In both the literal and figurative sense, our settlement planning team works to meet people where they are, in order to help them get to where they’d like to be. Milestone Associate Sam Dolce-Powers, Esq. describes how.
Many personal injury clients have endured the unendurable. They are dealing with the physical injuries and mental challenges of serious trauma. As comprehensive settlement planning experts, it is our responsibility to help people transition from their catastrophe into a new future.
The experiences I’ve gained in life working with seriously injured people have taught me empathy and compassion, and have honed my ability to listen. One constant in this line of work is being able to meet people where they are – both physically and mentally. It could be a new client in Jackson, MS, or in San Francisco, CA – every client’s living room feels a little different. The pain of their injury, the struggle with mental health, and their upcoming financial compensation may all be similar – but each individual and family are wholly unique. What types of other stresses and responsibilities do they have in their family? Were they a breadwinner? Meeting people where they are means to have an intrinsic understanding of where they were. This continual “learning” step is important in our ability as settlement planners to put the settlement into context, and to start to define what the settlement means. Painting a picture of what the future may look like is part of the closure process in litigation, and clients are also going through this phase; until you meet them, you don’t know where they are in this step of the process.
Our team at Milestone prides ourselves on our ability to reach clients and leverage our experience to their benefit. We will take the time to show up in person, to help guide a plaintiff and their family through this experience. Skills and expertise in this profession allows us to navigate various familial situations, levels of personal crisis, and each unique financial hurdle.
As a team, we engage with leaders in the field of trauma-informed care. We constantly seek to push boundaries for our clients, and we celebrate the positive outcomes that our clients and their family’s experience. It’s investigative work in many ways, and the lawyer in me comes out in this part of the process. Getting to know the clients is one thing, but being able to ask hard questions, and develop a basis for what a client needs at any one particular time is a skillset. Are they worried about income? What effect will the settlement have on taxes? Are there children who have special needs as a result of a birth injury? Taking in the totality of the family and their needs is equally as important as doing a financial plan for the individual person.
Differentiated from most traditional financial planning firms, Milestone affords me the opportunity to focus solely on issues around catastrophic personal injury settlement. One of the unique challenges in dealing with people in personal injury settlements is understanding what their basis of knowledge is. 99% of our clients have never had this kind of money before, and don’t even know how to have the conversation. Where do I start? We hear this all the time. We have a proven process that respects where they are in the level of education, and at every step we provide them with a positive experience as they move through the settlement planning process. This specialized knowledge, combined with meeting people where they are, is part of the reason why we are such a unique settlement company.
