Jim Pattillo is an experienced litigator. In the past eight years, he has tried over 40 cases to verdict in a variety of areas including insurance coverage disputes, transportation liability, commercial litigation and professional liability. Mr. Pattillo is a frequent speaker and writer on a variety of topics regarding litigation and trial practice. He can be found at twitter.com/jimpattillo and linkedin.com/in/jimpattillo.
You are active in social media. What value has it added to your practice at this point?
“First of all, it helps me represent my clients in litigation by finding out information about opposing parties in an information over-sharing age. It’s almost not surprising anymore what things people post that would be relevant in litigation. It also it helps me interact with my corporate and insurance clients. We are able to relate more on a personal level.”
Do you have any examples of this?
“Any time I am defending a personal injury case, the first thing I do is go to Twitter, Facebook or Myspace and see if they have posted anything relevant to the case. For example, if somebody claims they were injured in a construction accident falling off a two story roof, and two weeks later they’ve posted something about water skiing out on Lake Martin, that’s certainly something I am going to print off into a PDF in case they decide to change it later.”
What are some of the limitations of social media as it pertains to what you do?
“From a business development standpoint, it has limited value. I work with corporations and insurance companies and those relationships are rarely established via social media. On the litigation side, there are a lot of specific rules about discovery, about how you can contact people on the other side that prevent me from taking full access of some things I would otherwise find. For example, if somebody is represented by an attorney, you can’t add them as a friend on Facebook. That would be considered an ethical violation–you have to contact them through their attorney. But, if they have something posted in a public format, if they don’t have their privacy settings set on their social network, then it’s fair game for me.”
What does Blueprint Birmingham mean for you as a small business?
“Birmingham is a city with immense potential. Blueprint Birmingham is probably the best plan for the city that has come along in quite some time. Not only does have the potential to increase the vitality and vibrancy of the city, it also has a roadmap for providing jobs, improving schools and boosting the economic center of Alabama. I’m very hopeful the steering committee will be able to take this plan to places that previous plans (like Region 2020 and MAPS) failed to go. Looking at the steering committee, this program seems to distinguish itself from its predecessors by a heavy involvement from the business community. I’m very optimistic that this plan can bring about real change for the city.”
Switching to health care, with the patients bill of rights coming into play recently, where did we win and lose? Both as individuals and small businesses?
“Some of the changes are considered consumer protections, but as they say, read the fine print. For example, preventative care is supposed to be covered at no cost. But there is an issue whether some preventative care actually prolongs life and thus may not be covered at all. Another example is the provision that requires insurance to pay for coverage at any emergency room regardless of whether it’s in the network. That’s good. But anyone that has been to an emergency room will tell you that they are already overcrowded. Now someone is faced with the possibility of not being able to see a primary care doctor (because it may not be covered if out of network) so they will just go to any ER for a problem that is not an emergency. That will make them even more crowded that they already are.
“Small businesses will certainly be affected. There are some tax credits that may be available to them. But the health care act also requires a certain percentage of any premium be contributed to actual health coverage. Employers may have to decide whether it is more cost efficient to provide health insurance for employees or to pay a fine and have employees purchase their own insurance through the new health insurance exchanges.”
Mr. Pattillo is speaking at a national meeting of defense lawyers in San Diego on Oct. 22, 2010 on “Social Networking for Litigation and Business Development” for the Defense Research Institute.
http://www.nwkt.com/default.aspx?id=328
http://www.dri.org/open/event_brochures/2010AM.pdf
