Plaintiff structured settlement experts stray from the path

In part two of my commentary this week on the questionable marketing and side tracked mission of the plaintiff side of the structured settlement profession, I look at what I consider to be the four major flaws plaguing the plaintiff only side of the structured settlements. You can read part one of my earlier commentary on this by clicking here.

The problems as I see them are:

1. Brokers who state they are a “plaintiff experts” when in fact they are opportunists who work for whomever has the power in a particular case or transaction.  One of the biggest trends of the last 5 to 7 years is the almost comical rush by previously "defense exclusive" structured settlement brokers to rebrand themselves as plaintiff experts. In many cases their only pitch to trial lawyers is that " we worked for the casualty companies for years and we can get your case settled faster because they know us and trust us." Really? If your competitive position is that you are exploiting your long standing relationship with defendants for your new "friends" in the plaintiff bar, simply so you can get a commission, can I also assume you would just as quickly sell out a plaintiff if it meant you getting paid by a defendant. In short, these guys blow with the wind and who ever pays best and are no more friends of plaintiffs then a fox is friends with a barn full of chickens.

2. Using long ago discarded claims practices such as rebating or post case underwriting to needlessly defame and discredit structured settlements being offered by defendants, simply to get yourself inserted into a case. As anyone who has read my commentary over the years can attest, I've been very rough on the defense side of our profession and the claims practices they perpetuated in the business for years. However, I am here to tell you that most of those abuses are gone, the few remaining are on their last legs and it's time for plaintiff guys to move on. The continual rehashing of stories and tactics that haven't been practiced for years does nothing at this point other then discredit our profession, our products and diminish us in the eyes of trial lawyers. As I stated in my last post, calling everyone else a crook or clueless doesn't elevate you, it just drags down our professional status with trial lawyers and diminishes our value in their eyes and the eyes of their clients. In short, if all you bring to the table is that you are less rotten and less crooked than the other guy, you can probably expect to be replaced when your product is no longer competitive. ( Oh wait, thats where we are now, right?)

3. Lavishing contributions, “soft money” and entering into business deals with trial lawyers or their professional associations simply to try and get the same “exclusive agent status” that was at the heart of many of the defense abuses and hubris over the decades. This is the one that really gets me. I would contend that few brokers in my business have been a bigger friend and ally of trial lawyers than I have. However, the attempts by many structured settlement experts to buy access and endorsements from trial lawyer groups and associations is both sickening and ultimately diminishes our profession. While anyone is free to donate to political campaigns and support trial lawyer groups, the fact that our profession is now often the first ones called to write a check for trial lawyers indicates not our loyalty but that we are being viewed as patsies and an easy mark when it is time to raise funds. We need more professionals willing to say no to this financial arm twisting and our requests for pay to play exclusivity as the "approved broker" for an associations members. We need to instead stand on our professional competence and our ability to help lawyers resolve difficult claims and to take care of their clients. When you continually hang a "for sale" sign around your neck, you will never be valued as a professional peer among trial lawyers.

4. Representing yourself as a settlement planning expert, when in fact you make most of your money from alternative investment products or brokering annuities, and you wouldn’t know what a MSA, SNT or QSF was if it hit you in the face. The professional training and education of many plaintiff structured settlement experts is woefully lacking with many of them unable to properly explain what a special needs trust is, when it is used, what a MSA is or why it is crucial to trial lawyers, not to mention the complete cluelessness on non-qualified annuity issues. We need as a profession to stop relying on a single product sale and start crafting complete solutions for injury victims.

In short, the plaintiff structured settlement experts need to get out of the past and stop telling lawyers to not go on cruises because the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank a 100 years ago. Get over the past, shape a coherent and professional rationale as to why we provide value to trial lawyers and injury victims and get started spreading that message. The days of scare tactics, trading on inside information and attempting to buy loyalty must come to an end or our profession is going to stay stuck in the mud.

( Mark Wahlstrom is the President of Wahlstrom and Associates, one of the nations leading experts in structured settlements, settlement planning and structured legal fees. Based in Scottsdale, AZ he also writes for The Settlement Channel and hosts the weekly show Speaking of Settlements.)

“Every one in my profession is either incompetent or a crook but me…”

Last week I was having lunch with one of my friends in the structured settlement profession and we were talking about old times when we started in the claims and structured settlement business. The conversation turned to the claims and settlement practices that we commonly accepted and practiced in that era during the early 1980’s until the 1990’s, essentially agreeing that what passed as “aggressive negotiation tactics” then, would now get someone fired or even referred to the US Attorney for prosecution today. It was our mutual opinion that our profession has changed dramatically for the better over the years, with the current process by which settlements are negotiated and designed being far more equitable, transparent and largely eliminates most of the sins of the past.

