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Turning SOCIAL MEDIA Into a REFERRAL ENGINE! | Bourbon of Proof vs. Arkady Frekhtman

31m 25s

Turning SOCIAL MEDIA Into a REFERRAL ENGINE! | Bourbon of Proof vs. Arkady Frekhtman

The transcription features an interview with Arcadia Freckman, a New York trial lawyer and social media educator known as "the People's Champion." Freckman discusses his current trial, a line-of-duty case for a police officer with a traumatic brain injury caused by a reckless partner. He describes learning from prior cases, including a $3.1 million settlement, to improve his advocacy. Freckman emphasizes the power of client stories, such as the officer sitting in his car to avoid sensory overload from his daughter's cartoons, over technical medical evidence. He also explains New York's unusual jury selection process, where no judge is present, and how venue affects juror attitudes toward damages. The conversation covers finding niche experts through networks like Expert Institute and the Washington State Association for Justice, as well as the importance of vetting experts' prior testimony to avoid exclusion. Freckman balances his trial work with YouTube content, which generates cases nationwide. The interview underscores the value of continuous learning, storytelling, and expert due diligence in personal injury litigation.

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English
I try to learn as much as I can. I've almost been like a little bit, maybe two, voracious with the learning. I did another traumatic brain injury case. Earlier this year, and it ended up settling during jury selection for like a 3.1 million. So I learned a lot in that case, and I kind of like eating off that kind of like a stepping stone and keep going with this case. (upbeat music) - Welcome to this episode of Bourbon Approof, where we interview those who both have been successful at law and life. Today we're coming live from New York City, Bourbon and Branch. Let's give it up for Arcadia Freckman, laser gelman, Arcadia. - Hey. - Arcadia is in a trial right now. He just picked a jury. He's opening tomorrow. That's how dedicated he is to the practice of bourbon drinking. - Yeah, he's here, Arcadia. - Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. - We also have on from Expert Institute, Zach Perreto. - Zach, thank you for coming on, brother. We're gonna learn a lot about you, but over bourbon. - So okay. - I love the bourbons, that makes more sense. Love it more than experts, maybe. - Well, you can also, you could do both. And our fabulous co-host, Marofi Ori Jr. - Hello, I don't know, six, seven shows deep in. I'm relatively coherent. - Yes, and I think that's thanks to our bourbon steward. Will, where are you, whiskey? - Bourbon, here we go. So we're gonna start with a pour for you. - We're gonna have to bring the pour. - They're ice cubes? - Yes, so you can use the fury legal one. I suggest fury legal. - You can select justice HQs, insuring justice HQ, you can stamp, and I shall do a turn. Just go like this, watch. Push down, it'll let you bring it. - The press is like, it goes right through ice. It's called science. Look at that. Bob, not the science guy. - No one calls me that. - So this is the Jack Daniels bottling bond. This is not your typical Jack. So Jack has never done a bottling bond before and 120 half years of his tilling until they release this. Bottling bond is the bonded act by the US government. It was a way of certifying the whiskey. The government was backing it. It wasn't gonna kill you. With that being said, this was something a lot of people saw and they just went at the time, oh it's Jack. Oh it's Jack, and it was overlooked. And I had this for the first time when this came out and I looked at it and I said, do not overlook this whiskey. I'm telling you right now, this is gonna shock you. Sure enough, that year, this one whiskey of the year. - Really? - That year and you couldn't find it after that happened. It just appeared everywhere. But for $35 a bottle for whiskey beer, that's pretty darn good. - $25 a bottle. - $35, that's still. - It's great. - A barrel of it wants, not the bottling bond but a single barrel Jack is always very good. So Arcadia, you do a lot of social media. I see you on YouTube educating a lot of lawyers. I also see you a lot being an educator and also being educated in workshops. How have you channeled that? Could you just pick the jury today and yesterday? So what's it like, man? So put it all together for us. - No, I mean, I like all aspects of it. I love being on YouTube. That's something I started during COVID. And it was a lot of downtime. So I thought instead of just being home, waiting it out, I'm gonna try to give back to others. So I started doing different types of topics, including how long is my case gonna take? How much am I gonna get? Questions that people with injuries have. And then over the five years I've developed the following. So now I have about maybe close to 15,000 followers and I have about a few hundred thousand views every month. And now I just go live sometimes and get maybe like 60 people in the room. And they start asking me questions live. But I just do my best to answer their questions live. - I love it. - So I've gotten a little bit of a nickname. They call me the People's Champion. So I try to just like give back, as much as I can and help out. - So it's the People's Champion. - Arcadia Freckman and of course the Rock, the People's, the True People's Champion of the WWE. - Cheers. - Cheers. - So is Arcadia, is that like a family name or what kind of name is Arcadia? - Yeah, so I was born in Moscow in Russia. And I think Arcadia is kind of like Archie, but Archibald, but in Russia. And I came over when I was six years old and I lived in Queens in sunny side. So I grew up here in New York City. - Oh