In an era where artificial intelligence is becoming integral to various sectors, its application in the legal field, particularly in medical malpractice, presents unique challenges. This article explores how a trial lawyer designed a specialized tool to address these challenges effectively, resulting in improved outcomes for clients.
“The issue is that most AI tools marketed to attorneys focus on standard personal injury cases like car accidents. Medical malpractice, however, is distinct,” stated Hastings, a plaintiff’s trial lawyer with 25 years of malpractice litigation experience across numerous courtrooms. “A robust system must capture the various pathways and contradictions hidden within the details. Those specifics can determine the outcome of a case, and no conventional product has come close to achieving this.”
What Florence Does
The Florence platform processes medical record PDFs, systematically organizing clinical events in chronological order across different documents, including nursing flowsheets, medication administration records, physician notes, lab panels, and operative reports. Its interactive dashboard enables the firm’s attorneys to query the data, perform targeted searches, and engage in AI-assisted analyses of the clinical narratives.
The analytical framework behind Florence is tailored, reflecting the unique patterns recognized by Hastings throughout his 25 years of depositions, expert challenges, and courtroom proceedings. Development involved tackling challenges that generic products fail to address: reconciling inconsistent charting methods across hospitals, monitoring medication orders through overlapping systems, identifying lapses in monitoring during shifts, and pinpointing subtle timestamp discrepancies that seasoned malpractice attorneys know to scrutinize.
“You cannot create a tool for this work without firsthand experience in medical malpractice cases,” Hastings emphasized. “Florence is effective because it was designed by someone who has faced high-stakes experts during depositions and has contended with them in their fields of expertise. This is not about a smarter AI; it’s about an AI that finally understands the right questions to ask.”
What the Firm Is Finding
Attorneys at the firm have utilized Florence to review charts across a variety of cases, consistently uncovering significant errors. “We are noticing substantial mistakes in almost every chart we analyze,” said Gabe Sassin, a senior trial attorney at Hastings Law Firm. The firm leverages Florence to balance the scales against the limitless resources offered to insurance firms and multi-billion-dollar healthcare corporations.
A Different Kind of Legal Tech Story
The relationship between the legal industry and artificial intelligence has often been recounted from the perspective of technology companies targeting law firms. In contrast, Florence flips this narrative: it is crafted by a practicing litigator who understood the internal challenges, possessed the domain expertise to define the solution, and utilized AI tools to create it independently, without a software engineering background.
“I’m not a software developer,” Hastings acknowledged. “But I know precisely what I need from medical records and what questions need to be asked. The irony is not lost on me; while many are marketing AI as the ultimate solution, I’ve used AI merely as a tool. The key difference lies in recognizing the actual problem you are trying to solve.”
Hastings has received inquiries to commercialize Florence, but he remains uninterested. “I am a trial lawyer,” he stated. “I developed Florence to enhance our processes and achieve better outcomes for our clients. Selling software is not my intention. My priority will always be on litigating cases, holding negligent parties accountable, and improving healthcare safety for all.”
About Hastings Law Firm, P.C.
Hastings Law Firm, P.C. is a plaintiff’s medical malpractice firm dedicated to representing patients and families in healthcare-related injury cases, including birth injuries, surgical mistakes, misdiagnosis, pharmaceutical and medical device injuries, and medically-related wrongful deaths. Founded in 2005 by board-certified trial attorney and 2025 ABOTA inductee Tommy Hastings, the firm operates offices in The Woodlands, Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Phoenix. For more details, please visit hastingsfirm.com.
Media Contact
Tommy Hastings, Hastings Law Firm, P.C., 1 877-269-4620, [email protected], https://www.hastingsfirm.com/
SOURCE Hastings Law Firm, P.C.
