Transcript
Michelle Prince (00:00)
I believe that the biggest misconception is that all LRAs are the same. And that once you’ve worked with one, you can expect the same low level of client communication, the same low level of passion and interest, same level of consulting, which I think is at a minimum in the industry. And so we see a lot of fatigue there from attorneys saying, you’re just another LRA. You’re the problem child of this whole process because you’re holding up the money for the claimants. We aim to be different, and we are different.
Al Ludwig (00:29)
Michelle Prince, Lit Pro, welcome to the Law Firm Brand Builders Podcast.
Michelle Prince (00:32)
Thank you, Al. Happy to be here.
Al Ludwig (00:35)
So today we’re going to talk about Lit Pro, of course. We’re going to talk about lien resolutions, patented AI technologies that are helping kind of evolve your world to that next level. And I bring that up because a lot of people who listen to my podcast are foreign to this world of lien resolutions. Of course, I have lawyers that listen that know exactly everything about it, they know the importance of it, but also have marketers, media buyers. People like that who don’t understand how important that lien resolution process is to the overall brand experience as well. And I think it’s gonna be important for them to to learn a little bit on here because you know, that lien resolution process is at the towards the end of that user’s journey and they might have had a great time at intake and with their legal team, and then the ball kind of stops, right? There’s a gap in the lien resolutions. They were delayed on settlement. And now that client is unhappy, and that affects the referral relationship down the road, the reviews, so on and so forth. But before I go deep into all that, I want to talk about you. Okay. You came you came up as a lawyer. You spent years on the vendor side of mass torts, then enterprise software and process consulting. So give me some of those details and what how that led you to founding Lit Pro.
Michelle Prince (01:49)
Sure. Yeah, it wasn’t that I dreamed as a child that I would start a healthcare lien resolution company. Definitely an evolution in my career. I practiced law in North Carolina for several years, both with a law firm and in-house. And at some point I transitioned to work for a company in North Carolina that was in the settlement administration space and fell in love with the area and got to learn about all of the different outsourced services along the entire timeline of large litigations, everything from intake and plaintiff fact sheets all the way through settlement administration and healthcare lien resolution. And I worked with that company for many years. And then I went on to work with some other legal technology companies in consulting roles. And it was about 10 years ago that I reconnected with two of my former colleagues at that same administration company. And we decided that we saw an opportunity to come into the space and and be a disruptor and bring modern day technology into what we saw was an antiquated industry and also bring a real passion towards client service. Which we also felt like was very missing in the industry. The three of us were attorneys and we felt very strongly that that whoever these firms were working with also had a duty to serve these clients exactly as if they were their own law firm clients. So we started a plan to start this business and incorporated in 2018. And in 2019 we were off and running. We had some asbestos clients that we had worked with previously that came on board really at the jump. And and then built our system to handle that complex multi-defendant, multi-settlement.
Al Ludwig (03:37)
Would you say that as that asbestos starting there was actually a kind of a a linchpin in getting started because of the nature of that work versus some of the other healthcare lien areas?
Michelle Prince (03:48)
Absolutely. It’s like starting at the high dive, right? Without, you know, rather than starting at, you know, the edge of the pool. And we jumped right in with the most complex types of litigation, right? 60 plus defendants, some viable, some in bankruptcy, the settlements rolling at various points in time. Extremely complicated to administer the lien resolution process because at every single settlement or payment, there has to be, it has to be addressed. Lien resolution has to be addressed. So these complicated global programs were formed with some of the private lien vendors that we began administering. And to do that work, we built a system out. So it it we were ready to take on complex litigation, multiple defendant litigation, because we had already had that foundation in our system. So really quickly we transitioned into mass tort. And now what we do is about, you know, our revenue is probably 99 percent attributed to a mass tort, a lien resolution.
Al Ludwig (04:46)
Yeah. Okay. So let’s let’s step back a bit and just explain like in plain English to the person who’s not familiar with healthcare liens, you know, what exactly is it and why does it stand between a a settled case and the client getting paid?
