[00:00:00] Scott Distasio:
Before I started getting actively involved in trying to figure out how to make script for these things, we were getting 20, 30, 40 views. But um, now we're getting anywhere between 515,000 views. At the end of the day, if there's something you want to do and you're not doing it because of fear of the unknown, just dive in.
[00:00:22] Bobby Steinbach:
Welcome to Hot Docket, the show where we talk about winning marketing strategies that have built the most successful law firms.
[00:00:28] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Join us every two weeks for the latest trends and tactics to grow your law firm. Hey everybody,
[00:00:33] Bobby Steinbach:
and welcome to the Hot Docket Podcast. Today we have on with us Scott Distasio of the Distasio Law Firm, a Tampa personal injury and nursing home abuse slash medical malpractice law firm.
[00:00:50] Bobby Steinbach:
Um, we're gonna be talking about a bunch of things. I know we've got YouTube shorts on the horizon, so we'll talk about that. We're gonna talk about what it's like to be trying nursing home abuse cases in Florida, in Tampa, and the difficulties that come along with that. And, um, kinda go from there. Keep it open-ended.
[00:01:08] Andrew Nasrinpay:
I'm excited because. Medical malpractice is difficult. In Florida to say, to say the least.
[00:01:13] Bobby Steinbach:
Medical malpractice is hard.
[00:01:15] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Yeah. Uh, I, I'm curious to see how Scott navigates all that. Yeah. So, Scott, do you wanna start off by giving us a quick background, uh, why you practiced law, how you started your firm, and kind of like your origin story?
[00:01:29] Scott Distasio:
Sure. I, uh, I was in law school in the, uh, college of Economics, getting a PhD in economics and. Decided that was not for me. Everybody said you should be a lawyer. So I looked into law school, went and actually thought I'd do something in the line of mergers and acquisitions, but it's about the time of, uh, a kind of a, a market dip.
[00:01:55] Scott Distasio:
I got a interview in Tampa, uh, for a summer associate job doing medical malpractice defense work. I really took to it. I enjoyed it and ended up at that law firm for about 10 years. I became the partner in charge of the nursing home abuse and neglect, uh, practice in the firm. And about that time, just kind of establishing myself at the tenure year mark, uh, the, uh, law firm imploded and I was left with a choice.
[00:02:28] Scott Distasio:
Um, be contin, take my clients and move to another law firm. Or take the leap to be a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer, having really never done that kind of work before. So I chose to take the leap. I've fired all of my clients million, couple million dollars with a repeat business, uh, two babies at home, and, uh, helped start a plaintiff's personal injury law firm in Tampa, Florida.
[00:02:55] Scott Distasio:
There was three of us on laptops and cell phones. We grew that to, uh. A pretty big advertising law firm in town and did that for about six years and decided, uh, I really wanted my own shop. I didn't want the bigger advertising, uh, uh, platform. And so in 2006, uh, walked away from that practice and started the journey of a solo plaintiff's personal injury law firm.
[00:03:28] Scott Distasio:
And I really thought that people would come to me with their, you know, small car crash cases, and I'd just kind of be able to finance my firm because those, to me, are a more routine type of case. But people knew me in town. You're, you're the guy that does the complex medical cases, the medical malpractice and nursing home.
[00:03:50] Scott Distasio:
And it was really from the defense side. But you know, they, they came to me. So here I am. That was in, uh, that was in 2006 and 21, 20 year, 19 years later, built a firm out of it.
[00:04:07] Bobby Steinbach:
This reminds me of, uh, Michael Duffy, where he said something along the lines of he was the guy with the suitcase that everyone just knew if there was a case that was complex on the medical malpractice side, you just went to him.
[00:04:20] Bobby Steinbach:
Right. And he established that pedigree. Yeah.
[00:04:23] Andrew Nasrinpay:
The, the suitcase was to, uh, to look busy when he was young.
[00:04:27] Bobby Steinbach:
Right.
[00:04:29] Scott Distasio:
Yeah. I mean, I, I think that, um, there's a certain amount of analytical. Um, time and willingness to spend on these types of cases. It's not that car crash cases are easy, it's just that they're more routine and it's predictable.
[00:04:48] Scott Distasio:
A medical malpractice case, a nursing home abuse and neglect case, you may have 10, 20,000 pages of records and you have to sort through those records, identify the story. Uh, what has happened here, and then you have to, I identify what are the medical issues, and then you have to find medical experts to testify about those things.
[00:05:11] Scott Distasio:
And it's a complex, long journey. And quite frankly, a lot of lawyers are not interested in putting in that kind of work for the result. And, and the risks are huge, but the rewards are also huge too.
