Aaron DeShaw
Dr. Aaron DeShaw, Esq. - Co-founder and President
Dr. Aaron DeShaw, Esq. is a trial lawyer, and innovator in the field of plaintiff personal injury law. He is the co-founder and President of Settlement Intelligence.
As a lawyer he has individually, and in cooperation with other law firms, obtained settlements and verdicts for his clients in excess of $1 Billion. He has the largest compensatory damage verdict in Oregon history, and the largest below knee leg amputation verdict in the United States - a $77,500,000 verdict in M.M. v. Nicolopoulos.
DeShaw is the founder and CEO of Trial Guides, as well as the co-founder and President of Settlement Intelligence. DeShaw is the leading author in the U.S. on the subject of insurance bodily injury assessment programs such as Colossus, Liability Navigator (formerly Claim Outcome Advisor) and ClaimIQ used by most auto insurance companies for evaluating personal injury claims. DeShaw is the author of three books, multiple book chapters and is featured in multiple professional education videos on the topics of traumatic injuries and insurance. He has lectured extensively nationally on the topics of insurance claim software, demand letters and traumatic injuries to the legal community.
Notable figures in the legal community, including David Ball and Nick Rowley have referenced him as one of the visionaries of plaintiff personal injury law.
"Trial Guides and its founder, Aaron DeShaw, have armed, honed, and inspired more plaintiff's attorneys than anything else this century." Leading trial consultant David Ball Ph.D., author of the landmark legal books David Ball on Damages, Reptile, and Damages Evolving.
DeShaw is the author of the only books on insurance bodily injury claim software - notably Colossus: What Every Trial Lawyer Needs to Know. His three books on the software used by insurers to evaluate noneconomic damages and economic damages were the first books published by the company now known as Trial Guides. During the years he researched those books from tens of thousands of pages of original programming notes and non-protected claim manuals, he took the information created a proprietary demand letter format to trigger insurance company software. This demand letter method seeking the information of value to insurers and lays it out in the order sought by the insurance company software. This is the basis for the present Settlement Intelligence demand letter format. In addition, he created proprietary forms to collect the factors and subfactors involved with two of the most valuable claims to insurance claim software; "Duties Under Duress" and "Loss of Enjoyment of Life." These forms have been granted intellectual property protection as they were the result of DeShaw's original research, compilation and creation.
From 2005 to 2010, DeShaw worked on Hensley v. CSC, a national insurance class action case against over 580 insurance companies as well as all three major bodily injury software manufacturers. Millions of documents were produced demonstrating the use and effect of bodily injury claim software. Most of the documents from this case remain protected. DeShaw has gone on in his career to work on multiple bad faith claims and class aciton cases against insurers including State Farm, GEICO, Allstate, Farmers and more.
After the end of Hensley in 2010, DeShaw started Auto Claim Experts, a consulting company for lawyers who wanted their demand letters written for them using DeShaw's demand letter method. He chose Charlette Sinclair as the Director of Auto Claim Experts and in the following years Sinclair ran a team of doctors, legal nurse consultants, and paralegals evaluating claims, and writing demand letters for law firms throughout the United States. Sinclair purchased the company and continued writing thousands of demand letters with her team while DeShaw continued practicing law and running Trial Guides.
Starting in 2015, DeShaw was asked by FileVine's founders to discuss the idea of creating technology to do demand letters and generate other letters to improve case outcomes using his claim methods. Despite over a year of negotiations and discussion, FileVine failed to move forward with the joint venture.
After many years of discussion about improving Sinclair and DeShaw started Settlement Intelligence in 2020 and Sinclair has run a team of programmers implementing Dr. DeShaw and her demand letter methods. Subsequent to this EvenUp approached both Sinclair and then DeShaw to get their expertise on demand letters but were declined. Similarly, investors in FileVine re-approached DeShaw in 2022 seeking his expertise on demand letters, but were declined given the company's prior failure to move forward on the previous joint project and DeShaw's commitment to Settlement Intelligence as the sole platform that would use his work for AI demand letters.
In his legal career, Aaron has been awarded the Oregon Trial Lawyer Association's Presidents Award for contribution to the practice of law. He has the highest personal injury compensatory damage verdict in Oregon history. He is one of less than 100 members of ABOTA in Oregon. Aaron has been elected by his peers to Super Lawyers in multiple years.
Before his time in law, he was a Doctor of Chiropractic in the United States and Europe. Aaron obtained a Doctorate of Chiropractic from Western States Chiropractic College in a 4000 hour post-graduate doctorate program, passed three national board examinations, as well as licensing boards in two states. During his seven years as a doctor, he practiced in five countries treating people from over 100 nations. In the year prior to his retirement, he worked at the exclusive Hale Clinic, started by King Charles III in the Harley Street area of London England. He entered the legal field and insurance claims in 2000 with an extensive understanding of traumatic injury diagnosis, permanent impairment ratings, radiology, ICD codes, CPT codes, and more.
Presently, more than 90% of Aaron’s legal cases involve traumatic brain injuries, with the remainder of his personal injury cases being catastrophic injuries such as quadriplegia, amputation, and wrongful death cases. He has extensive experience doing jury trials on complex medical injury cases.
As a leading authority in personal injury demand letters, DeShaw believes the potential for AI demand letters will significantly impact the future practice of law. He and Sinclair have developed a comprehensive plan for a broad development of AI demand letters and legal AI as it relates to the personal injury fields.