Small Things Make a Big Difference

Most stories have a theme:

Fate v. Free Will

Good v. Evil

Man v. Nature

So do personal injury cases. Themes help tie together evidence and remind juries why what they’re hearing is important.

One of the big struggles is figuring out what theme really fits the facts of the case. A theme that isn’t quite right can be distracting to disastrous.

The themes we talk about in the context of books and plays usually have mammoth proportions (like Good v. Evil). But those kinds of themes usually don’t apply to personal injury cases.

Over time I’ve found the theme that “fits” about 95 percent of cases is “small things can make a big difference.”

One of the examples we like:

What difference would it make if Usain Bolt lost one or two percent of his speed?

It’s the difference between winning the gold medal and last place.

And those “small things” aren’t confined to the track. They apply to all of our lives.

My own experience:

And it’s not just about a couple fractions of a second. Or a couple minutes. It’s about the seemingly little things that have an over-sized impact on our quality of life.

A little bit of pain is a distraction. That distraction keeps us from being fully engaged when our kids want to show us what they’ve made at school, when our partners tell us about their days, when we’re watching the game. And that’s what life is really about. Having full engagement with the people who matter most to us.

Maybe it’s (accurately) described as 2/10 pain. But that 2/10 pain means that we lose the race/miss the bus when it comes to fully experiencing what matters most in life.