[00:05:27] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Not to mention the cost on the expert side. Uh. That you don't have quite as much of on the personal injury side and med mail prices add up quick.
[00:05:37] Scott Distasio:
Absolutely. You can be carrying anywhere from 25,000 to $200,000 in costs in a file. And, uh, working it, you know, they're a longer cycle working it for, you know, anywhere from a year to five years carrying those costs and, and. And believing in your client and your case enough to, if they don't pay you, take the risk to stand in front of a jury and, and potentially losing that time and money and, and, and those costs.
[00:06:07] Scott Distasio:
It's substantial risk, but when it works out, there's substantial reward.
[00:06:12] Bobby Steinbach:
Are you currently using, um, any a, any AI tooling for the analysis and summarization on your medical records?
[00:06:20] Scott Distasio:
You know, we have looked into it and for car crash cases. It works. Um, but the difference is that when you're talking about a car crash case, you're talking about the person's injury and did it preexist, and then after the, from the time of the event forward, what, what is it?
[00:06:40] Scott Distasio:
Um, it's very easy to program AI to do that because as you're looking for certain things, when you're talking about a complex medical malpractice case, there's judgment and decision making in as you're looking at the records and putting your chronology together that. In my opinion, AI is not quite there.
[00:06:59] Scott Distasio:
So do you use it to like maybe look at certain topics? Yes. But to put together a detailed chronology about what happened? I just don't think it's there yet because it, it takes human judgment and decision making as you're looking at the records, what is important and what's not. And I, I've just not. Come across the ability to pre-program that because it changes as the information that you're looking at.
[00:07:24] Scott Distasio:
What you thought was important turns out not to be, and something else turns out to be more important. As you're going through the records,
[00:07:32] Bobby Steinbach:
there was one really concrete use case that I was given a demo on for nursing home abuse, specifically for one narrow circumstance. Was it pressure ulcers? It was, it was pressure ulcer.
[00:07:46] Bobby Steinbach:
Well, yeah, state four bed. So I think bed, I don't if that is pressure thing. That's the same thing. It's, yeah. So they were saying like specifically there is standards of care around, you know, how often your, you're, you must like rotate or whatever, return a client. Yeah. Um, and so using AI to interrogate the medical records, to basically look for when was the patient turned?
[00:08:09] Bobby Steinbach:
Like were they turned in? You know, in, in line with what is expected based on standard of care. And that for that like very narrow use case, AI was a good solution.
[00:08:21] Scott Distasio:
A a, absolutely. And I, and that's what I mean, uh, to do an entire chronology. No, but to say, okay, here's a person that needs to be turned and repositioned.
[00:08:32] Scott Distasio:
Were they turning and repositioning? Program it to look for those things and then say it, you know, in the care plan. Um, are they properly care planning for it? Yeah, absolutely. I think you can do that because you've identified specific things that you're looking for, but when you're looking at that, that gives you that data point.
[00:08:51] Scott Distasio:
But now let's say that person is malnourished. Um, let's say there's issues in the nurse's notes that they need to, to, um, uh, provide fluid to that person. You're not gonna know that until you get into the chronology and then start looking at it. So that's what I mean by a total chronology. I, I just personally don't see it happening.
[00:09:15] Scott Distasio:
But if you focus it on an issue, it'll give you those solutions, but it's still gonna take human interaction to kind of put all that together and. Put it into a theme for your case.
[00:09:26] Bobby Steinbach:
You might not be saying this, but what I'm hearing you say is that you feel that lawyers might be too quick to use AI today.
[00:09:36] Scott Distasio:
Absolutely, absolutely. I think there's this big rush and I think that it has a lot of potential, but I think it's a mistake to just rely on it. I think there are use case for use cases for it. But, and I think as the technology continues to improve, it's gonna be there. But my personal experience is, I, I'm just not gonna hand it to AI and say, here, give me a product and go run with it.
[00:10:03] Scott Distasio:
I, I, I'm just not gonna do that.
[00:10:06] Bobby Steinbach:
I think that's fair. But I do wanna talk about things that are working for you. So at the start of this, we said we're gonna talk about YouTube shorts. How are YouTube shorts working?
[00:10:17] Scott Distasio:
You know, I, the, the landscape of digital marketing is, is just rapidly changing today, right?
[00:10:25] Scott Distasio:
I mean, you used to have your SEO and you used to be able to, um, just reliably count on organic if you're putting it into, into the proper perspective and, and putting the right money and have the right vendor you used to be able to rely on, on, you know, ads of certain types. But everything is so fragmented now, and the, the AI is starting to change the way that SEO is working.
