Gray Broughton

Gray Broughton: We are a veteran-lead trial lawyer firm … A guy driving like a Ford F-350 with a big utility trailer on the back went into a diabetic coma … I mean, just three years ago, it was myself and a paralegal. And now we have 16 people in the office, we’ll have 17 people come Monday ….

Narrator: Welcome to “Celebrating Justice,” presented by the Trial Lawyer’s Journal and CloudLex. The next gen legal cloud platform built exclusively for personal injury law. Get inspired by the nation’s top trial lawyers and share in the stories that shape our pursuit of justice. Follow the podcast and join our community at www.triallawyersjournal.com. Now, here’s your host, Editor of TLJ and VP of Marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands.

Chad Sands: Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?

Gray Broughton: Yes. So in terms of, like, just becoming a lawyer in general, it’s one of those odd things that I knew at, like, age, like, 12 or 13 that I’m going to be a lawyer. And I think the reasoning behind it was somewhat ridiculous. I thought, like, “Oh, one day I wanna be, like, governor of Virginia. So if I want to be governor of Virginia, uh, what should I do to do that? Oh, yeah, like, lawyers typically go into politics and that would be a good thing to do.” Lawyer. So went to college with the thought of being a lawyer and did ROTC and, and then got a delay from going on active duty to go to law school. Went to law school and was in the, in the army, in the, as a lawyer in the JAG Corps. Being in the JAG Corps of the Army is a fantastic experience when you’re, like, an aspiring lawyer or trying to figure out what you’re trying to do as a first job as a lawyer. It was, was awesome. I’ve lived all over the world and it was great. And then I got out of the army and I kind of, like, followed the traditional path, like, what, what should a lawyer achieve or do? Well, you should go, of course, work at a big law firm. Sort of that’s the narrative from law school. You know, that’s what’s kind of cool. You should work for a big firm and bill a lot of hours and work at a big firm, do all that. And so I did that. I billed, I, like, over 2,200 hours one year. One month, the month my middle daughter was born, I billed over 200 hours. This is in August of 2007. But then practiced there for almost nine years. It was actually — and I’m gonna get to the answer to the question. I became a trial lawyer for almost, a good friend of mine who was in the army with me, he and his son were in a very bad car crash. Uh, lived in Maryland at the time, both out of the army. Both he and his wife were in the army, in the JAG Corps with me. My wife and I were both in the JAG Corps of the army, we were friends. We hung out together ’cause we were, of our contemporaries, were, like, the only ones who actually had kids, uh, all in the army. So anyways, my, my buddy was driving home from, like, Taekwondo practice with his son and gonna stop at a Costco and get, like, a, you know, hot dog and Coke or something. And they were stopped at a, a stoplight to take a left turn going to Costco and a guy driving a, like a Ford F-350 with a big utility trailer on the back went into a diabetic coma and was driving, like, forty-five miles an hour and slammed into the back of them. The young boy was seven at the time. He was, he was properly buckled in a booster seat, was ejected through the side window. He ended up losing his leg above the knee, had a traumatic brain injury. He was resuscitated over a dozen times. He was airlifted to Johns Hopkins, um, where he was hospitalized there two months. He was then inpatient months. My friend, who was a lawyer and he was working for the Department of Justice, he missed a year of work with a brain injury. So his wife called me. I was, at the time I was doing commercial litigation and white collar criminal defense. She called me and told me what happened. Like, that day or the next day my wife and I went up and saw them, saw my, my friends in the hospital. Basically they called, like, let me, she called to let me know and, like, ask for advice on what to do. And so that’s the moment that, uh, that’s when I became a trial lawyer. Kind of like, it was kind of a big case to, to be my first case. Uh, and in personal injury, it was not something that I ever really contemplated. I mean, I was a, I was a … doing commercial litigation … company A suing company B. When I took that case on, it became clear to me that, like, the stuff I had been doing, while it was fine and it paid the bills and that career doing that was okay. Yeah, I’d just like to say that I’ve developed more into a trial lawyer as time has kind of come along and I’ve just, like, sort of figured out personal injury firm and everything else along the way. But that was really the impetus for me becoming a trial lawyer.

Chad Sands: Do you still have dreams of maybe becoming governor one day after your trial lawyer career?

