1 Mass Torts
I am an entrepreneur and business executive who starts and manages law firms that represent, on a contingency fee basis, individuals who have suffered bodily harm caused by the negligence of companies that manufacture pharmaceuticals, medical devices and toxic substances. Most of the case types we handle are mass torts, but a few (such as mesothelioma and sexual abuse / sexual assault) are technically not mass torts.
2 Case Types
My law firm currently handles the following case types:
- NEC Infant Formula — Infant formula based on cow-s milk causes necrotizing enterocolitis in pre-term babies
- Mesothelioma — Long-term exposure to asbestos causes mesothelioma, a usually fatal cancer
- Roundup — The herbicide Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that originates in the lymphatic system
- Hernia Mesh — Defective mesh implants causes infections, adhesions and the need for revision surgeries
- Sexual Abuse / Sexual Assault — Claims against companies and organizations that could have prevent sexual abuse and assault and did not
- Elmiron — Long-term use of this bladder medication causes serious vision problems
- AFFF — Manufacturers of firefighting foam used toxic PFAS chemicals which cause various cancers in firefighters and military personnel
- Transvaginal Mesh — Pelvic mesh lawsuits cause chronic pelvic pain, bleeding, urinary problems, and recurring infections
3 Paragon Analytics, LLC
I am founder and CEO of Paragon Analytics LLC, a startup that utilizes proprietary world-class artificial intelligence and data mining techniques to identify individuals who have valid mass tort cases. Using these techniques, rather than waiting for the phone to ring, we telephone them. Rather than spending $5,250 to find a valid Roundup case, or more than $100,000 (!) for a valid mesothelioma case, we spend $300 in outbound telemarketing costs. These techniques comply with all medical data privacy laws, including HIPPA.
We identify the six out of seven people who will never respond to traditional marketing channels (such as TV and Facebook ads) for Roundup, mesothelioma, hernia mesh, and talc/Baby Power claims, and then we telephone them. We are the only law firm in the country that has this technology. Here is an analogy I use. Imagine there are two bodies of water: a small pond and an ocean larger than the Pacific. In the pond there are hundreds of fishing boats (law firms looking for mass tort clients) and as a result, the pond is overfished (it’s difficult to find valid mass tort cases). As for the ocean, there is only one fishing boat (my law firm) and there are zillions of fish, each one of which can be caught at almost no cost.
Paragon is currently raising capital, so if you might be interested, please telephone me at (917) 526-2673, or write to me at JMitchell@ParagonAnalytics.ai.
4 Business & Entrepreneurship
I’ve been interested in business since elementary school, and I’m probably the only person you’ll ever meet who began reading The Wall Street Journal at age 13. My business interests include general management, management of professional service firms and knowledge workers, corporate strategy, competitive analysis, business process reengineering, project and team management, knowledge management, intellectual capital, professional training and development, entrepreneurship, technology startups, venture capital, and business and corporate law.
5 Juris Informatica
From 2004 to 2010 I spent most of my time launching content farms for both legal and non-legal topics. The non-legal websites made almost no money, and economically were a complete waste of time and energy. The legal websites, however, did quite well financially, since law firms are willing to pay well for good leads. This caused an evolution in my thinking, from (i) selling leads to (ii) starting a law firm that would sign up cases and then co-counsel with another law firm to (iii) having my own law firm process the cases themselves and thus keeping all of the legal fees.
In terms of launching over 100 websites, I became an expert in certain internet technologies, such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, SEO, SEM, conversion, calls to action, and Google Analytics. I used (and currently use) the WordPress content management system for all my websites. I now spend much less time keeping up with internet advances since I have developed alternative methods of generating legal cases, namely the AI and data mining techniques discussed above.
6 IT Consultant
I spent 12 years as a high-level IT consultant for major technology companies (Digital, Lotus Development Corporation, and Codex) and major commercial banks (Bank of Boston and Shawmut Bank). Although I had deep technical skills (e.g., operating system internals) from my previous work experience, I quickly gravitated toward business information systems (“BIS”). In BIS, for for-profit businesses, the most value added is understanding the business problem the senior executive faces, rather than, e.g., the future direction of quantum computing. And frankly I enjoy thinking about business problems even more than, e.g., the merits of SOAP as compared with the REST API.
7 Electronics Insight
Electronics Insight was a newsletter published by Arthur D. Little (the consulting firm) which covered the electronics and computer industries. They asked me to be Executive Editor. I was not interested in a long-term career in publishing, but I thought it would be interesting to serve as Founding Editor until they found a long-term replacement. I spent most of my time interviewing the various gurus at ADL (of which there were many, ADL had some very smart people) and then writing articles about their thoughts. I had the privilege of working with Richard Golob, a remarkably gifted writer and editor.
8 Harvard Business School
I was a Research Associate at Harvard Business School. At HBS, “research” primarily consists of writing cases and technical notes, as opposed to writing boring academic articles that six people on the planet will actually read. Unlike my work at Digital, HBS’s focus is much less technical, focusing primarily on management information systems and business uses of computers. I was also a Teaching Assistant for two second-year MBA courses, and I spent a fair amount of time at MIT at the Sloan School’s Center for Information Systems Research (the Sloan School frankly has better IS/IT faculty than HBS).
9 Classical Music
At and after Harvard, I studied classical music theory and composition with Luise Vosgerchian, as well as classical piano with Suzanne Sobol of the Longy School of Music. It took me far too long to realize how little musical talent I possess. Music remains one of my greatest passions in life, and I’m also interested in movies, theatre, opera, ballet and dance.
