This week, I will turn my attention to the topic of the Law & Risk Management and an annual seminar produced by Professor Fred Karlinsky at Florida State University. These two topics are inextricably interrelated and yet distinct. Their universe is broad and complex, including a variety of potentials for interaction, impact, and influence intended and unexpected.
The study of these actions and reactions is often Newtonian and always interesting. Brilliant people carve careers striving to understand segments or strata of this entanglement. Listening to their perspectives stimulates thought and sometimes comprehension.
There is a great variety of risks, both personal and professional. Efforts are expended to limit risk through efforts involving personal safety, behavior, and infrastructure. In addition to those preventative efforts, there is significant investment in engaging law and regulation to define and delineate risk. It is clarified as are its responsibilities, relationships, and a variety of tools. Beyond this come the methods for assessing, valuing, and distributing risk through various paths of contract and insurance.
Across Florida, many professionals spend their days contemplating the "what ifs" of weather, casualty, and injury. There are concerns for our homes, automobiles, businesses, workers, finances, economies, success, and potential threats. Personally and professionally, daily risk decisions are made assessing, preventing, and planning for risk. I find it intriguing that many of my students admit to making such decisions in their lives, and yet recognition of their actions as "management" comes to them as a revelation.
There are many potentials for discussion in this deceptively simple title of Law & Risk Management.
As is my habit, I will be briefly addressing workers' compensation. The opportunity is of great value not because the topic is misunderstood and maligned. In that, this vein of risk management is neither unique nor even noteworthy. In this, workers' compensation shares much with risk management generally.
I plan to discuss some of the deeper history of workers' compensation in Florida. Our state history is so very complex. In Floridiana and the Workers' Compensation Adjudicators, I have compiled a significant volume of Florida history. I have striven to explain why Florida came so late to the world of workers' compensation, in 1935. I have tried to memorialize some of the intense and complex personalities who have labored in it.
The risk of workplace injury has always existed and always will. This will remain throughout, in heavy industry and in the most sedentary of clerical work (such as being a judge). Despite the best efforts at safety and security, all occupations and workplaces present some risk of illness and injury. Through the adoption of workers' compensation and its evolution through the years, Florida has striven to define risk, ameliorate effects, and mitigate impacts.
I also plan to discuss the miracles of automation and information technology. As we stand today on the brink of what will be an amazing artificial intelligence revolution, I am amazed at the revolution I have already lived through (a list of my AI posts is here).
I have stood on the beach and listened to the electronic filing critics, e-service critics, remote hearing critics, and more. Each innovation came with the muttered warnings: "it will never fly Orville." Each time, the proverbial Wilburs has been wrong. Not just mistaken, but utterly wrong. Each time, the innovation has taken flight, and together we have soared.
The result is a distributed and dispersed workers' compensation process that has led the way so often. Florida was the first with mandatory mediation in workers' compensation. It led the way to electronic filing, automated case management, electronic service of documents, remote hearings, automation, and more.
In the critical moments of March 2020, as systems across America ground to a halt, the Florida OJCC neither paused nor hesitated. The team remained at work, the processes and procedures for workers and employers persisted, and the work went on. There were adjustments and shifts, but the work went on. That success was built on years of foundational efforts in electronic filing, paperless processes, and database management tools.
This has all meant progress. The OJCC of 2025 is smaller than it was in 1994. Fewer people work here today than 30 years ago. The budget of this office today, adjusted for inflation, is almost 30% less than it was in 1994. In the same period, the general cost of doing business, the state's budget, has increased by over 30%.
The workload remains. The OJCC today receives over 80,000 petitions each year. Those are processed, categorized, scheduled, and docketed. Many are mediated, disputed, and discussed; a few require trials, orders, and more. These disputes generate a great deal of incoming paperwork.
In addition to those 80,000+ petitions, the litigants file another 500,000 documents with the OJCC each year. Those all have to be opened, examined, and often acted upon. Certainly, a portion are merely reviewed and held for future use like trial. But many require updating schedules, changing names, or entering orders.
The volumes are stunning. Each judge and their team processes about 80 incoming filings each working day of the year. Each also produces about 20 orders each day to keep this litigation system, these people's disputes, on track through pleading, discovery, mediation, and resolution. Those orders are no longer the chicken scratch scribbles of the paper age, but legible, professional orders too often left unread by the parties.
Yes, much has changed. The long delays of the 20th century and the challenges from rising tides of relentless paper are gone. Today in Florida workers' compensation is marked with unprecedented and unparalleled professionalism, proficiency, and persistence. Efficiency and effectiveness in this area of risk management.
Florida is fortunate to have the many professionals actively engaged in this area of risk management. I will immensely enjoy having a few moments to discuss it, courtesy of Florida State and Professor Karlinski. I look forward to Tuesday, March 11, 2025, at 3:00. The Meeting ID: 924 1041 1685 and passcode Karlinsky.