Gray Broughton: No, no. No, gosh, you c— like, cannot be into that. That was one of those things, I think, the army, I realized, like, I mean, it’s like, this is like a — seems that’s like a childhood sort of thing, like, “What do you want to do?” “To be president.”

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Gray Broughton: That’s kind of like one of those.

Chad Sands: Yeah. But your first case as a plaintiff trial lawyer was a good friend of yours who was a former, or who was a lawyer, a former JAG, but he was a lawyer himself who was seriously injured with his kid. And yeah, how did you get around? Because if someone has a medical episode, I thought, and they get in an accident, they’re, they’re not liable because it was a medical incident and then it wasn’t out of their control.

Gray Broughton: The reason we got to the, around that is that we immediately started interviewing with, immediately started investigating, and what we found out is that we — this driver started having trouble well before the collision happened. And he had been swerving, he’d been going off the road, but he had sort of corrected himself, gotten himself back on the road. So it wasn’t as though this happened, like, it wasn’t like a heart attack — immediately he’s passed out and then causes this crash.

Chad Sands: Yes. Yes.

Gray Broughton: He had had enough warning signs and enough to where he’d, you know, gone off the road, corrected back, and then enough trouble. And we had eyewitnesses who were driving behind him and we got their video. You know, we got everything recorded, just preserved, to where we blew that out of the water. It was a bit of a, a struggle because on the criminal side, the prosecutors weren’t as aggressive. Ended up not being charges. But, so, and if we hadn’t done the investigation, did our own, it could have been, you know, big fat zero.

Chad Sands: Yeah, as your first trial, I mean, representing your close friend who, and there’s usually enough pressure and risk on trial lawyers when they’re going to case when it’s just their client. How did you handle that pressure, especially as it was, you know, your first time trying a personal injury case and it was your buddy and his kid?

Gray Broughton: And then when I left the firm, wasn’t going to be a personal injury lawyer staying at this big firm.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Gray Broughton: I ended up continuing to work with them. But I had someone on the case, but also, uh, I have, for good or bad or whatever, I’ve always had sort of, like, extreme confidence in myself and knew that I would, like, knew that I would figure it out. And, and the stakes were high enough to where if I had had any doubt about my abilities, I wouldn’t have taken it on. I knew that it was not something where we could sit back and, and maybe, like, poke holes at things. We had to, to do that, we had to build a case. You know, and that’s kind of the way we, we handle our cases at our firm. We act like prosecutors, that we are building a —

Chad Sands: Case. Yeah. Have you always had that confidence, even as a young kid, you know, when you were gonna be governor for sure? Or did you, did, uh, did it get carved out in college or when you were serving, or is it always kind of been innate with you?

Gray Broughton: First I would credit my parents for being very positive with me. Then also sports. Played a lot of sports, uh, I played three sports growing up and, uh, two sports in college. People are kind of like, there’s two types of people. There’s people who want the pressure, want the ball with the game on the line. There are people who want that and then there are people who want someone else to have that. I, I want that. I trust — if the game is on the line, I trust me.

Chad Sands: You’ll take the shot.

Gray Broughton: I’ll take the shot.

Chad Sands: Give me the ball. Exactly. It’s like in “Hoosiers,” Jimmy.

Gray Broughton: Yeah, I might miss, but like, yeah, I’ll —

Chad Sands: It’s a shot.

Gray Broughton: I’ll take the —

Chad Sands: Well then, what makes you unique as a trial lawyer? Is it that confidence you bring into the courtroom or, uh, something else that gives you the cutting edge?

Gray Broughton: Yes, I think the confidence is, is key. I think one thing that sort of makes me stand out, uh, di— differentiates me, I think probably two things. And we talk about this a lot. And partner, you know, he, we’re both former prosecutors and we’re both, you know, former military. And so those things are, those two things are — and actually, we, he wrestled in college. And so I think, like, yeah, I’d say, like, the sports background, the military background, and being a prosecutor, those sort of things differentiate us, me. And certainly, that’s, proud of the fac— I’m proud of the fact that I’m a veteran. Proud that I served in the JAG Corps. And I think the sort of prosecutor mentality of, and the ability in the cases, it’s just how I approach and how we approach cases at our firm. The team sports too. You know, the experience of playing team sports at a high level. I’m, I’m comfortable working with others. I’m also comfortable, like, being on my own. Yeah, I’d say the, the military in particular, and, and that resonates especially with, like, people in the veteran community and maybe even people whose, you know, mom or dad, um, was in the, were in the military. We have a case that we just settled earlier this month for the policy limits of, like, 1.1 million, where that case came to me because he was in the army for 30-plus years and the daughter who contacted me, she was a second lieutenant in the army at the time. And the only thing that happened, and, you know, kind of looked up different lawyers and saw that we were veterans. And she gave me a call, and that’s the reason why we ultimately got the case. It makes a difference with certain classes. People don’t care. Don’t care about you. Okay, so that’s most, a lot of people, and that’s fine too. But with a lot of people, shared experience, that sort of common experience of having served can be a —

