to talk about, right? So have you seen or how do you foresee the use of AI in what you're doing. Negative impacts, positive impacts. How are you using it. Anything on that?

00:29:04 Jason Lazarus
Yeah. You know, we have just recently launched a new company that is a technology solution for law firms to identify and verify claims that are being made against a personal injury settlement. And because today that's something that, for example, law firms do same thing with lien resolution as well. These are tasks that law firms take on that. Really technology and outsourcing providers can do better more efficiently.

00:29:39 Jason Lazarus
And so in my opinion the the the key thing for AI is for personal injury firms is really looking at their law practices, understanding what tasks could be done by technology, and then leveraging that after you've analyzed the time savings that can be achieved by doing that. Because then, you know, the the law firm staff can focus on the human interaction with the injured party and, you know, helping to increase value of the recovery versus dealing with some of the ins and outs of administrative burden that law firms today still continue to take on.

00:30:28 Jason Lazarus
So I see this these technologies that are evolving very quickly as ways to continue to enhance the practice of law by leveraging them. I mean, for me personally, not about you. I use it every single day for a million different things. That accelerates what I do. I use it particularly in my podcast. Like you, I'm I'm a podcast host too, so it's incredibly helpful.

00:31:04 Jason Lazarus
I mean, what used to take me hours of prep is like minutes now. I mean, it's it's insane and incredible what it can do. And so I think we are at such a early stage of what this will look like. You know, for example, with law firms, you've got the traditional case management software systems that are now launching AI as part of their systems.

00:31:34 Jason Lazarus
Then you've got pure AI systems that are taking on a lot of facets of some of the administrative burdens for law firms. And, well, which one's going to win, like are the case management systems going to buy up all these AI players or the AI players and buy them up because there's so much money pouring specifically into the plaintiff personal injury technology space?

00:32:01 Jason Lazarus
It's it's incredible. I mean, some of these companies are being valued at billions of dollars without, you know, really the traditional revenue benchmarks to to drive that valuation because there is so much potential for technology to be deployed in those spaces. The key thing to me is just making sure that it doesn't take the place of some of the more key things that you need a human in the loop.

00:32:31 Jason Lazarus
Even our AI technology solution that we've built is a human in the loop. We have subrogation experts that are part of that process. Same thing in a personal injury practice, or really any way you're using it, is making sure the human in the loop is, you know, an important part of that particularly, you know, personal injury is intensely personal by definition.

00:32:55 Jason Lazarus
I mean, I you know, what I went through was very personal. It impacted every aspect of my life. And so, you know, for law firms, understanding that and not using technology as a way to avoid, you know, interaction with the client, but to enhance interaction with the client, enhance their ability to represent that client, to me, are the key ways that AI is going to be leveraged in the future.

00:33:23 Tracy Liberatore
Oh, absolutely. I know in the medical expert space, we're seeing a lot of experts who are kind of getting in trouble for using it to help them either write reports or they can't testify to their report. They don't even know the content. So it's like an overused and depending on it, where it's making up cases and hallucinating and doing all these things.

00:33:42 Tracy Liberatore
But on the other hand, it really helps you get organized and to do a lot of things and make some of the other tasks more. I mean, I created a like like you did my business, an AI teaching training guide to help, you know, medical experts learn how to write, because I've been teaching these things for ten years.

00:33:58 Tracy Liberatore
And so some of the stuff that I do all the time, you can delegate that to help. But there's still certainly with the analysis piece going to need that human interaction. And I think especially in court, you need that experience of the expert to be able to speak to that. And if the expert can't speak to that, and that's where they're kind of getting in trouble in the medical expert space.

00:34:18 Tracy Liberatore
And do you see anything like that in the space you're in now where people are not using it properly and sort of getting into trouble for using it?

00:34:25 Jason Lazarus
I mean, there's certainly been instances I don't have personal knowledge of it, but you've seen, you know, some of the news around, you know, lawyers on both sides of the V using it in a way that it hallucinated cases. And see, I mean, you just have to be very careful and understand what it can do, what it's good at, what it can't do.

00:34:49 Jason Lazarus
I mean, it's it's just like anything else, you have to use things knowing what their limitations are and what their capabilities are. If you don't have that understanding, you shouldn't be using it in the first place.

00:35:02 Tracy Liberatore
Yeah, that's very true. Very true. Yeah. And I've actually seen it extend to the lawyers getting into trouble with the courts because they didn't check the experts work because the expert didn't, you know, and it's just like, you know, at what point does this become who's you know, who's in trouble for it? I guess they're just everybody is at this point for now.

