Obtaining Higher Settlement Offers
If you settle most of your personal injury cases, you need to know the specific factors that are provided value by insurance companies. One of the Top 5 value drivers is a claim for Duties Under Duress.
Duties Under Duress is a unique term used within insurance company bodily injury software used to evaluate bodily injury claims in auto claims.
As discussed in Trial Guides' first book Colossus: What Every Trial Lawyer Needs to Know, by Aaron DeShaw, the original programmers of Colossus used the term "Duties Under Duress" as a replacement for providing value on medically determined disability claims. Disability as determined by doctors using forms such as the Neck Disability Index or Oswestry Low Back Disability Questionnaire, is provided no value by the bodily injury software used by most auto insurers and premises liability insurers.
A claimant must have experienced pain while conducting one of several activities, had that noted in the medical records, and then the lawyer must make a specific claim for Duties Under Duress. Aaron DeShaw, Trial Guides founder and author of the Colossus text, discusses this in a new blog post at the Settlement Intelligence web site. Settlement Intelligence is a leading AI Demand Letter platform that formats personal injury demand letters based upon the insurance software.
DeShaw's Duties Under Duress forms were reverse engineered from original programming notes for the insurance software as well as early drafts of user manuals, allowing DeShaw to provide lawyers with the factors or "value drivers" actually used to evaluate claims. Without providing the specific factors and sub factors for a Duties Under Duress claim, lawyers cannot get clients the highest settlement offer prior to litigation.
These forms are protected by a registered federal trademark of Trial Guides and are exclusively licensed to Settlement Intelligence. The content cannot be used by AI platforms without a license from Trial Guides.