Michelle Prince (05:00)
Right. Yeah. And this is something you’re right, you mentioned earlier that claimants usually don’t understand. And it is usually very shocking and surprising and maybe upsetting when they realize that before they can receive their settlement dollars, the attorneys, the claimants themselves, and in some instances the defendants have an obligation to make sure that the health insurance company that paid for that injury related care gets reimbursed for that injury related care. So the insurers get paid first out of the settlement dollars. And when you think about it in the case of Medicare, it I think people can wrap their head around, you know, Medicare is a federal trust. We want to protect those dollars for the future. And when a third party comes in and takes responsibility for your injuries and that Medicare has been paying for, then yes, Medicare should be reimbursed out of that pot of money, right? So there are various different types of health insurance that are involved. Medicare is one, Medicaid is another, 50 different Medicaid states, private health insurers, thousands of different types of private health insurers, the military, Indian health services. There’s a there’s a whole web of healthcare liens that could come into play in the settlement, any kind of settlement. And to understand how to unravel it, to address it, to repay, and to be compliant, it is is very is very complex and it requires you know knowing the right people at the agencies and it requires understand the legal overlay of state and federal law and contract law as it comes into play and in the obligations to repay those. So to to to people who are totally outside the legal space, Lit Pro is a legal services company and we serve mass tort law firms. To lawyers, I say Lit Pro is a healthcare lien resolution company in mass tort litigation. So, you know, depending on your your level of knowledge around mass tort litigation or litigation in general, you know, you get a different definition from me. But it’s really that last hurdle before the claimants can get paid and before the lawyers themselves can get paid or and or whoever is financing or funding that litigation. So there is a strong motivator on the law firm side and on the funder side to ensure that the right kind of vendor partner is in place because time is money. And also these claimants have been waiting, you know, in some instances years, some instances decades for these settlements. So ensuring that that process is is efficient, is accurate and compliant is is essential.
Al Ludwig (07:37)
Yeah, the the lien resolutions affect two of the most important things in in my mind. And that is reputation, because you don’t want it to take long. You don’t want people to get the to sour to haven’t worked with you. And your revenue, as you mentioned, the the lawyers also want to get paid. You know, and that’s why, you know, in the end, a lot of us do a lot of work that helps a lot of people, but there’s always a monetary aspect to it, and we all do want to get paid and support our lives and our families and all that. So reputation and revenue, I guess the two ores are the things that the that lien resolution stage I think is is affecting at at the end of the day and why so much care really needs to be put into that. And so I’m curious from from your perspective, when you work with a new client or you’re auditing another service, what are the the biggest issues you’re uncovering in in that lien resolution process and where Lit Pro is able to then put in a different system or help just the efficiency of of everything happening.
Michelle Prince (08:38)
Yeah, there are a number of different points where I think we add value. One which I think is undervalued is client communication, claimant communication, law firm communication within the law firm themselves, providing clear guidance on why we’re going through this process, what the obligations are, the reasons for the delay. And we provide a lot of information to our clients to assist them in giving the right kind of educations to their law firm staff. And and to the claimants themselves. That can go a long way and that reputation piece you you mentioned, right? Having a clear communication and understanding of what this process looks like so that someone can can wrap their brain around why we have to wait a little bit longer to get that settlement. So that’s certainly very important. Another part that we come in and do things differently is data management and data organization to do this work. So early on we’re advising our clients what they need to be collecting, how they need to be collecting it, where they need to house it. And then we’re taking that information and developing a strategy about how we’re going to approach the lien resolution project as a whole based on the litigation. All litigations don’t look the same. Some litigations are environmental exposure in one centralized state. You you have a different with with with demographics that are that are very clear and and contained. And for those you have a different approach than a national product defect or medical device, right? So we come in and provide that consulting at that stage based on our analysis of the data that we’ve advised on them collecting and then putting that into place. And then there’s authorizations. And making sure that we have the right kind of authorizations in place to do this work for patients, people who should be protected by HIPAA laws, right? And so that is also a piece of it. And then the connection of our systems so that there’s that simple exchange of information. We develop APIs within on almost every CRM out there in the market.
Al Ludwig (10:59)
Okay. Communicate back and forth with Yeah, that’s definitely
Michelle Prince (11:02)
The goal of that is so that the law firms aren’t working in multiple systems and they can push information to Lit Pro so that Lit Pro can then use that to do our work and then we can push information. So that a paralegal right. So a paralegal working on a case can just log in and see, okay, well, we have the claims for this for this claimant from Medicare. The auditing work should be done in 30 days and we should have a final lien within this amount of time, right? So that they can also provide additional guidance, communications towards clients in the process they’re going through. So that’s another part that we take.