nice. - Okay. - So in New York, when you pick a jury, the judges aren't there. - Exactly exactly. - Did you know this act? Did you know about this? - Yes. - Yeah, I mean I'd learned this like what, five years, there's no judge when they pick a jury here in New York. - No judge in the courtroom? - No judge, right. Like today I was picking a jury and I was asking the jurors, we had 12 jurors seated. I was asking them if they're okay with all the different categories of damages, like future medical costs, loss salary, past and future pain and suffering. And then the defense lawyer was like, let's step outside. So we got to go to the hallway. She didn't like that idea that I was asking them if they could be fair in all the different categories. - So who keeps everything in line? Is there like a clerk or something? - You just have to work it out with the other side. - What's your number one question? - I don't know if they're a jury out. How do you know if you don't like somebody? - If you don't like someone, I mean basically based on their answer, like if they say they can't be fair, if they say that you're not starting out at an even playing field or sometimes you get people who just tell you like I have a certain, I can't do certain things. Like I can't allow for monetary compensation. So but yeah, actually in the Bronx, the good thing is the jurors are very plain and friendly. So today we got, we were pretty lucky. We were like a knife through butter. It was easy to get the jurors. - So whenever you pick the jury, if you have a challenge with the juror, if the other side and you can't get along, like what happens? - Well yeah, ultimately if you can't get along, then you have to go see the judge. And then the judge will just, there's no, you know, sonographer either, no court reporter. So then the judge will just listen to you, the judge will question the juror himself or herself, and then make a ruling. So it's a very weird, antiquated system. - So I mean, how do you feel because a lot of people see you on social media and assume he's just a social media lawyer. But you do a lot of big high profile cases, you try cases like how do you break that moniker when people just have that feeling about you? - Well, when I'm on social media, I try to tell everybody that I'm a trial lawyer, that that's what I do. And primarily I'm running cases like depositions, trials. And then I just try to make a little time for social media, like maybe an hour or two a week when I go live or maybe another hour or two when I'm recording some videos. But yeah, so I try to balance everything out. But I really enjoy both aspects of it. Like I love being in trial, I love helping clients. But I also like the idea of marketing and social media. And I actually was thinking that once this trial is over, it's supposed to be maybe the first or second week of December, once it's over, I'm gonna go back and do some more content for social media. - So do you find you get cases from doing what you do? - Yes, yes, especially from the YouTube. I have been getting cases from the YouTube because once people see the videos, I guess they're interested in it. And they see that I know what I'm talking about. So then they start maybe texting me and asking for a consultation. So I'll give them a consultation. And then sometimes it leads to them retaining me in New York. And also sometimes it leads to me referring them somewhere else, like to a lawyer in California or Florida. I even had one call in Alaska and one call in Hawaii. (laughs) Been called some all over. - Well, that's the big thing about national referral networks. I know we've set you cases in New York, vice-verson, California. And it's also with the expert institute. I know it's hard sometimes to find the right expert or to get the right ammunition on an expert on the other side, right? So I know we use them in our practice. Do you guys use an expert institute for stuff that you do? - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We sometimes use them before to help us find an expert, especially sometimes technical experts, like engineering or, I think recently, we need an expert on a strange type of case, like a sports injuries. We needed a sports expert who was familiar with safe courts, but basketball courts, things like that. So sometimes we use engineering and expert institute. So we look forward to using them in the future as well. - It's good. I mean, there's really an expert, everything. You didn't like the whole idea of like, on the court? It's cool. You have to get to look at it from every angle. I like that. - Mara, what do you do when there, because you do a lot of cases in the state of Washington, you have a firm up there. - Yeah. - What do you do when you need to find like a niche expert or something like that, because you, mostly are in Southern California. - Luckily, there's an association called the Washington State Association for Justice. It's a plaintiff lawyer organization, and they have a really good list serve, very active list serve with really good lawyers on there. So anytime I need anything like that, I go on the list serve. It's called the Eagle List serve, and it costs like an extra 500 bucks a year to have access to the list serve. They make you an eagle, and you have like a logo you can put on your website, you're at a Washington State Eagle. So the 500 bucks is the best money I spend, because I go on the Eagle List serve, and I say, "Hey, fellow Eagles, I need an expert in palliab, "in the middle of nowhere in Washington." And the guys respond, usually within a day or two, I get some bunch of responses, they give me three or four names, and I've had great success doing that. So shout out to the Eagles if anyone's watching. - Can I tell you what I love about this area of law? There's literally so many cases that are going on that you've literally never