00:35:20 Tracy Liberatore
It'll be interesting to see how this all works and plays itself out. So how about for you? I'd like to talk a little bit about your books and your education. I know you've mentioned your your one book at least, and so maybe you'd like tell us a little bit about if you want to tell us the book titles or I know you've written several and why is it so important to you?

00:35:40 Jason Lazarus
So I've written two books so far. Third book is in process. It's about to go to the publisher and for final editing. But the first book was called Art of settlement, which was a guide for personal injury firms, paralegals, trial lawyers, legal professionals to really educate on issues, spotting what I had talked about, giving this kind of broad based guide for law firms to leverage when they're representing cost injured.

00:36:14 Jason Lazarus
And then I decided to write a book for the injured parties. That's called litigation of life, so that they better understand what to expect. It's kind of a what to expect when you're involved in personal injury litigation. Guide for the injured. And, you know, I wrote that because I knew how difficult it was for me being a professional in the space to navigate all of this, much less be someone who's never had any experience in the personal injury system.

00:36:51 Jason Lazarus
So I wanted to write something that would help give those people a better understanding of what's going on when the case is about to resolve. Obviously, personal injury attorney guides them through the personal injury case, but this is a guide, sort of what to expect when a case is settling. If you're, you know, catastrophically injured. And the educational piece for me has always been important because, you know, ultimately, I want to make sure that everybody has the tools and information as it relates to this area of the law so that they make the right decisions, whether it's a personal injury firm, making the right decisions about how to advise their clients, and dealing with liens

00:37:42 Jason Lazarus
and government assistance and the financial aspects, and for the injured party is understanding all of that so they can make the best possible decision for themselves. Just knowing how critical this particular area is, I mean, not that's the thing is, you know, this is not you know, and you articulated this earlier, people that are catastrophically injured, they don't go back to work.

00:38:07 Jason Lazarus
They've permanently they've retired, and they don't ever get enough money to take care of themselves for the rest of their lives. So this is important, you know, because the alternative becomes, you know, they wind up having nothing left from their recovery, and they're completely dependent upon society. And that that's really not what we want. We want people as protected as they possibly can be when something like this happens.

00:38:35 Tracy Liberatore
Yeah. No, absolutely. It's hard and bad enough to have suffered the injury itself and then to have to have nothing left after that. So devastation after devastation. Right. And that sense. So if a young attorney wants to build a practice kind of like you around this catastrophic injury litigation, what would you tell them or what should they learn first?

00:38:54 Tracy Liberatore
Where would they even begin?

00:38:55 Jason Lazarus
Yeah, I don't know that you necessarily have to to, to get into the niche that I've, I've found myself and I mean, I think, you know, if you're if someone's interested in this, it's going to be kind of a probably just some experiences that they have lead them into this, this area. But it really becomes an area where you have to self educate because it's not like there's a degree even like I mean, I went back and got my degree in elder law because it it has overlap with disability law.

00:39:31 Jason Lazarus
I mean, in essence, elder, the elderly and the disabled have similar but not the same legal issues. So there's not even, you know, a specific degree that you can get in this. There are, you know, designations. For example, I've, I've got a designation for Medicare set aside consultancy. So you got to go through those those type of things to become, you know, educated as an expert in these areas.

00:40:04 Jason Lazarus
I mean, for the personal injury attorney, I think it's critical for them to have some underpinning and understanding of all this stuff. Not, you know, they certainly don't need to be the expert in it. Right? That's that's the whole point of what I've been saying. But, you know, reading a book like the book I've written will help them understand issue spotting or go out and, you know, do some continuing legal education webinars.

00:40:31 Jason Lazarus
There's plenty of stuff that we've put out there that helps attorneys and paralegals understand these, these particular issues to better represent their clients. So I think, you know, both those are two answers to the question.

00:40:45 Tracy Liberatore
Sure. So if somebody were just thinking, hey, I really like how it sounds, I want to help people sort of like Jason. I mean, they need to start where law school, basically.

00:40:54 Jason Lazarus
I mean, like, there are people in the profession that are not lawyers. You know, you can certainly be a lean negotiator. You can be an advisor on the financial aspects of a personal injury recovery without being a lawyer. I mean, that was part of what I did when I first got out of actively handling litigated matters, was I was doing more consulting on the the financial part of the recovery and how to manage everything.

00:41:23 Jason Lazarus
So you don't have to be a lawyer to do that. There are certainly careers within this space that you don't have to be a lawyer to do. But, you know, if you really want to do legal work that helps the injured party, then go to a law school.

00:41:42 Tracy Liberatore
Yeah, I find it interesting because I was in a similar situation myself. You don't necessarily have to be a lawyer to do what I do with medical experts, but it certainly helps with the understanding. And I sort of have felt now, ever since going through law school, I feel like I needed to go through law school just to survive every day, like day to day life.