Chad Sands: Yeah. I mean, that’s something you can’t buy to put on a billboard. You gotta earn it. I have a question, is because I think when I had Sharif on, on season one, he, he also did the prosecutor and the defense side. Is that always, if you go to, through JAG, do you always do both sides? Or did you happen to just kind of switch around and get to get more experience?

Gray Broughton: I was never —

Chad Sands: Oh, you were only prosecutor. Okay. So I have to do my “A Few Good Men” comp, analogy, comparison. You were the Kevin Bacon then. Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Gray Broughton: I’m probably 14 years older than Sharif. So it was a different, different time and stuff, but also, Sharif was a prosecutor and he’s a defense counsel. Whereas I, I was a prosecutor, but also I did, like, I was, I served in Iraq and did, like, operational law, which is like signing off on airstrikes and doing rules of engagement and things, that sort of, like, stuff that, parts of the laws you don’t even have in the civilian world.

Chad Sands: Can we talk a little bit about that?

Gray Broughton: In the JAG Corps, you’re, like, you are, like — I was a captain in the JAG. Actually, I was, I was an army officer, but I was a JAG officer.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Gray Broughton: So when I was in Iraq, I was, as a lawyer, I was the lawyer on — I mean, I was Captain Broughton in the JAG doing operational law. I was there in late 2003, early 2004. For perspective, the war started in March of 2003. Major combat operations were over in, like, the summer of 2003. The insurgency kinda picked up around the time I got there in October of 2003. And so for people who can remember, Saddam Hussein was captured in, you know, December of ’03, and like Abu Ghraib, if you remember, Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse —

Chad Sands: Yeah, it seems like —

Gray Broughton: — the time that I was there. And so that was kind of, like, dealing with the rules of engagement. Uh, so like, can our soldiers and service members, what are the parameters within which they can operate? It was pretty wild. So like, for example, we drafted laws for martial law. At the time, we, yeah, invaded Iraq, we were running Iraq, so martial law was instituted and we had what’s called the Coalition Provisional Authority, was the governing body. So we would come up with these, you know, with the Coalition Provisional Authority, like, basically rules and laws that were governing Iraq. You know, like, third-year lawyer helping to draft these laws to govern, uh, this country. And then also things like dealing with airstrikes, uh, you know, if there was a, you know, you know, and not being determined whether, like, the process to try whether he was, you know, he’s part of this, just, you know, either providing a legal objection or not providing legal objections. So if the, if the, what they wanted to do was within the rule of law, then kinda giving the green light or the thumbs up, yeah.

Chad Sands: And that’s obviously different than, I guess, so after you served, were you still a JAG and did you come on stateside or did you finish your service abroad and then when you came back you went into kind of civilian?

Gray Broughton: All my time in the army, with the exception of, like, training at the beginning, was abroad. I was a year in Korea. I was stationed in Germany for three years, and when I was stationed in Germany, my unit in Germany was deployed to Iraq. So I went to Iraq with Fifth Corps, which was in Germany at the time. Then when I got out, went to one big law firm in 2006. I joined the civilian population at that time.

Chad Sands: And you’ve been doing it ever since and found your way, uh, into plaintiff personal injury and your own firm. When did you kind of hang your own shingle?

Gray Broughton: When I had that big case, there was a period of time where I was still working on the big case but knew that I needed to leave the firm. So kind of made a deal with really a firm that wasn’t doing personal injury. So the big case that I have in order to get a personal injury practice up and running. I was technically employed for, like, three years with a law firm, and in 2013 — 2018 is when I opened up my own firm, and ever since. So that was, that in itself was kind of, you know, wild, because when COVID hit, my firm was now, like, two years old.

Chad Sands: Right.

