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By Allen Shinder
What is the meaning of empathy?
Empathy is the ability to feel and understand the feelings and emotions of another person. It is a key factor in effective communication and can help resolve conflicts. In personal relationships, it helps build trust and understanding between people. Empathy can also help people feel connected to others and make them more likely to cooperate with others. In professional relationships, empathy can help resolve conflicts and manage disagreements. After all, that's what litigation is all about. That is why empathy is critical in personal injury cases.
Why is Empathy Critical in Personal Injury Cases?
You want to develop empathy for your client. You want the judge, jury, mediator, and most importantly the insurance company to understand and be able to relate to the feelings of your client.
Why? Because if they feel the pain, frustration and suffering of your client they will want to help them. That is just human nature.
What is the difference between Empathy and Sympathy?
There is a difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy involves feeling sorry for or pitying the injured person. While empathy involves understanding and relating to the injured victim's feelings.
How do you develop empathy toward your client?
One sure fire way is to produce a day in the life video. Watching a well produced day in the life video will bring out the empathy in most people with a heart that watch it. Talking about pain, suffering and frustration can never communicate it like a video can. Watching the injured person struggle to get through routine daily tasks is one powerful way to develop empathy.
Many successful personal injury lawyers have used Day in the Life videos for decades with great success. They should be used for settlement purposes and then reused and possibly re-edited for trial use. Many times, I will remove the sound for trial and the lawyer will use witnesses on the stand to authenticate and explain what we are being shown in the video. Many times this is done by the client, a doctor, an expert witness, or a caregiver.
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