Al Ludwig (11:25)
Okay. For the various mass tort litigations, is there a certain size that Lit Pro works within?
Michelle Prince (11:31)
We’ve handled litigations as small as a couple hundred, but these days it’s more in the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of claimants. We really shine the bigger the litigation is because we are a tech enabled company and we’ve got a team of over 50 people who are two-thirds of them are involved solely in operations. These people come from backgrounds working directly for the lien holders, working for other recovery contractors out in the space that represent the private companies, they have that inside information, that niche knowledge to do this work so well. And we definitely need those humans to direct this process. But the tech behind it, what we built built is our proprietary system. We call it the Lit Portal, is really where we shine because we’re ingesting data and then we’re using the Lit Portal to execute on our work by incorporating calculations and algorithms and if then statements to get us to the results that give us the accurate results to resolve liens in a compliant way at the end of the day. So the bigger the better is what we say because really can shine it that way.
Al Ludwig (12:46)
So the Lit Portal that that’s the is that the patented AI technology that you built out?
Michelle Prince (12:51)
Yeah, it is. Yeah, Lit Portal is a patented AI technology. It serves as our business engine. It’s actually running our work behind the scenes. It’s keeping our program managers and analysts on task. It’s providing a client-facing portal to our clients, to the law firm clients as well. So they can see where we are in the process. They can get a high-level view of litigation and how close we are to finalization, or they can dig in deep at the claimant level or the lien level. And get the questions answered that they need to when they get asked by their clients. We even go so far as to show in our portal how our audits are being done. I I don’t know that any other vendor in the space is doing that. We are we we we want to be completely transparent. We want to make sure that people are seeing our value and the auditing work we do is a large part of our value. That’s actually the patented piece of our system is the auditor itself.
Al Ludwig (13:45)
I was curious about the the auditing auditing aspect. ‘Cause haven’t y’all gone in and audited some of the larger like the the more legacy names in this world to make sure that everything is simpatico or that the or or discover issues, right, for the law firms that are utilizing them?
Michelle Prince (14:01)
That is right. Early early on, we we took on a number of consulting projects with the leading asbestos firms in the country when the DOJ was looking into Medicare reimbursement compliance at the bankruptcy trust level in asbestos. And yes, so we came in kind of as the I don’t know, the the the the Ernst and Young of of lien resolution administrators and did this high level view and we got to see in systems and figure out how and where the missteps were being made by the other administrators and advised the clients at that point in time how to be more compliant and where they could fix some of the problems.
Al Ludwig (14:38)
Okay. So y y’all started this in 2018, and it was a a group of you who all was involved?
Michelle Prince (14:44)
I was my co-founder Sherry Ramazanian and Charles Medlin. Today it is Sherry and I. Our our co-founder Charles Medlin sadly passed away unexpectedly three years ago. And that was certainly a moment in our lifeline as a company where we really had to dig deep and and pull together and and decide to carry on and carry on the legacy that that Charlie wanted us to do. And we did. So we went forward and we we hired some more fantastic people to provide the resources we needed to bolster what we were doing and and and today we’re bigger and bolder than ever.
Al Ludwig (15:22)
Are is there any experience over the last eight years for a particular litigation or work that you took on that just sticks with you, that you had some interesting stories come out of because something unexpected happen?
Michelle Prince (15:34)
Yeah, no, I one that came to mind right away because it’s fresh in my mind because we just reported on this this week to our clients and to our internal teams. We were brought in to assist with the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy lien administration program by a number of firms who opted out from using the vendor that was selected by the trustee originally. The reason why these firms opted out was because they were displeased with the level of service, communication. And didn’t necessarily agree with the process that at that LRA had set out for resolution. That all aside, some of these companies came to us and we’ve been working thousands of these Boy Scout cases now for about a year. I think we’ve been involved in these. And we were able to report to our clients this week that we are on average reducing these liens for these Boy Scout, these these claimants who were abused, sexually abused by their Boy Scout leaders by 99 percent. So on average, we’re reducing by $72,000. So our work in going directly to these lien holders and fighting the fight, and in a lot of cases on these Boy Scout cases, we’re dealing with individual associations and they’re having to be dealt with as a one off. And we are reducing the liens almost to nothing, which is incredibly rewarding, incredibly justifying in the work that we’re doing, right? That that our staff is doing that very diligent auditing work. They’re applying the law, they’re applying the facts, and they’re getting the best results for these claimants who, you know, unfortunately in this bankruptcy situation aren’t seeing anywhere near the the kind of settlement dollars that they should be seeing for the horrific things they had to go through. So that to me, I couldn’t be prouder of that result.