Gray Broughton: You’ve got a personal injury — I worried about, like, bringing in cases to begin with. The courts are closed, you got no, no leverage, like, in cases, to move cases along. So that, that was an interesting time to kinda be a solo practitioner in personal injury.

Chad Sands: What do you attribute to kind of surviving that whole crisis and, you know, economically and mentally, ca— to make it out the other side to where now you’ve been open, expanding and growing, right?

Gray Broughton: So with that I kind of, I came to the realization, like, I’ve got to, I’ve got to figure out ways to bring in, and to become more efficient and adopt technology. And so I started just, so I started taking different courses on marketing and digital marketing and just sort of, like, running my own firm. I just started learning and implementing as much as I can, kind of like, almost like throwing stuff against the wall and kind of seeing what stuck. It was basically like, I’m, I’ve got, I’ve got no choice but to — we’re going to make this work. I mean, just three years ago, it was myself and a paralegal, and now we have sixteen people in the office, we’ll have 17 people come Monday, with four, soon to be seven lawyers. We’ll have seven lawyers total by the time we get to Labor Day.

Chad Sands: What’s been one of the most challenging things about running your own business, owning your own firm, but having it go from you and this paralegal to now having, you know, sixteen people reporting to you up the chain of command and now, you know, it’s a different operation?

Gray Broughton: The, the hardest, and, but I think also the part of it that is, is, like, most rewarding, is staying true to your culture in terms of the golden rule, which is, like, treat others as you want to be treated. So we try to do that with our clients, we do that with our people, with people in the office. Even, you know, even do it with, like, the defense, this counsel. It’s, you know, it’s maybe an unpopular take, but like, certainly advocate hard for our clients and do that for our clients, best we can, clients, but it doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk. It doesn’t mean you can’t, you know, still be a good person. Really, the, the hard part is when you bring someone on and they don’t fit that, and it becomes clear they are not a good cultural fit and then they’re going to detract from your firm. The hardest part is, uh, you’re giving yourself permission to let that person go.

Chad Sands: Right.

Gray Broughton: It’s like a cancer —

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Gray Broughton: — within your firm, then they can just completely destroy your culture. There’s the old adage of be slow to hire and quick to fire. And it sounds like, it’s very, sounds sort of cliche, of course, you know, but it’s very true. And when you hire quickly out of necessity, it’s very rare that that’s going to work out. It’s important — well, if you can kind of anticipate what you’re gonna … Another thing I always c— try to think of is, like, operating from a, an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. Staffing for, like, the staffing for, like, the cases that you wanna have. Building out the team and having confidence in yourself and your team that you’re going to bring in the cases, you’re going to work up the cases properly. But I’d rather have a little bandwidth, a little extra bandwidth, versus, like, stuff slipping through the cracks, not getting full value from your clients, all that sort of thing. So it’s like, it’s hard to, it’s hard to make yourself do that when, like, okay, you’ve got to make payroll. You’ve got to —

Chad Sands: Right.

Gray Broughton: It’s like, put my money where my mouth is.

Chad Sands: But I think kind of also ties back to, you know, the reality that you’re the guy who’s gonna wanna take the shot and you’re gonna make it and you believe that. Yeah. And that if you apply that to your business and that you guys believe that you’re gonna move forward and grow and make the shot, score the touchdown.

Gray Broughton: Hundred percent. I mean, it’s, why, why not us? In terms of whether it’s in Virginia or the country or, or wherever, whatever, it’s like, uh, I’m a great lawyer, we have great attorneys, great staff, and I love the team we’ve built. Paralegals, great staff. I think we do a fantastic job for our clients. So like, um, why wouldn’t it work?

Chad Sands: Speaking of clients, you know, we had the “Behind the Verdict” that we recorded and will release, but which you can share that story here if you want again. But do you have either that case or another case that really had a significant impact on you throughout the years that you always have in the back of your head and mind and —