[00:10:54] Scott Distasio:
And so we, we have decided as a firm to just dive into YouTube shorts and, and it's a new project, but it's been fun. Um, we, we come up with topics, um, we videotape 'em and, uh, have an editor that edits and, you know, it, it. Believe it or not, I get a little excited when I go, look, how is that short doing? You know, why?
[00:11:18] Scott Distasio:
Why isn't that one working? Why is that one is working? And, and so it's kind of a bit of a passion product, uh, a project. Right now, it has developed some inquiries and, and we, you know, signed up a case, but it, it, it's not to the point yet from. Our endeavor to, to say, you know, it's, it's a hugely profitable, uh, in investment, but I think over time it, it will be,
[00:11:44] Andrew Nasrinpay: it, that is also a hard thing to, um, delegate to an agency because you're the guy that's gonna be in the videos or at least another attorney at the firm.
[00:11:54] Andrew Nasrinpay:
So there's always that bottleneck of, it's both labor and time intensive.
[00:12:00] Scott Distasio:
Exactly. Um, I have done, you know, we, we it, we've done it for a while and done it wrong and it's been relying on other people and I'm, I'm just that kind of guy that if it's not working out, I'll spend my nights and weekends, um, figuring it out.
[00:12:17] Scott Distasio:
So, you know, I did that with o Organic, uh, when the website wasn't working. Um, I'm starting to do it with the YouTube shorts and. And I'm hopeful that that project will work out. But I, I do agree. Um, you have to, you know, I spend time on scripts. I spend time looking at the, at the short before it goes out and making comments.
[00:12:39] Scott Distasio:
Um, it, it, it, it, it, I enjoy it. So, um, that, that's, uh, that's a benefit. But at some point you want it to be, uh, the kind of profitable thing that it's not only fun, but it makes money for you.
[00:12:57] Bobby Steinbach:
Can you give some examples of shorts that you've run recently?
[00:13:00] Scott Distasio:
Yeah. Are all personal injury lawyers? Evil Little horns on my head as it starts and go into, like, I, I take 20, 40, 50, a hundred thousand dollars of my money and, and I invested in depositions and experts and, and take work for two years, four years on, on the hope that six people in a room are gonna pay me.
[00:13:26] Scott Distasio:
Who would do that to blackmail somebody into settling a case? Would you work for free for, for two or three years, maybe pay your boss to do it, and on the hopes you're gonna get your money back plus a good salary. I, I just don't know anybody who would do that. And then, you know, core little angels appearing on my head.
[00:13:45] Bobby Steinbach:
Love it.
[00:13:45] Scott Distasio:
That that's one example.
[00:13:47] Bobby Steinbach:
Love it. Yeah. That's great. And what's your viewership been like on those videos?
[00:13:52] Scott Distasio:
Um, you know, before we, I started getting actively involved in trying to figure out how to make scripts for these things. You know, we were getting 20, 30, 40 views, but, um, now we're getting anywhere between 515,000 views, and that's been, you know, over the last, uh, month that we've kind of, I've kind of delved into it and I'm hopeful as we continue that.
[00:14:20] Scott Distasio:
That, uh, that'll improve
[00:14:22] Bobby Steinbach:
and is crossover into like Instagram and TikTok on your horizon? Yeah,
[00:14:27] Scott Distasio:
so we take that short, we put it on YouTube, we put it on Instagram, we put it on TikTok. Um, we put it on uh, XI always have to say that, you know, TWI twi note X. And then, uh, uh, we, we've been starting to put it onto, uh, LinkedIn as well.
[00:14:46] Scott Distasio:
And I know it's not necessarily the platform for it, but. It's been, people have been receptive.
[00:14:53] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Whi which video got the 15,000 views? Was that the, our attorney's Evil?
[00:14:57] Scott Distasio:
No, no, uh, Amazon lawsuit. Basically, um, Amazon, uh, has this practice of taking their name, plastering it on their, on a van. Um, having the driver have a, a, a Amazon out uniform and the packages are an Amazon and that that van hits somebody in the neighborhood and, and catastrophically hurts them, and then Amazon says, not my responsibility.
[00:15:26] Scott Distasio:
That was an independent contractor over there. You gotta sue them. It's not our fault. And so, kind of put together a story and, and, and then talked about the right to control and the legal aspects of it. Uh, people really took to that. I mean, not only was it 15,000 views, but the comments back and forth, um, and I can't believe Amazon did this.
[00:15:48] Scott Distasio:
Of course, they should be responsible. They're making the money. They should be held accountable. Uh, so, uh. Yeah, it, it's kind of like the things that you think are people are gonna be interested aren't, but the things that they are afterward, you see that that whole aspect of Amazon trying to get out of responsibility really resonated with, uh, with people.