had a needed expert for. It's so niche in every single particular area. So, And that's why I like doing what I do at Expert Institute, which is like you even in like from these lists, you get these crazy cases that no one's ever heard of before and we get to work on them and we get to find the perfect expert for every particular case because every single case might have an expert that's never existed before. I think that's the most interesting thing about this portion of law and you really have to do your due diligence to find the best person in something you've never heard of which is kind of well. We needed a ballistic expert, so we have one, so we ran it through expert, the expert IQ or whatever to see what's out there against them to see should we even hire this person based on that criteria but yeah so what kind of case you're trying right now? So right now it's a line of duty case so in New York firefighters and police if they're in the line of duty and while in the line of duty if there's a statutory violation they consume so it's like an exception to workers comp so my client was a passenger in a police car and the driver of that police car was going to an emergency there was a burglary and he was going against a red light and about you know 10 car lengths before the intersection my client sees a car coming really fast and tells them to stop four times and instead of slowing down or stopping the driver speeds up into the red and gets t-bone then my client's head hits the windshield and he has a terrible traumatic brain injury so my allegation is that that driver was reckless I have to show the reckless standard under the vehicle and traffic law so if I could show he was reckless then I can recover a compensation. What are the damages in that type of case? So in this case he's got a traumatic brain injury he has he had a neuroquant and in one particular area he's only in the 1% tile he also had I think 12 out of 31 pathways on the diffusion tensor imaging being abnormal but more importantly just his day-to-day things like for example he just runs out of gas not once but it happened four times and his wife works as an operating room nurse so the mother-in-law has to come pick him up and she keeps complaining to her daughter why do I have to keep picking him up why is he right a guy to guess and you know he has a three-year-old daughter and the daughter finds his car keys she finds the remote things like that so he does have a very serious brain injury what do you mean passenger in a police car was he under arrest no no he was the he was just assigned that partner he was a police officer too right he said it to I was thinking I'm using like lawyer trick words here but even if he was a passenger so he can sue his partner right he can sue his partner no work complex right it's a line of duty and actually his own comparative fault doesn't come into play at all so because it's a game this is yeah it's like in Texas they have non-subscribers to workers come so it's like the same it's all these little nuances in different states have different type of laws but one thing I've noticed about you is Arcades so I see you always in workshops like where every time we do a justice HQ workshop a lot of times Arcades registered and shows up and I'm like I find you the most curious person that also has so much to give that it's like it's insane to me how often you show up just learn one or two nuggets oh thank you yeah no I try to learn as much as I can I've almost been like a little bit maybe two voracious with the learning because I love the justice HQ I've also been to the trial by human workshops those are great I was just this weekend that out of realm I think that was really cool too yeah I try to do as much as I can T.L.U. was great too so all the other workshops yeah and Ed Tyran Belly who was just here was at the outer realm too just came in fill A but there's always see like photos if I wasn't there I was like Arcade he was there too I just saw him he was over here I mean so how do you like as you grew up you know a New Yorker right so have you showed notice to shift it all and the jury sentiment or how they feel about the I lawyers like what's it like yeah I would say in New York it really depends on the venue for example in the Bronx and Brooklyn it's pretty good when you ask them those questions about allowing for money they're they have no issues if you ask them about caps they look at you like you're crazy like what's a cap like you know sealing on damages but if you're in Westchester then it's very different or Long Island like Nassau County there they tend to be more conservative so then you have to ask them more of the tort reform questions because that they kind of buy into the tort reform over there so really depends on where you are in New York and how did you become such an expert in traumatic brain injury cases because you're here rattle it off neuroquant and 1% where do you learn this stuff actually I just have handled a few in the past and also I've been to a few of those conferences like TBI met legal and I've watched a few of those webinars try to just immerse myself as much as possible so I did a another traumatic brain injury case earlier this year and it ended up settling during jury selection for a pretty good number for like a 3.1 million and so I learned a lot in that case and I kind of like feeding off that kind of like a stepping stone and keep going with this case so hey this is Bob Simon the host of Bourbon Approof this tour we couldn't do without our sponsors even up is an artificial intelligence platform that automates a lot of the mundane tasks that lawyers and law firm staff do from demand letters to do running playbooks to opening up claims or in police reports and doing those so you can spend more quality time with your clients in the courtroom or in their living room