Al Ludwig (17:21)
Nice. Yeah. That’s kind of exactly what I was hoping to hear. A story that helps conceptualize the work, the benefit, all that. And that helps for me too, right? Cause as I mentioned earlier, like I’m I’m familiar with lien resolutions, but I’m not an attorney. I never I never specifically worked in that area. And so hearing the story and how the implementation helps the overall process, it’s it’s really insightful. And you brought you brought the Boy Scouts. And so for me and and and many guys out there, it’s like if you weren’t in the Boy Scouts when you at least when you’re my age, like you’re in like the 3 percent of people that that weren’t in the Boy Scouts. Well, so maybe move us to some rapid fire questions. Okay. I know you got some meetings and stuff to get to, but I I’m curious about a few more things. Biggest misconception lawyers have about liens.
Michelle Prince (18:11)
You know, I believe that the biggest misconception is that all LRAs are the same. And that once you’ve worked with one, everybody’s the same. And you can expect the same low level of client communication, the same low level of passion and interest, same same level of consult consulting, which I think is at a minimum to a large degree in the industry. And so we see a lot of fatigue out there from attorneys saying, you’re just another LRA. You’re you’re the problem child of this whole process because you’re holding up the money for the claimant. We aim to be different and we are different because we do approach every single case in a consultative way, develop a specific strategy, try to be as proactive as possible prior to settlement so that it positions us to execute quickly and efficiently once settlement is reported. And we have a team of people who respond within 24 hours to every single email, to every single call. And there’s never a lack of communication along the process. It’s anything we overcommunicate. So I think that is the biggest misconception is that you have to work with the same kind of companies. You don’t.
Al Ludwig (19:21)
All right. One thing a firm could do tomorrow to speed up every distribution.
Michelle Prince (19:24)
Collect health insurance information early and accurately. I know for most mass tort attorneys, they don’t want to have the conversation around liens when they’re in taking a claimant. I understand the tension there, right? That is a that could be a turn-off, could turn somebody away from wanting to pursue their case or work with that particular attorney if it’s brought up. But pretty early on, it’s important to be gathering the right kind of answers to the questions we need answered as well as documentation of any health insurance over the period of time of treatment so that we can, like I said previously, do that analysis to determine what the landscape of liens looks like and then develop the strategy to attack.
Al Ludwig (20:09)
Most overused word in legal tech right now. AI. I think it has to be. Like it’s a whether whether you’re utilizing it in a very sophisticated and important way or not, it’s just used so much right now and there’s so much talk about it. I don’t think there’s any other legal tech word that exists right now.
Michelle Prince (20:26)
It is it is everywhere. It is terrifying to me how little interest I think most attorneys have in understanding what it actually means and how it’s actually being utilized. I I would at some point I would encourage you to talk to our VP of technology who built our system because he came from the financial world, newer to legal tech. And in he’s attending these conferences now and walking through the exhibit halls and talking to the other vendors and AI is everywhere. And he will ask the tough questions about, you know, where are you getting the information? Where is the where’s the information going? Who’s getting it? And in most instances, people don’t understand that it’s open. And we’re talking about data funneling now into the ether that in a lot of cases should be protected because
Al Ludwig (21:16)
Legal data, healthcare data, yeah.
Michelle Prince (21:20)
And he was mortified that more people weren’t asking those questions, right? So what we did is we hired the right kind of people to ensure first and foremost, data security is one of our highest concerns, right? But also the AI we do utilize is closed and it is built on our knowledge. I’ll give you an example. Our auditor that we built, which is a closed auditing system, was built on our manual auditing of millions of lines of claims. So we start one by one, you know, or in spreadsheet form reviewing claims listings and determining whether or not it’s related to the injury at issue. We then ingested that into our system and now we’re feeding it with more of our work. Every single day it’s getting smarter and smarter. And all of that is our internal knowledge translated into a really robust, strong, accurate system. And we’re not pulling in outside information and we’re not dumping by any means our claimant information out into the world. That is we’re protecting that extreme
Al Ludwig (22:21)
Very important.