[00:16:10] Bobby Steinbach:
I think there's a really interesting learning in that where as a smaller firm, you've gotta find those hooks where you can compete with bigger firms. And Andrew brought up one interesting point. It is gonna be you. That's on. You know, that's really the one that's gotta shoot these, not your fancy agency, not your fancy internal team.
[00:16:29] Bobby Steinbach:
It's you. And that doesn't scale. As firm scale. Time becomes thinner. So you can do that. When you're small, you can find topics that generate buzz regardless of production quality. It doesn't have to be the highest production quality. It's just about finding topics that resonate. So. I think you're approaching it in a really intelligent way that other small firms can look to and, and like take inspiration from that.
[00:16:55] Bobby Steinbach:
You can find viewership without putting a hundred thousand dollars a month marketing budget behind it.
[00:17:00] Andrew Nasrinpay:
That, that said, I'm curious to see if you've taken the ones that have worked well, have you tried to tweak it and make a version that is an ad to then promote it on all of these platforms?
[00:17:14] Scott Distasio:
No. Um, we've thought about it, but I, my, my experience in the Tampa Bay market, um, is that it is highly saturated and my experience is that, um, personal injury is an unsought service.
[00:17:31] Scott Distasio:
You don't know when. You're going to need it. And so, um, a direct advertising is very expensive to expect that that's going to bring in a case. What, what works for advertisers is branding because you don't know when, uh, that event is gonna happen. And you want that person to know your brand when it does.
[00:17:56] Scott Distasio:
And that is a very expensive thing in the Tampa Bay market. So I have not. Really ventured into, uh, any sort of advertising because of my feelings about that. I'm not saying that I'm right, but that's, that's just my intuition. So it, it would be interesting for, somebody could say to me, here's how we would do that and take that short and make it into some sort of advertisement.
[00:18:21] Scott Distasio:
But I would have to be, um, pretty convinced that there'd be some sort of ROI, because I have sunk money into. Advertising, um, in this market. And there's just a floor. I mean, you've got Morgan and Morgan spending tens of millions of dollars. You've got all these regional advertisers. We have people coming in from Miami opening offices, people coming in from Jacksonville, opening offices, and you know, you can spend your way, uh, to the poor house if you don't know what you're doing.
[00:18:56] Scott Distasio:
I learned that. In, uh, two, 2000 when I left being a defense lawyer. We set up that, that plaintiff's personal injury law, law firm, and we're advertising for about six years. And I, I just, I don't want to carry that overhead and I don't want to, um, take that risk because I'd rather sink my time and my money into my cases.
[00:19:19] Bobby Steinbach:
I, I think that's, uh, definitely best for clients and probably best for, for you at the end of the day too. Um. Any closing thoughts, Scott? Anything that you'd like, you know, audience, folks to take away or any advice for young lawyers?
[00:19:34] Scott Distasio:
Um, yeah, I think, I think at the end of the day, um, uh, if there's something you want to do and you're not doing it because of, um, fear of the unknown, just dive in.
[00:19:49] Scott Distasio:
I mean, I, I left a, a very lucrative de defense practice that I could have, you know, stayed at for the rest of my life. The firm had crashed, but I could have moved into another firm, but I was unhappy. I left no knowing where I was gonna go or how I was gonna make it work with two babies at home and, and, you know, help start a law firm.
[00:20:14] Scott Distasio:
I then left that law firm. When it became clear, I didn't want to be part of a big advertising machine into the unknown without any idea of how I was gonna run a plaintiff's firm and, and be the lawyer. And you know what? It all worked out because, and I'm happy, I'm not saying it's gonna work out from everybody, but it's that, that Teddy Roosevelt be the man in the arena.
[00:20:39] Scott Distasio:
It doesn't matter that you get knocked down. It doesn't matter that you, you get up and you get knocked down again because you don't want to be that guy sitting on the couch looking back and saying, I could have, would or should have. Just do it. I
[00:20:54] Bobby Steinbach:
love it. Just do it. Nike and Scott. Okay, perfect. Well, that was a great episode.
[00:21:00] Bobby Steinbach:
Thanks for joining us today, Scott. We'll put all like the relevant links in the show notes so everyone can access it and, um, see y'all on the next. Hot Docket. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Hot Docket. We're your hosts, Bobby and Andrew, founders of Meme Pug, the marketing agency for ambitious law firms.
[00:21:17] Andrew Nasrinpay:
Have questions about marketing or anything we covered today? Email us at mark@memepug.com. Be sure to subscribe to learn more. Until next time.