Gray Broughton: Yeah, the case you’re talking about is the Clark case, where we just got a, February of this year, ’26, we, the jury awarded $20 million in its verdict for our client, this young boy who is a resident at a residential psychiatric treatment facility. That was a case that I’d brought on two years prior, when I think it was just myself and, it might have just been, just another paralegal, maybe myself and a paralegal. I don’t, and maybe just, don’t even think I had any other lawyers with me when that case came on. We were not the first choice, um, client. We were, I think, maybe the fourth or fifth firm that the client, that the young man’s dad went to. It’s kind of interesting ’cause when I look at that case and I look at, like, how that case evolved, it’s very, it tracked very much like the evolution of the firm. That case started out, I was looking at the case as though it was just, kind of looking at it through, like, the traditional plaintiff’s lawyer’s lens of — and when I say, like, the traditional lens, it’s like you assign value to a case based on, what are the specials? What are the lost wages? Like, what the medical bills? What are the, these quantifiable metrics that I could put a number, I can put on the board? And then, you know, kind of like you’re, you’re taught, like, you take a multiple of that number and that’s the value. So sort of looking at that case through that lens. And this is a case where this is a young boy who was in a residential treatment facility. He’s, he was in a psychiatric residential facility. He’d been abused from a very young age. He had a dozen or more different diagnoses. None of those diagnoses changed after he was physically — they were all the same. We couldn’t get a — we had hired a psych— a psychiatrist, an expert, to look into, you know, kind of contributing medical treatment or future medical treatment or even just diagnoses to this particular incident of abuse, and we couldn’t, and wouldn’t. So we spent, like, probably over twenty thousand dollars on expert fees to not have an expert. And it wasn’t until we ended up focus grouping this case, the fall of last year, of 2025, when we focus grouped it. And it was one of three cases that we put in front of the focus group. And I clearly, you know, remember, we presented the case and when we presented it, we just kind of presented it as a — so we were this third party that had been hired to just, cases in front of the focus group, and just basically told them, here’s what this case, video clip. That’s where — and part of that, we made ’em, the jurors, fill out a form saying, like, “Who do you think hired us? Was it the plaintiffs, was it the defense, was it the insurance company?” So —

Chad Sands: But it was actually, but it was actually, like, you leading the focus group. Yeah. Okay, interesting. Yeah. But, but they didn’t know, like, w— that you guys were a law firm and you guys were the actual plaintiff attorneys. Exactly. I like that.

Gray Broughton: And so, and one of the jurors, or one of the jurors, when we presented this case, they want— basically said, “What is, what are they, like, what, how much does the plaintiff want?” We said, “Well, eight million what they want.” And the, the mock juror said, “Well, give that.” And this is a mock juror who, in the, the prior case that we just presented a few minutes earlier, was very conservative, very, you know — we’re talking about orthopedic injury, two hundred thousand dollars in medical bills on a premises liability case, and he’s like, “You know, give them a hundred thousand dollars.” And then he’s just like, “Give them whatever.” You hear people talk about, maybe, like a Joe Fried or some other, uh, like that in particular, talking about, you know, assigning value or, you know, finding value in the case. It’s not, it’s not necessarily the economic damage, it’s not the things that you’re putting on the board, it’s the loss. In this case, it’s a loss of trust for these people who were supposed to protect him and did the opposite, exact opposite. And so it’s one of those things, I took on the case, I knew it was gonna be a good case because I just, I just had a gut feeling on it. And then eventually, you know, we got the video and the video was, it was compelling. But it was, you know, through the evolution maybe of me as a trial lawyer, our firm — when we had that focus group and how we’ve, we handled the case going forward was just kind of a complete evolution of our firm in terms of, like, just how we handle cases and how we focus group things and how we find value for our clients. And that’s, that’s by really treating them, not treating them, not looking at their cases through the sort of formula that, I think, insurance companies have sort of conditioned plaintiffs’ attorneys to follow, where it’s like, you know, what are your specials? Well, here in Virginia, we can, it’s like we can put in the medical bills before your reductions and so on. So in that, in Virginia especially, it’s like, okay, what are your total medical bills? Okay, we’ll take your total medical bills and maybe multiply by three or whatever it is. And that’s what the case is worth. It’s sort of like refusing to be limited by that, refusing to buy into that. Because jurors, they don’t know that that’s, you know, how you’re supposed to value cases. They wanna know, well, how is this person affected? Like, sure, there’s medical bills or this, but people are also in the back of their minds like, “Well, there’s probably insurance to pay for the medical bills anyway. So like, that’s probably not very relevant.” And you never — that’s the third rail you can never even touch. They want to know, like, how is this person’s life different? That case was sort of transformational, because we had that case — the transformation in how we had — so now we run a focus group now at least once every quarter and more frequently if we have the need.