Michelle Prince (22:23)
Yeah, it we’re very concerned about that. So yeah, that’s where I think
Al Ludwig (22:26)
Things are gonna happen in the coming years about exactly that potential issue that’s floating around out there with a lot of more of the open technologies.
Michelle Prince (22:35)
Exactly. I mean, if I could give, you know, listeners to your podcast any any big warning is try to understand what that means when you’re working with a company who says they’re utilizing AI. Where is their inform data going? Who is getting it? Who’s analyzing it? Don’t get yourself into a situation where your client’s information is released out into the world.
Al Ludwig (22:56)
Is Lit Pro going to move into single event?
Michelle Prince (22:59)
Yes, we’ve always been in the single event space. We have some core clients, large PI firms that have been working with us consistently in single event for for many, many years. We tend to stay away from any new clients in the single event space without significant volume because where we really shine is in the volume that we the the management of the the volume cases. Single event work is is mostly manual. It’s paralegal work. It’s reporting one case and negotiating one lien. And we can do that work and we do it very well for the clients we serve. But where we really shine is the ability to ingest massive amounts of data, clean that data and turn that data into you know, resolved liens.
Al Ludwig (23:46)
So what would that look like from a like a PI firm standpoint in terms of volume?
Michelle Prince (23:50)
That’s really good question. I’m not sure I could probably give it a number, but I think most importantly it would probably take a very tech forward single event firm who’s willing to immediately integrate with us and their system integrates with us so that we can establish a regular communication cadence that isn’t burdensome on either side, right? That it’s not just phone calls.
Al Ludwig (24:13)
It’s probably a little bit more about the sophistication of the of the operations of the law of the law firm and the tech stacks that they’re using and and those those workflows.
Michelle Prince (24:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.
Al Ludwig (24:24)
All right, and question a firm should ask a vendor but never does in in your space.
Michelle Prince (24:31)
Well, one is who owns you.
Al Ludwig (24:33)
Okay.
Michelle Prince (24:35)
And and and I understand this this this world we work within. There’s there’s lots of outside of investors, and I’m not I’m not throwing any kind of shame on that, but I think it’s important to understand the company you’re working with, who are they beholden to, who are they tied in with, where could they potentially influence the way that you’re operating your practice that you might not want. Lit Pro is completely owned by Sherry and I. We have no outside influence. We’re attorneys trying to serve our attorney clients the best way we can. And we we don’t answer to anybody outside of that.
Al Ludwig (25:09)
Perfect. Well, where can people find you? Find Lit Pro.
Michelle Prince (25:12)
You can find us on LinkedIn, which is where we’re probably most prominent. We have Instagram and Facebook, but I think if you’re spending a lot of time on Lit Pro Facebook or Instagram, I would recommend maybe some hobbies because
Al Ludwig (25:28)
And it sounds like y’all are all y’all y y’all are big into the conference tour and that you can probably be found at many of the conferences. Is there a favorite conference?
Michelle Prince (25:35)
Yes, we attend almost every large mass tort conference during the year. We we like to show up and throw some fun events. We we sponsor some plaintiffs related charities that we’re really proud of. We’re very strongly associated with the plaintiffs bar and unabashedly so. So organizations like Child USA and Public Justice we’re we’re really proud to be associated with. That’s where we we show up most is those kind of places. Yeah. And we also have a Spotify account that we occasionally pop in a playlist or two associated with a particular conference or event that we’re that we’re going to. We we we know we’re not the most exciting part of of of litigation. We understand that. But we we don’t aim to be boring. So
Al Ludwig (26:26)
But you need to have good people doing the the the quote unquote boring stuff, right?
Michelle Prince (26:30)
Exactly.
Al Ludwig (26:31)
It is what it is. And if and at the end of the day, if you’re a law firm out there, your lien resolution system needs to be something that is flawless or as flawless as possible because reputation and revenue are the two more most important things to most law firms and very well should be. So if you have problems with with your lien resolution or you just need an audit, Michelle, Lit Pro, I think they’re y’all the team to call. And so Michelle, thanks so much for joining the Law Firm Brand Builders Podcast.
Michelle Prince (27:02)
Thank you, Al. I enjoyed it. Thank you so much.