we also have attorney share attorney shares a product to be able to have lawyers find more cases in their wheelhouse to help clients without having to have the market spend that's out there and also tracking all of your referrals in one place it integrates with all the major case management platforms and it allows lawyers to really better serve their clients and also refer out clients and other jurisdictions and practice areas and be able to monetize all of that good will that they put in other sponsors justice HQ just HQ is a mobile app bring together all the community in a legal field from vendors to staff to paralegals they have own masterminds they have our podcasts are on their other lawyers podcasts are on their on demand education every event in the industry and you have direct access to the best of the best and of course coastal research coastal research helps all of us injury lawyers find out the insurance limits to investigation that's on the other side whether you know it or not they're not required to in many states to tell you how much insurance is the for the person that cash roughly harmed your clients but coastal research is able to do it very quickly efficiently for you to have an actual technology platform that's so easy to use and pushes data back and forth we only let people sponsor the show if we use their products and believe in them and I like the story you said about your client human being running out of gas I mean these are the stories that actually resonate with jurors you could talk about the science all you want but if you could say something like that it's so powerful how do you listen to those stories from your clients yeah so with this particular client we went to his house me and another attorney from my office went to his house bet his wife his daughter and just like listen to him for you know almost the whole day and just and just try to ask him questions about how this you know brain injuries affecting him that's how we learned about the gas story and there were a few other like powerful stories like for example his wife comes home around 6 p.m. but around 4.30 his daughter starts watching cartoons and they have a bay window in their in their apartment or in their in their house in their condo so what he does is because he can't take the lights and the sounds from the cartoons he goes into his car and he sits in his car with the engine off and he just quietly sits there in his car and watches his daughter sit on the windowsill of the bay window for like hours until you know hour and a half until his wife comes home and I just thought that's so sad that he can't interact with his own daughter and she's only three so stories like that and I feel like yeah you're right that's more much more powerful than talking about you have a picture like from his point of view from the car looking at his window or his daughters are yeah we were we're gonna use a picture of the bay window maybe an opening statement and talk about that tomorrow so it's crazy it's guys giving an opening tomorrow and here you are so I mean how many law firms you think you guys work with thousands three to four thousand wow yeah shit that's pretty big yeah what do you think the biggest cops are that lawyers do they don't do they don't check what people have said in court previously they don't actually check if they've been challenged in court these are the biggest problems you get caught up in actual trial deposition with something that someone said previously that's a that's a big mess up yeah and especially like being excluded as an expert like I always check I tell my lawyers before you hire an expert especially in federal court check that and dober or fry to see where they excluded to make sure you don't fall into that death literally a death sentence trap where's Will Will we're ready for the next four looking almost jumped out of the seat I love it oh this one I know I like so this is a private barrel of garrison brothers that I hand picked out I hand dumped this barrel bottled every bottle waxed every bottle hand wrote on every bottle and how failed every wow yeah so this is a super important one to me only 36 bottles are in existence so very solicit it is barrel strength this is a hundred and forty two proof a hundred and four where's my wife yeah a hundred and forty two hundred and forty two proof this is that's my wife's kind of juice she likes it's strong strong but I'm gonna tell you right now it doesn't drink it it drinks one 10 112 this is a sleeper it will sneak up on you quick yeah that's like when I play golf they're like that that is about 90 yards away and I use a five word I think yeah but I five what hits about 90 feels maybe 150 to you but it's not Bob has a completely different set of yardages in his bag he's hitting driver from like one to 20. And you do you. But last time I played with him, he played one hole and he made a birdie. Is that your first birdie or is that of the day? I was shocked myself and I was like, I'm out of here guys. That's how it's done. I'm going home. Actually, you know what I just thought about? There's a really interesting situation that I was in with some way where we were going against another ex we were doing opposition research at another expert because you were talking about what do people not look for and it's a really weird one that doesn't usually happen and it was an expert that on the other side that we found had been indicted for insider trading because he was involved in he's a doctor. I'm not going to name his name is in Chicago. He's indicted for insider. Is it Dr. shaky hands? Kind of something like that. But he's indicted for insider trading on a medical device that he was working on. So he had gone public with the device that he was working on and then he indicted and then that came out later on. That's kind of the stuff you got to watch