I’ve done some radio in the past.
I’ve done some television spots as well.
But what I’ve enjoyed the most are podcast appearances.
Don’t get me wrong. Radio and television are a lot of fun. They’ve both excellent mediums to educate and give updates on my chosen field; the practice of Plaintiff side personal injury law in Ontario.
It’s amazing how many people, know so little about such an important area of the law. Lots of people have cars. All motorists need to pay for car insurance. Car insurance is basically a legal contract.
The same applies to home owners and home owner insurance. It also applies to renters and rental insurance.
How about Ontario Disability Support, Unemployment Insurance (Disability/Sickness) or Canada Pension Plan-Disability. All of these relate to injuries or disabilities, and in turn, to personal injury law.
What about injured employees who need to take time off of work due to an injury, illness or stress leave. These people try to claim disability benefits from their employer and get denied. This is yet another branch of personal injury and disability law.
What I’m trying to say is that know a few basics about personal injury law isn’t such a bad thing for people to know. And by doing these media appearances, our office tries to educate the masses as best we can, in an easy to understand way.
The problem is that sometimes these personal injury legal concepts can get a bit technical. It takes more than a simple 15 second sound bite to explain.
The problem with television and radio is the limited amount of time which the personal injury lawyer as a guest has to not only explain these concepts, but also make them interesting and entertaining. The reality is that speaking about personal injury law can be rather dry at times. It’s not as appealing as a criminal law case dealing with a high profile murder or a smoking gun evidentiary issue to convict the accused. Let’s face it, you don’t see many television dramas about personal injury lawyers. Those are reserved for other areas of the law (Suits, CSI, Law & Order, or going way back to Matlock!).
The great thing about Podcasts is that there is no specific format to follow like on television or radio, and most importantly, there are no time constraints.
Podcasts are a long form of conversation which people seem to crave in the day and age of sound bites and getting our news in 280 characters or less on Twitter. People are starved for information, or for something “edutaining” to listen in the background while they do something else (like clean the house, exercise, or drive).
Podcasts are great mediums for storytelling, and also exploring some often boring legal concepts. It’s a great way to educate, and entertain (edutain) listeners. This is why I love doing them so much.
It was with great pleasure that I had the chance to be a guest of The Capital PTBO Podcast this past week. It was my first appearance on a podcast in a while. It seemed like COVID stalled these sort of media appearances. In fairness, it did. I used to do a lot of in person spots. For around a year or more, I wasn’t getting together in person; nor were the television, radio or podcasters having outsiders inside of their studios. Which is all fine. Having contracted COVID at least 2 times that I know of, I wouldn’t want to be the one running off to do an in person appearance in a tiny sound proofed and poorly ventilated studio; only later to find out that the people I met with all got COVID because I gave it to them. At the very least I can do my part.
The remote appearances are fun and fine. But they are not as fun, nor do they have the same energy and connection as the in person appearances.
On my recent appearance on The Capital PTBO Podcast, I had the pleasure of discussing my favourite basketball team in the land; the Toronto Raptors. While we didn’t get into the weeds at all about personal injury law, that was fine with me. The time chatting went by very quickly based on the content and quality of the conversation. Talking about NBA basketball and the Toronto Raptors is refreshing when you spend most of the day talking about the finer points of personal injury law, car accidents and long term disability claims.
But, if you want to chat about personal injury law, car accidents, accident benefit claims, OCF-18 Treatment Plans, OCF-3 Disability Certificates, statutory deductibles, medico-legal thresholds, 104 week disability tests, catastrophic impairments, Glasgow’s coma scales, traumatic brain injury, paraplegia, quadriplegia, slip and falls, trip and falls, occupier’s liability, dog bites, bike accidents, motorcycle accidents, professional negligence claims, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, gross negligence, aggravated damages, punitive damages, damages for mental distress, fibromyalgia claims, depression claims, anxiety claims, PTSD claims, sexual assault claims, mortgage insurance claims, fatality claims, dispensing error cases, and more, then don’t hesitate to reach out to my office at Goldfinger Injury Lawyers at 1-877-730-1777 or by email at info@goldfingerlaw.com
Last topic of discussion has little to do with the practice of personal injury law. It has to do with single use plastic bags in grocery stores. It appears that these will be eliminated in 2023. That’s fine. But why aren’t grocers moving to paper bags? They are biodegradable, and last time I checked, they are rather inexpensive. Perhaps they cost a bit more than plastic, or perhaps they are less expensive. Either way, the fact that large grocers aren’t making the change to biodegradable paper bags, instead of plastic bags is hard to digest. Grocers are basically forcing consumers to either bring in their own bags (which is fine), or buy one of the grocer’s reusable bags for $5. Seems like a cash grab to me. By not providing the consumer an option of choice (bring your own bag vs. purchase a paper bag); it’s acting as a sales deterrent; or forcing the sale onto the consumer which isn’t right at all.