00:42:01 Tracy Liberatore
Knowing the law just helps with that too.

00:42:04 Jason Lazarus
So that teaches you some important skills, both writing, oral. You know you're speaking skill sets that you develop through, that you're.

00:42:15 Tracy Liberatore
Reading the contract. Yeah, everything you do is a contract. It's crazy. All right. So how about some quick questions here at the end. Biggest career lesson.

00:42:25 Jason Lazarus
I mean, I think the biggest thing I've I've learned in my career is that what got you here won't necessarily get you to where you ultimately want to go in, in building a company. So my, my company synergy, we started with five people in 2008. Today it's over 100 people, you know, in 2026. And the journey and how I've had to evolve myself as a leader, you know, eventually stepping aside as CEO to allow the company to have some different leadership and grow in different ways, but yet still be part of the organization.

00:43:05 Jason Lazarus
You really have to reinvent yourself and evolve in your career, because when I start out in my career, I thought I was going to be a litigator. Well, here I am now. I'm in an alternative legal career and started a company and grown. I mean, it's always going to be a bit of a crooked path. And so you've got to be able to to recognize your weaknesses and your strengths and how you use that and deploy that to get to the right destination.

00:43:37 Jason Lazarus
And it's always going to change.

00:43:39 Tracy Liberatore
That's a great piece of advice. So on the heels of that best advice you ever received?

00:43:43 Jason Lazarus
I've got a a lot of people I've worked with over the years that have coached me, and I really believe wholeheartedly in coaching, because you can't see the forest for the trees when you're mired in in everyday minutia. And some of the best advice I've gotten has been around recognizing that when there's extraordinary stresses going on within a business or within your career, or even personally, you have to give yourself grace to realize you're not going to be able to operate at 100%, because if there's something going on that takes away 20, 30, 40%, and you're only operating that, you have to give yourself grace and understand that you can't place the same expectations and

00:44:37 Jason Lazarus
demands on your body, on your mind, when you're not at full strength. I mean, I obviously when I was going through my recovery from my my personal injury case, that was like and it was so hard because I just wanted to get back to normalcy and really pushed hard to get there. But I didn't really realize how much was being drained away from my capabilities, from the physical and mental recovery aspect of that.

00:45:09 Tracy Liberatore
No, absolutely. That's great advice. How about a most memorable case if you have one? I know we asked sort of that question earlier.

00:45:17 Jason Lazarus
Most memorable case is one where I helped a family. They had been involved in a very serious motor vehicle accident. Mom and dad in three kids. Mom and dad were significantly injured. Two of their daughters were killed, the third was paralyzed, and they were the most positive, amazing people to be around. And I, I struggled to understand how you could maintain that kind of positivity with such a catastrophic situation.

00:45:51 Jason Lazarus
I mean, I've got three kids and I could not imagine losing to and having your third be in that situation and being able to maintain that kind of positivity. So that's always stood out my mind. And there's a lot of others I just incredible situations that people seem to have, you know, this ability to overcome that I wish I, I understood because it's amazing.

00:46:22 Tracy Liberatore
I can still hear you on that because it's something and I don't know why, but I think regularly I have three children as well. And like, you know, you see these different things in the line of work that we do. Right? And it's just like, how do you ever recover? Like, because I think about my kids and myself and I just, I don't know, I mean, would I be strong enough to recover from that?

00:46:44 Tracy Liberatore
It's hard to know. God, I hope I never have to find out.

00:46:47 Jason Lazarus
Or just, you know, seeing how some parents become these incredible caregivers when a spouse is catastrophically injured and seeing how much they care. And then I've seen the flip side to where, you know, you see, there isn't that care. And you know that planning to protect that injured party is really critical in those situations, protecting them from their own family.

00:47:12 Tracy Liberatore
Absolutely. Both. Very great points. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Let's see the little personal here. How about you. Where did you grow up. Were there many siblings you know.

00:47:21 Jason Lazarus
Yeah. Zero siblings. I'm an only child, which I get reminded of every day by my better half.

00:47:27 Tracy Liberatore
She's like.

00:47:28 Jason Lazarus
You're such an only child. I was I was born in Brooklyn, New York. My parents were born and raised in Brooklyn, and they moved to Jersey when I was three, so lived there until I was ten. And then I've been in Florida ever since. My family relocated here to my parents, started a business here in Orlando, and so it's probably part of why I ultimately started a company was that entrepreneurial spirit.

00:47:55 Jason Lazarus
And but I've been in Orlando for a very long time now, since 1980. So I've seen Orlando grow from basically Walt Disney World to what is now a very bustling, large city with a lot of obviously tourism at its at its center, but still a great place to to live and raise a family.