out for. And you got to know. So first of all, look at the color of this. This is pretty dark. It's only five years old. So remember, will hand disclose squeeze squeeze this juice my own two hands. All two hands. All right, cheers brother. Appreciate it. It's only 38 existence. Sorry. I love this. This is like my speed. This is your best one of the day. Well, for sure. Cheers. Well, to you brother. All right. Appreciate it guys. Now to smooth. Now that you've had like essentially you can run a car off of this. Are you ready for opening statement tomorrow? Yeah, I think this is loosening the up for opening statement. This is this is great. So do the is that judge in the courtroom for opening statement? Yeah, it shows up for opening statement like a bit in before. Actually, it's funny. We've been on trials since November 5th, but all that time we were what we were working on motions and limine. And so the way this judge works is we thought we each filed our motions and limine. We filed memorandums of law supporting briefs. Then she does oral argument. Then she takes a day or two to think about a decision. And then she issues a written order on the motion and limine. So because of that process and working slowly, it took all this time. I think two weeks just to do nine motions and limine. Being I mean, it's your practice. When you're in trial that long, how does your practice still survive? Well, we're lucky to have a really good COO or chief operating officer Jennifer. So she kind of helps run everything. And then I I try to keep myself available. She has a question. You know, she'll text me, speak to me, but she's really good at organizing everything else. And since COVID, we've kind of been mostly remote. So people are working even from we have one employee I think who now lives in California. Most of the people are local in New York and New Jersey. And maybe between all the offices, we just have two or three people show up each day to an office and the rest work from home. But it's really working well with meetings, with Slack, with people just get more done for some reason. As long as we have the software like we use smart advocates, so just works out well. Yeah. So shout out to smart advocate Igor. Their CTO is fantastic. And they get a lot of good stuff done man there. I think smart advocate is bigger on the East Coast. But did not a lot of people use it on the West Coast, but out here on these coast, it's very popular operating system. So a lot more. Must be the East Coast. There's a bunch ones that are more East Coast centric like West Coast. We just started on different systems. Case fear, file vine, Cleo, way more prominent or Cleo's more other practice areas, but there's a lot on the West Coast. Yeah. So I mean, so what is the future hold after when you're not trying cases, when you're not on YouTube doing shorts? Like what does our Katie do for fun? So for fun, I like to read books. I like to go to the gym in the morning, work out. I play tennis about twice a week. I'm in a league. So I play about a three, five, four, four, four levels. I play mostly singles, but once in a while, I'll play doubles. And yeah, I just kind of take it easy. My son just started college. So sometimes I'll go visit him upstate. He's in upstate New York. He's who likes it. He's doing well. And my daughter she's in the eighth grade. So she's doing her dance and her gymnastics this weekend. I'm taking her to bot mitzvok, her one of her friends from summer camps. So try to spend time with them. And just enjoy and enjoy myself. Yeah, it always seems like such a happy positive guy. And it seems like running a, I mean, you're running a law firm, you're trying cases, you're juggling all this stuff. I mean, do you do anything outside of that to just maintain your, your happiness? Yeah, I mean, sometimes I'll listen to some audio books. And like I like this one book, the Untethered Soul kind of like that kind of philosophy. I mean, Michael Singer wrote it. And then I have a place upstate New York in the cat skills. And nearby, there's like this little Buddhist temples. So sometimes I'll go there and they have this thing on Sundays from 11 a.m. It's called Prayers for World Peace. So they kind of do this like prayer and a little bit of a Buddhist lecture. I just kind of like chill out, listen to that, and they have a beautiful pond and like little chipmunks sort of get out. It kind of gets you grounded and gets you kind of like refreshed. That's pretty amazing. You know, the one thing that I really like what you said is that you're played tennis, not pickleball. Oh, yeah, no, I don't play pickleball. Yes. I tried it once. I tried it once. Oh God. That pickleball is a scourge of society. It's they've taken over, man. I don't know what it is. It's also a weird sound like the non-athlete sport. There are cities that are banning pickleball because it's so noisy and it's there's banning it from their cities. Yeah. So one of the things that I like about your platform on expert institute is if you have you can do it by expert, right? So I can have the dirt on whatever expert in perpetuity and I can ask for an update. So within, oh, I want an update on so and so they'll pull all the all the lectures this expert did if they're on YouTube. Like they'll pull YouTube talk that they did. They'll find out new things that they've done and it's like real time new things on them because it's like there's so much out there now and we back in the day, we would go and Google that expert try to find out what they were speaking about, try to find their their CV that was updated and the stuff that they took out of their CV. Yeah. But you guys do it in like real time. It's all it's all AI driven. But yeah, I mean like even if you know, on a podcast like this, they were there that day. They're the next day. We're checking that out. That's the whole