PI Attorneys and Paralegals: ERISA What to Know
The Peak Practice Newsletter helps trial lawyers scale, streamline, and accelerate their practices with expert insights on law firm operations, business growth, marketing, and lien resolution strategy.
CUTTING EDGE INDUSTRY THOUGHT LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS
Synergy’s blog brings you the industry’s foremost thought leadership InSights on matters of healthcare lien resolution and Medicare Secondary Payer Compliance. Visit often to discover helpful InSights on important lien resolution compliance issues.
How to Reduce a Hospital Lien: Why Reasonableness of Charges Wins the Fight
Most hospital lien negotiations start from the wrong number. This post explains why billed charges function more like list prices than a measure of reasonable value, how to determine whether a provider holds an enforceable lien versus an unpaid debt, how to test whether that lien was properly perfected, and how to build a defensible reasonable value range using Medicare rates, commercial negotiated rates, and cost report data. It also covers auditing the itemized bill, catching balance billing violations, and layering statutory and equitable arguments on top of the reasonableness case.
Chris Rose: Personal Injury Referrals, The Risk Most Firms Never See
Chris Rose of LegalFlare built a firm around handling personal injury referrals, and he’s found that most firms treat referral relationships far too casually. In this Trial Lawyer View recap, he breaks down why a referral fee comes with shared malpractice liability, why referral listservs offer almost no vetting, what to demand before accepting a case, and how his team catches errors other firms miss in closing statements. He also weighs in on where AI genuinely helps a personal injury practice and where it doesn’t.
California AB 2305: The End of the MSO Exit for Personal Injury Firms?
The Peak Practice Newsletter helps trial lawyers scale, streamline, and accelerate their practices with expert insights on law firm operations, business growth, marketing, and lien resolution strategy.
Ten Years After a Truck Hit Me: What My Own Injury Case Taught Me About Personal Injury Injuries, Recovery & Liens
Ten years after a truck hit him on a group bike ride, Synergy founder Jason Lazarus revisits the personal injury case he negotiated himself, from a six figure medical lien to a settlement plan built while recovering from facial reconstruction. He connects that experience to a bigger issue facing firms today: rising MSP compliance pressure and staff hours lost to administrative lien work. His conclusion: keep case selection, negotiation, and client relationships in house, and hand off lien identification and Medicare compliance to specialists.
Kyle Wright: How a Small Market Trucking Practice Outgrew Its County
Kyle Wright built his trucking practice in Sandusky, Ohio, a market most firms would overlook. In this Trial Lawyer View recap, he explains how he studied federal motor carrier regulations, put six figures a year into trial training, and ran a catastrophic case at litigation speed pre suit to secure a 5.7 million dollar policy limit settlement. The result: a smaller, higher value caseload and a referral pipeline built on reputation, not marketing spend alone.
Understanding Medicaid Liens: Federal Protections Every Personal Injury Professional Should Know
When a state Medicaid agency demands full reimbursement from a client’s settlement, federal law may not actually allow it. This post breaks down the federal mandate behind Medicaid’s third-party recovery rights, the anti-lien and anti-recovery statutes that limit them, and the two Supreme Court rulings, Ahlborn and Wos, that define how much of an injury victim’s recovery is truly protected.
Liability Settlements and Medicare Advantage Plans
A longtime Medicare Secondary Payer compliance attorney reflects on becoming a Medicare beneficiary and the lessons this experience offers to personal injury lawyers. Her story provides valuable insight into how MSP obligations impact injured clients.
How Lien Resolution Leaks Profit
Every firm tracks what a case costs to try, but lien resolution costs rarely show up on a report. They arrive as absorbed hours, delayed disbursements, and reduction arguments never made. Here’s a breakdown of the three hidden leaks draining profit from personal injury firms, and why the accounting shifts entirely once the work is outsourced.