Injury Insight Podcast

Takeaways

• Medical malpractice law can be a family business, with generations of lawyers specializing in this field.
• Starting a law firm requires hard work and dedication but can lead to success and growth.
• Helping people in their most difficult times is a rewarding aspect of practicing medical malpractice law.
• Providing accountability and honesty to clients is crucial in building trust and making a positive impact on their lives.

Chapters

• 00:00 The Journey into Medical Malpractice Law
• 03:48 Building a Successful Law Firm
• 05:15 Helping People in Their Most Difficult Times
• 06:05 The Importance of Accountability and Honesty

Transcript

(00:01.422)
Welcome to Injury Insight, the podcast that unravels the stories behind personal injury and medical malpractice lawsuits, examines the science behind the claims, and spotlights the fight for justice in the healthcare system. Your host for the podcast is Mike Duffy, a practicing attorney with over 25 years of experience.

(00:51.256)
So in today’s diagnosis, we’re going to talk a little bit about how I became involved in medical malpractice. Bluntly, this is a family business. My father was, my father passed a few years ago, my father was one of the best to ever handle these types of cases. And he had been involved in a law firm in Manhattan for many years. And when I got out of law school, I could either go work for him.

or I could start my own law firm. And since he and I were way too much alike, I decided that working with him was probably not in my best interest. So I started my own law firm. It sounds better than it may have been because he made sure I had work and I started handling medical malpractice cases. At that time, there were a lot of law firms all over the state that were small firms.

and had one or two medical malpractice cases that they really didn’t know what they were doing with. And so what they would do is they would start the case and hope to get settled and it wouldn’t settle. So then it would just sit in their office and gather dust. And I went around and I sat down with each of them and I said, you know, let me take the case and I’ll try the case and I’ll, it’ll be over one way the other and it’ll be out of your office. And I referred to it at the time as the stinky fish door because I told each and every one of them that they have.

these files sitting in their office that smell like dead fish and they are not going to smell any better tomorrow and let me handle them and we’ll get it over with. And I did and it worked out very well. I went out and I was trying cases all over the state. I was trying cases long before most people at an age when most people were not trying cases. And so within a relatively short period of time, I was suddenly an experienced trial lawyer and

Then my father and his firm broke up and he announced to me that he was coming to my neighborhood and opening up a law firm to try cases. And I made clear to him that was a very bad idea because there was already a guy named Duffy in that neighborhood doing the exact same thing. And that probably wasn’t going to work out too well for me since he was among the best to ever do this. And my father was a very tough guy and looked at me and said, well,

(03:18.99)
That’s your problem. So I did what any Irishman would do in those circumstances. I called my mother and I made clear to my mother that something had to give here. And she made sure that he and I sat down and worked out a deal. So we did and we started this firm in 2000 or 2001. I forget the exact date. And we had a great working relationship. I ran the business. He was out trying most of the cases at that time. We built the business.

and we really haven’t looked back. Over the years, we’ve grown from, it was myself and my father and two other people, one of them being my sister, and we have grown that now into 17 or 18 lawyers and doing a lot of medical malpractice cases. So it’s been a family endeavor pretty much from the beginning. One of the things that my entire family and the folks that work here, including,

a gentleman that I went to high school with, so I basically consider him my brother, Jim Lacalzi, one of our partners here. And I went to high school together and have been at each other’s side for almost 40 years now. We have the great benefit, honor, and satisfaction of being able to help people in their most stressful and difficult times of their lives where

The medical system and the medical providers that they trusted, they literally trusted their lives with have failed them. And they have nowhere to turn. And the industry, the legal industry is, as you know, the legal industry is full of lawyers who really don’t know what they’re doing, but will try to benefit from someone else’s tragedy. We get the benefit of being able to actually help these people.

We have had people we’ve helped come back and tell us that we’ve changed their lives, that we have allowed their families to go to school by providing the financial resources that we provide, that we have allowed children who were severely damaged at birth to be able to be cared for the rest of their lives and allow the family the freedom to live their own lives while also providing for their loved one. We get these,

(05:43.208)
wonderful opportunities. get the opportunity to provide accountability to people who in many instances our clients aren’t really looking for the money. They’re looking for someone to stand up and take responsibility for what happened, to tell them what happened, to just be honest with them. And in the end, we’re honest with them about everything.

I tell every single client that I sit down with that at the end of my investigation, I’m going to be very honest with them and I’m going to tell them whether there is a case there or not, whether they want to hear that result or not. Every part of what we do, we are very upfront and honest with our clients about exactly what happened, exactly what we can prove and exactly what we can do. That is something that they have sorely missed from the medical profession and we get to provide that.

In the end, what we get to provide is we get to provide our clients with answers and accountability, and it is our great honor to do that.

contact Duffy and Duffy to schedule a confidential consultation. You can call us at 516 -259 -3775 or email Mike Duffy at mduffy@DuffyDuffyLaw.com and we’ll get back to you quickly.