10 Crimson Supper Club
After attending Harvard University, I started a dinner club that once a week invited senior faculty at Harvard, MIT and other universities as guests of honor. Over a 5-year period, I hosted over 250 dinners. This Harvard Crimson (the undergraduate student newspaper) article describes these dinners.
11 Harvard University
I studied international security and defense policy (which some have nicknamed “bombs ‘n bullets”) at the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Harvard University. My two primary mentors were Michael L. Nacht and Albert Carnesale, and I also studied under Richard Garwin and Joseph Nye. I was a Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and I was also a member of two national security working groups at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Additionally, I intensively studied statistics and data mining, taking or auditing several undergraduate- and graduate-level statistics courses. You might think the graduate courses provided better training, but you would be wrong Like most academically prestigious universities, graduate level statistics courses are basically applied math courses (focusing on partial differential equations, linear algebra and real analysis), with little attention to real world data analysis, while the undergraduate courses paid much more attention on how to approach actual problems. Much more than my Harvard classes, I received a better education by working as a Research Assistant in statistics for Professor Gary R. Orren, a brilliant statistician and methodologist.
12 Digital Equipment Corporation
I worked as a Senior Software Specialist at Digital Equipment Corporation, the leading minicomputer company in the world before the IBM PC put these companies out of business. My responsibilities included advanced technical support of various Digital operating systems, network topologies, network and communications protocols such as DECnet, and DBMS-11/IDMS (DEC’s database management system).
13 Computers, Software Development and AI
I started programming computers in 1970, when I was 15, eleven years before the IBM PC was introduced. My work at Digital, Harvard Business School, and as an IT consultant are described in Sections 12, 8 and 5, respectively. I still spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about computers, software development, business information systems, the internet, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Although I have extensive programming experience, having seriously programmed in more than a dozen programming languages, I rarely program anymore, but I do do extensive code reviews. (When your software developers know that you will be fly specking their code, it’s amazing how much better their code is.) For the information systems I develop and manage, I typically write the functional and system specifications and the database schema, as well as serving as the technical lead and the system architect.
From 1970, I have also been interested in AI, both professionally and on-the-side hacking. Chronologically I have focused on expert systems, then neural networks, then machine learning, then deep learning, then natural language processing, and now generative AI. I am by no means an AI expert, but I can do a good job managing an AI development team.
Since its introduction in November 2022, I have been fascinated by, and am an avid user of, OpenAI’s generative AI ChatGPT program (specifically, Microsoft’s version, Copilot). I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has an opinion concerning competitive offerings, particularly ones that do not have so many [expletive deleted] safety features. I’d love to spend a lot of time analyzing the pros and cons of Copilot, Googe Bard, Chatsonic, Claude, Jasper Chat, Socratic, YouChat, Quora’s Poe, Perplexity and Stability, but as a startup CEO, that would not be a good use of my time.
14 Pitzer College, the Claremont Colleges
At Pitzer College I studied economics (what an utter waste of brain cells) with Harvey Botwin, political philosophy with John R. Rodmam, and demography with Ann Stromberg. Claremont had a Digital PDP-10 mainframe computer, with which I spent most of my time.
15 Harvard-Westlake School
I attended the Harvard-Westlake School, from 7th to 12th grade, graduating in 1973. I started programming computers in tenth grade. If you’re thinking of sending your child to Harvard-Westlake, I cannot say enough good things about the school – the education was in some ways superior to Harvard University. The school’s transformation began when the Board of Trustees hired Christopher Berrisford as headmaster. Berrisford stopped hiring teachers with teaching certificates and instead recruited graduates from top universities with subject matter expertise (math, physics, history, literature, etc.). On the school’s faculty we even had a few PhDs from schools such as Stanford and Yale.
16 Independent Study of Law
Although I am not an attorney, I am quite knowledgeable about law. My father and paternal grandfather were prominent attorneys in Los Angeles, and I worked for my father part-time for 4 years. I received a better legal education from my great uncle, Donald R. Wright, who was Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court (“CSC”) from 1970 to 1977, appointed by Ronald Reagan when Reagan was Governor of California. The CSC heard oral argument in three cities. When an exceptionally important case — e.g., People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628 — was being argued in Los Angeles, Don’s secretary would mail me the briefs and I would attend the hearing. Afterwards, Don would review with me the transcript of the hearing, asking questions such as “Why did this lawyer argue this point but not that point?” (I was thinking, “Well Don, I’m only 17, how on Earth would I know?” but I kept my mouth shut.) Five years of this, combined with my father’s training, molded my brain a certain way — permanent brain damage at a very young age.
I developed an even stronger interest in law after what happened in the first company I purchased. My M&A attorney was not as good as opposing counsel, and document A contradicted document B which said something different than document C. After the deal closed, the seller’s lawyer tried to renegotiate the deal, based on the discrepancies among the various agreements. (I told him to go pound sand.) This caused me to learn a lot about corporate law, and to this day I remain paranoid about lawyers – it constantly amazes me how many bad attorneys there are in the U.S.
17 David Allen’s Getting Things Done Methodology
I have been heavily influenced by David Allen’s Getting Things Done, a book about time management and personal productivity, and I’ve gone to his seminar twice. (When I went, Allen taught the public seminars himself, unfortunately he no longer does.) Using it, my mind is almost always free of worry and I am totally in the moment, what Allen calls “mind like water” and “in the zone.” If you’re intrigued, you may want to start with an essay I wrote, and then I would watch Allen’s talk at Google. After that, I would recommend that you purchase the second edition of his first book. Once you’ve read all three of his books, you may my to read my essay, How I Implement GTD.