We also both agreed that as a result of the efforts of a few tough pioneers on the plaintiff side of the settlement profession, companies were force to slowly admit that in order for the settlement profession to continue to grow and proper, that there had to be representation on both sides of the settlement transaction in order to temper the excesses and worst impulses of both defendants and plaintiffs. The result is that today we typically have settlement professionals on both sides of most cases and that trial lawyers and injury victims who decide to engage in negotiations or purchase a structured settlement with out a top professional by their side, do so by choice, not because they aren’t aware of the availability of settlement experts willing to assist them in the decision process.

So, if the settlement business is now more balanced and professional in it’s treatment of most injury victims, why do I keep bringing up all this dark history you might ask?

Largely because it is my belief that many of the worst business practices, intellectual laziness and marketing abuses practiced by defense brokers decades ago, are now permeating the plaintiff side of the profession and threaten to ruin our brand permanently with the very people who must make the important decision to structure or not structure. As someone who had a direct hand in establishing the plaintiff settlement profession, as well as one of the biggest advocates of the rights of injury victims and trial lawyers to informed representation, I think I have sufficient credibility and experience to call out the new breed of “plaintiff brokers” who I believe are directly and indirectly poisoning our professions reputation.

I will cover a lot of issues in detail in part two of this series, but as a preview, some of the topics to be covered are:

1. Brokers who state they are a “plaintiff experts” when in fact they are a opportunists who work for whomever has the power in a particular case or transaction. 

2. Using long ago discarded claims practices such as rebating or post case underwriting to needlessly defame and discredit structured settlements being offered by defendants, simply to get yourself inserted into a case.

3. Lavishing contributions, “soft money” and entering into business deals with trial lawyers or their professional associations simply to try and get the same “exclusive agent status” that was at the heart of many of the defense abuses and hubris over the decades.

4. Representing yourself as a settlement planning expert, when in fact you make most of your money from alternative investment products or simply brokering annuities, and you wouldn’t know what a MSA, SNT or QSF was if it hit you in the face.

However, as egregious as those issues are, to me the single biggest destructive element that has infected the settlement profession is the professional jealousy and out right defamation of other brokers, all in the name of trying to get a marketing edge.

As I stated in the title of this post, most plaintiff experts marketing program to trial lawyers can be summed up in the concept that “ everyone else in my profession is a crook or incompetent so you need to hire me, I’m one of the “good ones.”

Let me sum it up like this ladies and gentleman. If all you every say, either overtly or by implication, is that our profession is filled with crooks, unethical brokers and incompetent planners with dubious motives, how long before trial lawyers, judges and plaintiffs start to view YOU as part of the same mess?

You can not possibly elevate yourself as a professional in the eyes of your existing and future clients if your business model is based on creating unreasonable fear of the product and the motives of the professionals in the business. All this while you blindly and naively throw money at trial lawyer groups in the vain hope that they will view you with admiration, when in fact they probably think your just as corrupt and incompetent as your competition, but you happen to be the patsy willing to finance their association or firms pet project, so they keep you around for a long as you are useful.

Sometimes the truth hurts and a lot of plaintiff settlement experts need to take a long look in the mirror and decide whether they are going to build a practice with enduring value to injury victims and trial lawyers, or if they want to take the short cuts and  the certain path to destruction of simply slandering your competition and buying the business, all in the hope that you will be rewarded by lawyers who most likely hold you in contempt because you are bought so cheaply and turn on your profession so easily.

( Mark Wahlstrom is the President of Wahlstrom & Associates and is generally considered to be one of the nations leading experts in structured settlements, settlement planning and structured legal fees. His commentary is available each week on The Settlement Channel and Speaking of Settlements.)

Speaking of Settlements, Sweep away the lies

In this weeks broadcast of Speaking of Settlements I review my two part commentary on the twin pillars of the structured settlement profession, and how one is solid and the other is crumbling as a result of fundamental flaws, lies and secrets.

I won’t rehash the written commentary, you can find them here on the blog posts, but if you want to watch a video summary of what is ailing the structured settlement profession, as well as some ideas of how we can restart sales once again, check out this weeks video commentary on Speaking of Settlements.

Every week I’ll provide both a written and video commentary on issues facing the structured settlement profession, settlement planning ideas and financial issues of interest to trial lawyers. You can follow me by reading the blog, or you can go to the Speaking of Settlements web site and view all of the similarly related content presented by a variety of lawyers, experts and settlement professionals.

( Mark Wahlstrom is the host of The Settlement Channel and is featured on Speaking of Settlements. He is generally considered one of the nations leading experts in structured settlements, settlement planning and structured legal fees.)