David Knows His Clients
To be the best attorney, in a trial setting and to get the case to a position where it can settle out of court for the highest amount of money. There is no substitute for getting to know the victim.
I spend an awful lot of time at people’s houses. I learn an awful lot just sitting in a kitchen, talking to a rancher, or somebody that is in a rural area. But, I do it all over Denver and the front range.
What am I doing? You know what I’m doing is one, they need to know me and they need to trust me. But you know what I need to know is that I need to know them and I need know how their injury is affecting them. You can’t do that without sitting down and talking to people.
But it does something else, it prepares you for trial. You better have the conviction that you’re doing the right things as an attorney. And the more you get to know somebody and the more you understand how the injury has affected them, the better attorney you are.
The fact is, is that do you know that I prepare and I prepare and I prepare before a trial, but a lot of times the preparation is done months before. And do you know what it is, it’s just sitting down and getting to know somebody and understanding how badly they’re hurt.
I think personal injury is a unique area of the law. It’s so unique because you’re taking somebody that’s so, so hurt, you know it’s different than securities law on Wall Street. It’s different than corporation law in the big cities like on 17th Street in downtown Denver. It’s different from criminal law. It’s people law.
And for you to be good at people law. You better feel their pain. You better understand what they’re going through. If you can’t, how do you convey it to a jury?
How do you get it to the jury? And you know I think that it’s part of the failings of the firm where there’s not hands on, talking to an individual. It doesn’t have to be everyday I’m sitting down and talking to people face to face. I mean I do a lot of work on the phone.
But my clients know they can get a hold of me. I give every single client my cell number, my home phone number. I want them to call me and I kid them. I say, you know, they sometimes say to me, I didn’t want to call you over the weekend or I didn’t want to call you last night. And I just quietly joke with them, and I say to them, I didn’t give you my telephone number for you not to call me.
The point is, what am I’m trying do?
I’m trying to give them the confidence in me, but I’m also trying to hear what’s going on with them because when I hear what’s going on with them, I can try to fix the problem, I can fix the problem and if we ever end up in a place where we’re in one ferocious fight, I know who’s sitting next to me.
