DAVID JEROME:
Well, it means that even though I may have been doing this for 25 years, there’s times whenever I’m going to have questions, things, times whenever I need some help in maybe running a case by someone and Rick with all of his years of experience is phenomenal. If I’ve got one that may have a civil issue associated with it, say a car accident associated with a work comp case, I know I’ve got Jaye that I can turn to and ask questions whenever I need them and I know that he’s going to know the answers or we know that we’ll be able to use the resources that we have to find the answer.
So, it’s nice to have attorneys with this level of experience, with this level of knowledge that no matter what the question might be, we have the ability, we have the resources legally to do this. But teamwork can also take another form, and that is our paralegals within this office. We have three phenomenal, phenomenal paralegals who are … I have some of my clients that will even say, “I don’t want to talk with you. I want to talk with Claudia.” And that’s okay. Claudia is amazing. So many of our clients build rapports with us, and it’s not just a legal rapport; we become friends with our clients. That’s just part of the process that will occur.
And so, she will have certain clients that she will become friends with and they turn to her for answers and turn to her. Obviously she’s not giving legal advice, but she’s there to answer a lot of their questions about medical appointments, about things like that. So she is as crucial a part of the team as the three attorneys are, because she is the one that helps these clients understand what they’re going through and help them to see what the next step will be in the process.
Also to help us troubleshoot some of those problems; weekly checks that are late, medical appointments that aren’t getting approved. So we’ve got an amazing, amazing team. And it was nice because when we built this office, we knew the paralegals that we brought over. So I guess you could say we kind of built the dream team and it has been phenomenal and it’s shown in the quality of the work and the quality of our paralegal services, and it’s made for an outstanding office.
RICK SALMI:
One of the questions that I get from clients on a regular basis is, how’s my case progressing? And the way I see it is, there are a number of different stages or steps that most people’s cases go through. Part of the team atmosphere that we have here is not only being able to kind of bounce ideas off or, “Hey, what do you think in this scenario?” Which is invaluable.
DAVID JEROME:
Yes.
RICK SALMI:
Both, you know, with work comp and looking at potential civil issues. But even when you talk about our staff here, because they’re so important in keeping the case moving forward, and I think that’s so important to people, is to know, hey, my case isn’t just sitting on the back burner somewhere; that something’s being done with it, that we’re continuing to progress. And I think having so many knowledgeable people in various key roles really helps that process continue to move along. And I think that helps give some of our clients a lot of reassurance. Hey, if my attorney’s not here, I know Claudia is probably going to be able to answer my question 90% of the time. And I know that they’re continuing to work on things.
JAYE LINDSAY:
Yeah, I’d agree. And frankly, it’s kind of funny because I think about what a law firm really is. You have the professional, the attorney who is doing the job, but if you were to go to opening day and you go over there and watch the Cardinals prepare for a game, not a single one of those players would have any luck in a game if they didn’t have the back office working for them. There are hundreds and hundreds of people that go into making those games successful and helping them win a game. You’ve got multiple coaches, you’ve got relief people. You’ve got folks who work in the marketing department, people who work in just about every part of that park who have some role to play.
On a much smaller scale, when you look at a law firm like ours, we certainly can’t go to court and have much success if we don’t have people on the back end preparing us saying, “I’ve done this back end work to get you ready.” And so I would say that at least to some extent, an attorney is about as good as the people who are behind them, supporting them and helping them. So, I think that our clients really do get a lot of benefit from having such experienced staff working in our team.
DAVID JEROME:
Absolutely.