At this stage of life, everything has to be additive for me. I need to work on something, stop, pick it up again, stop, and repeat this sequence until it’s finished.

Figuring out how an injury has changed someone’s quality of life needs to be explored in the same way. It’s rarely a super-direct process. There are many rough drafts before people are able to get to a fully distilled version of their “truth.”

(Truth is a tricky word because it implies that if something isn’t true, it’s a lie. I think that’s a limited way of looking at it. A lot of times we’re just wrong when we answer a tough question for the first (or second or third) time.)

The product of this process really gives depth to cases and helps maximize their value. But people don’t identify the “small” things right off the bat. It’s something that has to evolve over a lot of observation and thinking.

The term "non-economic damages" describes the loss of quality of life.

When I started practicing, I focused on “big” events that people missed after an injury to establish how an injury had eroded their quality of life. And that tied in with what people told me: They missed the annual camping trip to Mt. Rainier, or they couldn’t travel to Topeka for a graduation. But most of these “big” events were single servings.

But over time I realized that what really has the biggest impact on quality of life are the changes to ordinary activities that happen every day. Things like not being able to bring in the groceries by yourself or play catch with your child.

Going to Disney is something that happens once a year. Or once every couple of years. Or once during childhood. But being able to read or color or dance with mom is something that happens every day or a couple of times a week.