Chad Sands: And people can learn more about that full case and the journey and the “Behind the Verdict” that we did, which, which is available. And that, that case kind of, as you said, was a mirror of the evolution of your firm and how you guys have come together. And I think how you guys approached cases kind of moving forward now. Do you always do the focus groups as kind of like a third party marketing agency now? Is that some, or have you go back and forth?

Gray Broughton: No. That’s how, that’s how we, that’s how we do it. It’s worked for us. I mean, might find a different way to do it in the future, you know. It is, it’s a good way, especially if you’re trying to — I don’t know if it’s necessarily, you know, generally great for finding, like, the specific number or the value. It’s great for, like, issue spotting. So, for example, when we focus grouped that case, the Clark case that I was just talking about, when we focus grouped that, it was something where, that we hadn’t really noticed before, because we’d been deep in that case for a long time. We’d gone over the video numerous times. But we had a member of the focus group who was looking, you know, watching the video, and she basically said, “Look at the other kids in this video who were there and were bystanders. They’re acting as though this happens all the time. There was, there was not this big reaction. Look at this other employee who, like, opens the door as this woman is, like, dragging this kid across the floor by shirt wrapped around his neck. This, this woman — here’s one who’s just, like, calmly goes over and opens the door to, like, allow this person, allow this abuse to continue.”

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Gray Broughton: Stuff that we should have picked up on, but it’s kinda, the, the focus group is better for that sort of thing. So it kind of like — and also, like, sometimes a focus group will get caught up on sort of issues, like, you didn’t think were an issue. We’ve had s— we’ve had some, like, railing cases where someone, like, leans up against a railing and the railing gives way and the person falls, gets hurt badly. And it’s one of those things where it’s like, I mean, of course people lean against railing, it’s like a normal thing. And then you put it in front of a focus group, it’s like, “Well, they shouldn’t have leaned against that railing.” Like —

Chad Sands: Isn’t that what —

Gray Broughton: Yeah, how many times have you leaned against a railing in your life? I’m gonna say probably, you’ve been at a hotel and you’ve probably, like, up on the sixth floor, like, looking at the water, and you’ve probably leaned on the railing. You don’t expect it to, like, just, you know, give way.

Chad Sands: Is — and isn’t that the, the point of the railing, is to be able to use the railing?

Gray Broughton: Yeah, exactly. It’s like, wow, I didn’t know that was — I didn’t know that was an issue, I’m gonna have to admit. So it’s like, certain people, they’re, they’ll be quick to find fault with the way someone else handles something. But it wouldn’t, they wouldn’t be — they certainly wouldn’t find that same fault if they were looking at themselves.

Chad Sands: Yeah. I like the video tape story of the, the kid in the, in, in the childcare and that none of the other kids were kind of taken aback by the behavior and the actions that was going on and the person coming in the door was kind of nonchalant, like, this has happened, you know, this isn’t strange. Again, I, again, I think back to “A Few Good Men” where Santiago’s clothing were not packed. Yeah. And that if he was gonna, you know, it’s so excited to get off this base, finally, he would have packed his stuff, but the, the, no, the normal was not normal. So there’s, what, what about, uh, what about one more story about a case, and I don’t know if it was maybe from the JAG years or your early years when you were, uh, sweating as, uh, as, as a young startup, but do you have one more story that isn’t the, isn’t the big one?

Gray Broughton: So, I was a trial counsel, which is a prosecutor in the army JAG Corps. Only lost one case. If I could go back and I could only win one case, this is the case that I would have wanted. There’s a case — who I think was probably thirteen at the time. The allegation was that she, um, she was sexually abused by her stepfather. That was a case where we ended up being kind of caught flat-footed before a witness because we didn’t prep them as well as we probably should have. And there was a, uh, there ended up being a question asked by the panel, which is what a jury is called in the military. The question … she — one of the members of the panel asked, “Describe what his penis looked like.” She couldn’t. And one of the things where it’s like, we had that preparation, she could, and it’s like, like, we, we dropped the ball on that. I a hundred percent believe that she was sexually abused, and it was a terrible, you know, this man was acquitted. Terrible thing where, like, after, the mom left Germany with the stepdad. And the young woman was, like, kind of abandoned, left to be, like, you know, put in, like, with social services. So it was just this terrible situation. But I remember that feeling. It was, it was a, a feeling also where, in that particular instance, the decision had been made that one of my, my co-counsels was going to give the closing argument because she was a woman and she, like, that might resonate better with the jury. Uh, and trial ended up going longer than anticipated, and she had to leave, like, she had already had pre-planned leave or something rescheduled. I had to give the closing argument, without thinking I had to give the closing argument. It was, it was, fell far short. Now, so it was this experience where there was, there’s a lot left on the table and I feel like I could have done a much better job. And from that point forward, I was determined to — I’m like, “I’m not gonna be unprepared again.” So, yeah, it was — thinking back on that case, it was eye-opening. Yeah. And the people who are great trial lawyers, there’s a lot of preparation that goes into their work. A lot of preparation work. It’s not something that just naturally — there’s a lot of work and it’s being, knowing your case inside out and it’s being prepared for every contingency. So in that case, I learned that the hard way.