00:48:19 Tracy Liberatore
Oh great. And have a biggest influence on your life?

00:48:23 Jason Lazarus
I would say my parents, they are still around, thankfully declining in health. It's tough to watch that with with where they are, but they're still they're still around. I didn't know the last night. And so, you know, that's incredible that I still have the opportunity to actually live right around the corner for me in my community. There's a retirement community within a very large master plan community, so I can literally walk to where they are, which is a beautiful thing.

00:48:56 Tracy Liberatore
That's great. Yeah, no, for most of my adult life, I had lived, it was like 9/10 of a mile from where I grew up. So we were always been close with my parents. Now I've moved about 20 minutes away, but I think it's also great for, and I, I imagine your kids to, to really get to know their grandparents and have that very fortunate.

00:49:13 Tracy Liberatore
I'm very fortunate. You're very fortunate that our parents are still around, and I'm struggling as well with the declining health and looking at them and thinking, oh, I grew up, they were my age and now they're they say it's just one of those things that you're like sort of watching and observing, right?

00:49:28 Jason Lazarus
I've been working very hard of late on my, my own longevity and just hopefully not being in the same situation, like with some of the health challenges that they've they've had.

00:49:39 Tracy Liberatore
As a society. I think we've all grown a little more health conscious. Great. So what do you enjoy doing outside of work?

00:49:45 Jason Lazarus
So I am very much an avid fitness still cycle, although I don't ride and race like I used to, and I'm very careful about where I ride these days. And then I race cars, which is another dangerous activity. But so there's a little bit of a theme there. I actually instruct other people and learning how to drive on track, and so I, I find that it's the one place where I can really clear my mind, because you really have to clear your mind and not be thinking about work or anything else.

00:50:24 Jason Lazarus
When you're going 160 miles an hour, you got to be you got to be on point. So it's a great way for me to challenge myself, keep keep my mental skills, you know, sharp and also be able to focus on something other than the day to day stuff that we all struggle with.

00:50:46 Tracy Liberatore
Final question if every lawyer listening can make one change tomorrow, that would immediately improve the outcomes for catastrophically injured clients, what would that change be?

00:50:56 Jason Lazarus
Well, I think for personal injury firms is having a process within the firm to identify these types of cases and make sure that ultimately they are flagged within the law firms case management system and the people handling it understand that there are issues that need to be dealt with, and experts that probably need to be retained to help make sure that that the outcome of that case is optimal.

00:51:24 Jason Lazarus
You know, it's just like with, with with experts, it's critical to have the right experts on your side when you're litigating a case, you know, in terms of proving up your case. Same thing goes when the case is being resolved as well. So and most firms just don't have specific processes to to do this. And you know, I use a a very simple acronym.

00:51:50 Jason Lazarus
It's CAD consult advise document consult with experts, advise your client, document everything you're doing. Protect your cart.

00:51:59 Tracy Liberatore
Well Jason, this is really been a fantastic conversation. If you could now just maybe tell everyone if they're looking to try to get in touch with you. Where can you be found?

00:52:08 Jason Lazarus
Well, the easiest way to to find me is through my company synergy, which is a healthcare lien resolution company. It's partner with synergy. Synergy. I give out my cell phone to. If you've got a challenging case that you need help with. You can reach me at 407 6874165. And then I've got my law practice, which is special needs firm, special needs law firm, special needs firm is the website.

00:52:38 Jason Lazarus
And you can also find my books and information at Jason de Lazarus. Com.

00:52:46 Tracy Liberatore
Yep. And your podcast is.

00:52:48 Jason Lazarus
Trial Lawyer you. So I interview mostly trial lawyers but also industry experts, paralegals trying to help law firms better understand some of the challenging issues, not just related to what I do, but more importantly, how to optimize their practices using technology, marketing, AI. You know, all these things that are topical for law firm to to maintain peak practice.

00:53:16 Tracy Liberatore
Well, thank you again for taking the time to be with us today. I really appreciate all of the information you shared with us.

00:53:24 Jason Lazarus
Great to join you today.

00:53:25 Tracy Liberatore
If today's episode changed how you'll read your next medical record, consider sharing it with a colleague and follow the show so you don't miss future conversations with trial attorneys. Shaping the space statutes and stethoscopes is brought to you by Med Legal Pro, where I match attorneys with rigorously vetted medical experts and turn complex records into court ready work product.

00:53:47 Tracy Liberatore
If you're sitting on a case where the medical evidence isn't adding up, consider submitting it for a review. I'm Tracy Liberatore and I'll see you in the next episode.