Where the story really starts

Before she ever considered law school, Michelle DeLong had already lived an entire career chapter. 

By 23, she was a market manager for Black & Decker, promoted three times in two years, responsible for a team of six men and the west coast of Florida. 

She learned how to sell, build relationships, and create systems. But she also learned what she didn’t want. 

After leaving without a plan, she spent a year piecing work together. Art galleries. Retail management. Bloomingdale’s. She realized she was drifting, not building.  

At 26, Michelle DeLong enrolled in night school to become a paralegal. It felt like a step towards something more grounded. A place where she could challenge herself intellectually, and that allowed her to help people. 

On her first day of class, another truth surfaced. After years of running teams and territories, she wasn’t meant to take orders from attorneys. She was meant to be the attorney. 

That realization propelled her into law school with intention. Not as someone “starting late,” but as someone who finally knew exactly why she was there. She graduated magna cum laude.

Today, she runs her own Florida-based Medical Malpractice Firm with every intention to break from the traditional law firm model.

Every day for Michelle is a balance between firm owner, working lawyer, and mother. 

After getting her boys up for school, making breakfast, and packing lunches, she's at her desk by 9 am & blocks her time for marketing, finance, and case work. 

The right technology, she believed, was what would finally let working mothers launch their own practices without sacrificing control or quality.

So in 2023 (when the buzz around AI grew too loud to ignore), she blocked out time to learn what it could do.

Waiting for the right tool

In early 2023, “AI” meant ChatGPT to most solo firm owners. Michelle sensed it would matter for a competitive advantage down the road, but she couldn't quite see exactly how.

Later that year, she and her assistant tested a legal AI program but were not impressed. It "left a lot to be desired."

But she did walk away thinking, "This is only going to get better. Someone's going to make a superior product, and I should look out for that."

By 2025, new AI products had flooded the market, and she jumped back in. Like most PI attorneys, she started with medical chronologies, which was the work product she'd been outsourcing for years with frustrating results.

"I would outsource, pay a lot of money, and not be satisfied with the work product. Then I'd end up making my own anyway. I knew someone would get this right for medical malpractice cases. I knew there had to be a better way. It’s just that no one had found it yet."

Fast forward to May 2025, pitches from AI companies started flooding her inbox. Most she ignored.

"Most pricing models didn't work for a small firm. I'm not doing a lot of demands as a medmal practice either. So that wasn’t an option."

One detail changed everything

Then an email arrived from Supio (a sponsor of the Florida Justice Association where Michelle is a member) about a webinar coming up with attorneys sharing their experience with Supio’s AI product. One detail caught her eye: they had a medmal lawyer on the panel, not just PI.

Curious, she attended with her assistant. They were blown away by what the attorneys described.

A Supio rep followed up. They'd be at the FJA convention in a few weeks, and she set up a time to see the product live. That's when things got interesting.

"Show me on one of my cases"

"They offered to demo the product on one of my cases. Nobody else does that. I'd asked other vendors many times, and they'd say it's too much work, you need to commit first. Supio said: Send us 1500 pages from a case you recently settled. Don't tell us anything about it. We'll schedule a follow-up and demo it live."

She chose a case she had spent three years on that had just settled. She had to learn a lot of new medicine for it.

"We go straight to the demo, and they have a summary of my client immediately. I gave them nothing…just medical records. And there's the summary. I was like, you're kidding me.”

Then they started chatting with the case in Supio.

"It identified the defendants we'd identified. It tracked the timeline, conditions, medical issues, [and] everyone who touched him from when he entered the hospital until he passed away. I asked random questions I already knew the answers to. The accuracy and quality blew me away. Right then, I was sold."

From 8 hours to 30 minutes

The uses stacked up fast. Prepping for a deposition, she needed to know every surgery a physician had performed on her client after the incident. In seconds, she had a list: seven surgeries, with dates and procedure names. All cited and source-linked back to the records.  

"I can prepare for depositions in half the time now. I ask Supio about deviations from standard of care, what injuries relate to an incident, what questions to ask the doctor. It gives me questions very similar to what I'd come up with myself."

Why closed AI matters

Plenty of small firms use ChatGPT, but Michelle points out the important nuance here.

"I caution lawyers: don't use ChatGPT for medical records. It's an open AI system. Supio is closed and not learning off your client's records. That mattered to me. I have to keep those records safe by law, or I'm committing a HIPAA violation among other things."

But it's not just about security.

"ChatGPT is fine for drafting a firm policy or a basic letter. But Supio is built only for plaintiffs' injury law. It has the medicine and the law baked in, and that's its biggest advantage. As a medmal lawyer, it works because the medicine is already there. I've asked all kinds of questions about the medical side. It gives detailed, quality responses."

The partner, not just the product

Beyond the product itself, Supio’s client service stood out.

"Customer service is a huge differentiator because it's lacking in most of these companies. Supio has figured it out. Every person I've met there is likable, easy to talk to, helpful…they're like your friend. Likeability matters in our world. Clients hire us because they like us. So partnering with Supio, knowing I won't be abandoned after I sign up, that's huge. They treat me like I'm their only client. I've never had a company do that."

She feels like she has relationships she can count on, because she does.

"My sales rep, Zaid, is always checking in, and my account exec, Christian, is wonderful. Last week, I heard about new features rolling out, so I asked him to walk us through them. No problem, we scheduled a meeting, saw him earlier this week. They want the product to work for you and they'll meet anytime.”

The contrast with other vendors is stark.

“I pay monthly subscriptions for a lot of software. I won't name names, but the customer service is lacking. Sometimes I'm hunting people down just to talk to them, even when I want to buy more."

Scaling the firm gracefully

"With Supio, I can take on two to three times more cases without hiring another lawyer."

What it comes down to for Michelle is more client capacity minus the overhead, plus more time to work on the business. 

The firm she wanted to build finally has the right AI tool to make it work.

Want to see what Supio can do for your firm? Start here.