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Gray Broughton: Our firm, I’m very proud of the firm that we’ve … We differentiate ourselves by being veterans. We are a veteran-led law firm. Sharif Gray and I are, are law partners. We both are military, we’re both in the JAG Corps of the army, and we’re both trial lawyers. We handle cases — I know a, a lot of law firms may call themselves trial — we genuinely believe that you get the most value for your clients by preparing, by preparing our cases that we’re going to trial. And we have been very fortunate this year alone to have two fantastic verdicts. One, which is well known, we had a twenty million dollar verdict in Winchester Circuit Court in the Clark v. Hopkins case, where there’s a young man who was physically abused while he was a resident in a psychiatric residential treatment facility. And another, we had a verdict of a little bit over $363,000. And this is a, uh, sideswipe case where the man was driving, he was sideswiped, kind of run off the road, and as part of that sideswipe, he ended up tearing his rotator cuff. Didn’t receive treatment for his shoulder for almost nine months after the collision, but we were able to ultimately convince the jury that our client had a torn rotator cuff. And so this is a case that probably, we’d only received an offer of twenty thousand dollars for it. Believed in it, took it to trial, got a good verdict on it. And, you know, that willingness to take these cases to trial — the $20 million verdict case, that was a case that was passed over by four law firms — the willingness to go to trial, the willingness to just believe in ourselves, that has resulted in fantastic results for our clients. And of course, as a result of these recent verdicts, we’ve had tremendous success settling cases. And so, we love taking cases to trial and are happy to do it. But that’s not always what our clients want. What they ultimately want — they want to be heard and they want to be made whole, as whole as possible. And for some, that’s having their day in court, but for a lot of people, they don’t necessarily want to go to court, they want you to maximize the compensation, receive for them. So because we take cases to trial and because we have, because we follow through consistently — if we say we’re going to take a case to trial if our demands aren’t met, we actually do that — because of that, we’re, in addition to the verdicts, we’re getting, you know, policy, policy demands are being tendered and we’re getting results that are far exceeding what we were getting probably two, three years ago because of our — and that’s not just results, but our willingness to take cases to trial and to follow through on what we said. And really, there’s been this, this — we find value in our cases not by follow— following a formula that’s been dictated by the insurance company, but by looking at each case as an individual, not as a number, and looking at our clients and saying, how was this person affected? What was taken from them by the injustice or by the incident? How can we fully and fairly compensate them for the loss that they’ve suffered? It might have been a loss of trust. It might have been the loss of ability to hold their child, to be intimate with their spouse, to, you know, to do, you know, to play sport. Whatever the case may be, something was taken from them and, and how do we fairly and fully compensate them for, and for what they lost? It’s not necessarily just they lost this amount, you know, twenty thousand dollars in medical bills. That’s not, that’s not what the person lost, it’s what valuable human experiences that they’ve lost. And we, we fight for our clients, and we’re not afraid to fight through to a verdict for them. And the results have been great for our clients, and, and in turn, they’ve been good for us as well. We’re happy to work with other firms. Happy to, we’re happy to take cases on directly from, you know, from prospective clients, or if there are cases that other firms want to refer to us, we’re happy to have a conversation and see how we can add value to your firm.

Narrator: You’ve been listening to Celebrating Justice presented by CloudLex and the Trial Lawyer’s Journal. Remember, the stories don’t end here. Visit www.triallawyersjournal.com to become part of our community and keep the conversation going. And for a deeper dive into the tools that empower personal injury law firms, visit www.cloudlex.com/tlj to learn.