Tell me you’re in pain (without telling me you’re in pain)

Personal injury and disability attorneys know how difficult it can be to document the severity of our clients' pain. Most of the time, our clients can't communicate their pain either: whether to us or to their doctors.

Disability attorney Julia M. has an ingenious solution to this problem: ask your clients to tell you about their pain or injury without using the words “pain” or “hurts.” Instead of just talking about how they feel – which is impossible to understand and quantify – this will get them talking about all the changes to their behavior and activities their injuries cause.

This kind of specificity about their day-to-day impairments creates a far richer, more relatable, and more credible story than trying to convey something as subjective and ineffable as pain. On top of that, talking this way to their doctors also leads to much better documentation and treatment.