Our Purpose

Our purpose is to help those in need. We help the seriously injured and families who have lost a loved one. We stand up for them. We hold those who have harmed them accountable.

That is why I became a lawyer.

Everything my firm does flows from this central purpose.

My father the doctor:

I have always imagined that my becoming a lawyer started with my father – the doctor. Not that my father pushed me to become a lawyer. He didn’t. In fact, I don’t think he ever mentioned it to me. Instead, it is what I learned from my father – about how to live a meaningful life, how to make a difference, and how to care for people – that directed me to the law. My father was not someone who taught his children by explaining. Instead, he taught by doing – by example. Even as children, we could not mistake his love for helping people. Whether it was the fact that he worked every day, seven days a week, or that he would often return to the hospital, or to check on a patient, after he tucked his children into bed, or that (at least the rumour in our house was) that he never missed a day of work. That is the example my father left with his children.

I realized early on that the talents that you needed for medical school – in math and science – were not talents that I possessed. I still believed that somehow I would find a way to look after people the way my father did.

My father died far too young (at forty-seven of a heart-attack). I was seventeen. His death left all of us reeling. Among other things it left me needing, it left me needing and searching for another example of how to make a difference in the world by helping people. My Uncles are both lawyers. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a lawyer, and a judge. There were also lawyers in my community of Columbus, Georgia who seemed to be making a difference. It seemed that helping people who had been left damaged – and by helping families who were struggling with the harm to (or loss or potential loss of) a member of their family, you could make a difference as a lawyer. Since medicine did not seem to fit, the law would be the path I would follow to try and help people.

So that is how it started. My path to law school and my profession as a lawyer started not with a lawyer, but a doctor. My father’s example of caring for other human beings has directed me to where I am today. Although I do not stitch wounds, remove tumors or set bones to mend, I have the opportunity every day as a personal injury lawyer to help my clients rebuild their lives. Everyone I represent has been horribly damaged. Often the damage to them is horrible physical injury – paralysis, nerve injury or brain injury. Sometimes the damage has been to their family as their loved one has been killed by someone else’s carelessness. Regardless of the circumstances, my client’s losses are real. They often change their lives forever. I find that by treating them as my father would a patient – by taking their calls whatever the hour and by working tirelessly with only my client’s protection in mind – I can help them. My client’s know they have a lawyer who will stand by them, who will step between them and their problem, and who will hold those who have harmed them accountable. By fighting for them and by recovering compensation for them – to provide for their needs and their families – I feel that I am continuing my father’s work.