THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

‘Day In The Life’ Videos

Often Tell Stories Better Than You

By Mark Fierro

Read our Digital Issue

So, your personal injury client realizes they’ve been wronged and no one is willing to step up to the plate. That usually results in a call that says, “We’re going to sue.”

Insurance companies have elaborate mechanisms and formulas that can take a terrible human condition resulting from their insured’s negligence—something that caused con-siderable emotional suffering—and reduce damages to a cold, calculated settlement offer. Loss of a limb: this much. Two limbs? That much. Those amounts are aimed at not only compensating the injured, but also at convincing the law firm of the injured to forego the work and time and simply settle.

Yes, there are times for settlement. But when the circumstances surrounding injuries or death are so egregious—resulting from such negligence or bad acting that you and your client have decided there is no alternative—there are times when you and your client must fight.

When a law firm decides to push back and push back hard, one of the tools they can create to potentially influence an insurance adjuster or the jury is a “Day in the Life” video. These videos are often produced for personal injury, family law cases, cases involving complex business issues, and even in administrative cases where professionals find themselves under attack. The goal is to weave in and present the survivor’s human emotion and pain to the viewer in a very focused, strategic manner.

“A ‘Day in the Life’ video fills in the spaces between the facts and gives the case life.”

-Richard Harris, Esq.

A good “Day in the Life” video boils down many of a case’s salient elements, but what it truly focuses on is the emotion that could be brought into the courtroom…emotion that the defendants will find themselves up against. It will also give the perspective of the plaintiff’s life prior to the event. It will lay out the arc of their life. What kind of person they were…where they were in their career. And, it will show the devastation that resulted from the negligence of the defendant.

Richard Harris, Esq., of Richard Harris Law Firm is one attorney who has benefited from arguing cases using “Day in the Life” videos.

“The facts are the facts,” says Harris, a personal injury attorney in Las Vegas, Nev., for more than 35 years. “As a lawyer, you can talk about the facts. But a ‘Day in the Life’ video fills in the spaces between the facts and gives the case life.”

“It is said that all important decisions are rooted in emotion,” he continues, “whether it’s [making] a major purchase; choosing a profession; being on a jury; or, as an adjuster, giving authority for settlement of a particular claim. It’s all rooted in emotion. So the idea of a ‘Day in the Life’ video is to take the elements of the case and present them so that [they] yield a response from an adjuster, from a juror, from a defense attorney….When they watch the video, they’re going to say, ‘Wow, that moved me, and I’m the cynic. Imagine what’s going to happen with the jury?’

“ [A video] allows for an assessment of a claim in a very real way. It causes things to happen.”

Showing a “Day in the Life” video that illustrates how an incident or injury profoundly changed and damaged an individual’s life can pack a potent punch, according to Harris.
“You can talk about it in the abstract,” Harris says. “But when you have a video that shows the person before the accident, going about their activities in their happy life, and compare it [to] how their life is now and all the difficulty they are going through…that is very powerful stuff. It’s the same thing with a wrongful death case. When you don’t have your client there, you can show the value of their life, the vacuum that exists in the survivors’ lives, the great loss, [and] how life will never be the same for their loved ones.

“That’s the essence of these ‘Day in the Life’ videos,” he adds. “It’s to tell the story. And the story cannot be told in any better way than through video.”

It is important to note the major differences between a standard legal videographer and an expert in the field of creating “Day in the Life” videos, according to Harris. A professional with a rich background in producing “Day in the Life” videos who understands journalism, and the necessary balance of tension and storytelling found in well-reported news, will make the presentation much more compelling and achieve results you need to support your position as you fight for your client.

Fierro Communications, Inc., is a full-service public relations and marketing firm with video production assets and a wealth of media contacts in Southern Nevada and throughout the United States. The firm specializes in providing “Day in the Life” videos; op-ed pieces; books; and press materials, among other pieces, for the legal community across the country. Owner/Founder Mark Fierro is the author of two books and has appeared on national news broadcasts including CNN, Entertainment Tonight and ABC’s 20/20. Initial consultations for litigation support are always free of charge.