point. Oh shit. You know what exactly I got to check to see if we actually may be on there tomorrow. We did it with Paul with Paul Lee in our office. We actually live in front of our steps. Okay, dude, there was just one expert. It's okay. Now search that expert and Robert Simon and actually pulled up a bunch of depositions. I'm great took of that expert. I was like, well, shit, that was pretty good. That used to take us forever to be able to do this though. You know, what I don't know if Bob does it anymore, but back in the old days, Bob would hire surveillance investigators to follow around experts to see what they were up to. Oh yeah. And which is, I've known these the only person I know that's ever done that now, but now they're all these all in surveillance all the time. That's basically what social media is. That's all point. Again, I'm getting ready for anything. Played away and it's like one expert's like, well, I was in the hospital every day last week and I was like, tell the jury the truth. Where were you like on Tuesday? I was in the hospital. What a surprise you to learn that you were like at another lawyer's office. Does that ring a bell? I don't know what you're talking about. We did that in trial one time when I was in trial in a case and Bob had the same expert like the day before. And so I asked him, what did you do yesterday? And he's like, I don't know. I was at home. I was like, didn't you testify in it? And Bob was sitting in the front row. Didn't you know this guy? He's like, do you remember that lawyer crossed you yesterday? Yeah. He's like, oh, oh yeah. Now I remember. Yeah, it's such a fire. But Bob, we we had talked and we had the same expert against us at the same week. And Bob brought me the transcript. But it actually wasn't the transcript. It was just some phony transcript. Is this one you were going against? Yeah. So you go. Of course. Yeah. If the transcript says certified on it, it's certified. Yeah. Yeah. Catching an expert in a lie is like the biggest thing you could possibly do. It's so important. You probably have a lot of experts on this case because you have a liability threshold because it's got to be like to that level. And then you obviously they're fighting the nature and extent of the traumatic brain injury. Right. Yeah. We have a few. We have a liability expert. We have a police emergency driving expert. It's known as evoc emergency vehicle operations course. And this guy is from Oklahoma. And he actually wrote the course and he taught a lot of the New York people. And actually it was funny because my co-counsel was arguing the motion and limiting and the judge was about to preclude him because he's like, he's from Oklahoma. I eat a New York expert. And I'm like, excuse me, judge, he taught the New York expert. He's the head guy. I could have got you number two, but I got you number one, judge. He's like, okay, I'm going to do a 180. I'm going to allow him. How often does that happen to you where you have to go find an expert that's done something within the same state that you're working in? It really depends on the judge. It's kind of interesting. You really have to be malleable because you never know what the judge is going to do or what the reason will be or argument they're going to throw at you. So you have to really be almost like a boxer beyond your tip. It's almost like there's so much stuff out there where you can find has that expert been approved by that specific judge before. Go back, look, then hire that expert because you know you're going to get past that threshold. So it's so important that they match every single piece that they need to it within these courts. In every state, it's different. Because every almost every in this room, we don't get paid per hour, we get paid perhaps. So we have to win for our client. Look, we're going to fall away. experts, we're gonna use artificial intelligence to track and we'll do everything we can to make sure our clients fairly compensate it. >> Yeah. >> Sorry, Katie, you said you, you know, it's not the number two you brought into the forum, it's the number one. What is our Katie Freckman's number one pour? What is your bourbon of choice, bourbon of proof when you're at home by yourself? >> It doesn't have to be bourbon, could be hiding in whatever, what's your opinion? >> I do like bourbon, I like Weller, Weller's a good one. >> Yeah, so that's probably the one that I like the most, one of the ones. >> I like Weller a lot. Well, Katie, thank you for coming on this show. Everybody follow his YouTube channel, it's great stuff and also we find you on Justice HQ and we'll see you at the next seminar. I look forward to hearing about your verdict in two and a half weeks. >> Thank you so much, thank you. >> Thank you, Eric and he Freckman, let's give it up. We're on the last interview ladies and gentlemen, bring on the anchor man. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Attorney Arcadia Freckman balances a high-volume trial practice with social media education, gaining over 15,000 followers on YouTube.
  2. He is currently trying a line-of-duty case for a police officer who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident caused by his partner's alleged recklessness.
  3. Freckman emphasizes learning from each case, using prior experience from a $3.1 million settlement to build expertise in traumatic brain injury litigation.
  4. He highlights the importance of client storytelling, such as a father unable to interact with his daughter due to brain injury symptoms, to connect with juries.
  5. The discussion covers New York's unique jury selection process (no judge present) and how venue affects juror attitudes toward damages.
  6. Expert Institute and other resources are used to find niche experts, and due diligence (checking prior testimony) is critical to avoid expert challenges.

Summary:

" Freckman discusses his current trial, a line-of-duty case for a police officer with a traumatic brain injury caused by a reckless partner. 1 million settlement, to improve his advocacy. Freckman emphasizes the power of client stories, such as the officer sitting in his car to avoid sensory overload from his daughter's cartoons, over technical medical evidence.

He also explains New York's unusual jury selection process, where no judge is present, and how venue affects juror attitudes toward damages. The conversation covers finding niche experts through networks like Expert Institute and the Washington State Association for Justice, as well as the importance of vetting experts' prior testimony to avoid exclusion. Freckman balances his trial work with YouTube content, which generates cases nationwide.

The interview underscores the value of continuous learning, storytelling, and expert due diligence in personal injury litigation.

FAQs

He started it during COVID to use downtime productively, creating videos on topics like case duration and compensation for injured people.

In New York, judges are not present during jury selection; lawyers must work out issues with each other or see the judge if they can't agree.

He prioritizes trial work, depositions, and client cases, dedicating only a few hours weekly to social media content and live sessions.

He is trying a line-of-duty case for a police officer who suffered a traumatic brain injury when his partner sped through a red light.

He learns by handling cases, attending conferences like TBI MedLegal, watching webinars, and building on past experiences, such as a $3.1 million settlement.

His client sits in his car for hours to avoid lights and sounds from cartoons while watching his daughter through a bay window, unable to interact with her.

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