Tanya Ortega

{Theme Song Plays}

Tanya Ortega: Because when the money runs out, the pain will still be there… Within a year, my first trial was the reason that I got that award. And that’s how much that program means to me and how much it did for me… How can you sit in the ashes of someone else’s pain and truly understand it if you’ve never taken the time to understand your own pain?

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 triallawyersjournal.com. Now here’s your host, editor of TLJ and VP of marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands.

Chad Sands: Welcome back friends to “Celebrating Justice”. In this episode, we hear from the Gerry Spence Method 2024 Civil Trial Warrior of the Year, Tanya Ortega. Based in San Luis Obispo, California, Tanya shares how a dirt track victory with her middle school track students foreshadowed her calling in the courtroom. To get to the stories, I asked her, why did you want to become a trial lawyer?

Tanya Ortega: I started as a middle school track coach and teacher many, now probably decades ago. And it started when I was training my athletes, middle school kids behind this school building on a dirt track, just shy of the full distance of a real track. And we spent months running.

And I’d train with them and talk to them, mentor them. And we were gearing up for the big race, the last district track meet. They’d never won. In fact, they’d never won a single race at that meet, much less the team award. And that’s what we were working for. The time came, I remember it vividly. It was a hot Houston day, sun beating down.

Sweat dripping off everybody’s faces. And we were one of the poorest middle schools in Houston. And the meat was at across the highway at one of the richest schools in the district where they had this beautiful high performance red track. And I remember with each kid in each race, I was running back and forth on the infield, telling them on this part of the race, we’re going to work on our breathing.

And in this part of the race on the other side of the track, I say, we’re going to work on your arms relaxing. And then each time they had a different message. And sure enough, at the end of the meet, for the first time, those kids walked home winners and their heads were held high and their shoulders were back and their chins were up. And I realized that probably for the first time in their lives, they truly believed in themselves. I had a feeling

That I’ve never had before a true connection and love that I had a part in it. And I didn’t realize then, as I do now, that that feeling is my calling. When you get it, you just can’t ignore it. A short time thereafter though, some family members called me and said, “You know, we like your pipe dream, but you gotta go to law school. That’s really where you need to be.” And so I did. I went to law school.

Did everything that everyone told me to do that would bring happiness. Finished higher in my law school class. Went and worked for the defense for a little while at a nice firm in Chicago. Moved over to the plaintiff firm and that’s when I moved to California and I got good results and I did well. But I never had that feeling again. Until one day I was at a firm in San Luis Obispo and a client walked in and I don’t know, there was something about him.

He sat across from me on the other side of the desk and I could just tell he was worn. He was worn out. His shoulders were a little more hunched and he looked older than his years, which is what pain will do to you. And his eyes were darker and he was asking all the right questions that you ask of a potential lawyer. But what he was really asking me in the silence was, “Can I trust you?” And what I really heard was, “Because nobody’s believing me, nobody’s hearing me or seeing the struggle that I’m going through.” And it was in that moment, in the handshake across the desk that I took a promise to him and I took an oath to care. And for the first time, that feeling came back to me and I realized I have to do everything in my power to help this man reignite that belief in himself, that confidence.

And to let him know that what he’s going through is real and that people see him and that he deserves full justice for what’s happened. And that’s what drives me to take people’s cases from the start of that handshake to the end of the trial to verdict. That feeling, that calling is why I’m a trial lawyer.

Chad Sands: Was it like having that feeling with the high school kids and then kind of going through maybe a decade of your life or longer before you kind of had that meeting with that client and had that spark ignite again? What was that intern period like for you as a young attorney growing and going through ultimately trying to find what you found?

Tanya Ortega: That’s such a good question Chad. You’re living a life that doesn’t necessarily belong to you. It’s like you’re in a cage and everybody’s telling you how to act, what to do. This will bring you happiness. If you go to this school, if you buy that house, if you get that car, if you work the case up in this way, if you just do it like the template, like somebody else, that’s what life’s about. When you’re in the mill of it, when you’re in the process of that,

Living someone else’s expectations or what you believe someone else has told you lawyering is, you don’t know really until the end of it that that’s not what makes you whole. That’s not what life is about, at least for me. And when I got to the end of that road, having gone through school and the defense side and now the plaintiff side, I think I was looking for a moment to be vulnerable. And when I found that connection with this one client, I jumped in wholeheartedly because I missed that feeling so much. And it was only then when I was able to just risk everything for someone else. That’s when I realized that calling is what’s bringing me true happiness. I hope I answered your question, but it was like I was in a fog for all of those decades. And the calling came to me and I answered it. And thank heavens I did.

Chad Sands: Is that what makes you unique as a trial lawyer that you found this calling or what makes you unique?

Tanya Ortega: Before I met my husband and my stepdaughter, my husband lost his late wife and my stepdaughter, her mother, at a young age when she was in a crash. She was killed in a crash. And it was a personal injury case that went all the way through trial. Now, I didn’t know them then, but when I met them, their trauma became my trauma. And I know what they went through. What makes us different as a trial firm.

We know firsthand what our clients experience, the feeling of loss, pain, the effects that a trial will have on our clients. We’ve lived it. And that’s why we are a trial firm. We’re not one of those settlement firms who works the case just enough to get money on the table. We spend all of our time and as much money as necessary to get the clients full justice because when the money runs out, the pain will still be there. And that’s what the settlement firms don’t understand, that we know personally. I’ve been asked by some of those folks at the settlement firms, “Why do you do this? You know it’s bad business, right? To spend so much time and energy and all of your spirit and money into a single case when you could just cut bait and go to the next case. And make more money that way. That’s the better business model. And you know what? The clients would never even know. They don’t even have any idea that you’re a settlement firm.”

But I know, and I know how I would have wanted my husband and my daughter to be treated all the way through trial. And that’s how we treat our clients. And we spend so much time with them that we do build a connection as though they’re family. And I’ll go to hell and back for my family.

Chad Sands: Yeah, the settlement firms, it’s kind of like they keep running on that same dirt track.

Tanya Ortega: Even though they have the money to invest in the high powered rubber track, that’s the injustice of it. That’s the shame of it. That they put clients on the dirt track when they know better and they could do better and they choose not to.

Chad Sands: And they still gotta’ run with that pain for the rest of their life.

Tanya Ortega: They do. The effects that our family have of losing our loved one, my daughter losing her mother at four years old, we still process that. We will continue to process that and that’s our journey and that’s okay. When she gets married, when she has her first baby, shoot, even when she tells her friends for the first time that I’m her stepmom.

And using both of our first names to differentiate between who she’s talking about. It’s a part of her life, but it reminds me every day that the trauma that our clients go through, it’s now woven within the fabric of who they are and it will be a part of their life forever and their families. And that’s why they deserve full justice. And that’s why they deserve everything that we can give them to ensure that they get that.

Chad Sands: Now I know you are a track star, track coach. I have to ask a question. Is the 400 a sprint? Middle distance? What is the 400 meter?

Tanya Ortega: Nowadays, that thing is a sprint. I’ll tell you what, and not just that, the 800 is a sprint. The worst races in my mind are the 400 hurdles. Those are Spartans who run those races. The 400 and the 800, absolute warriors on the track. And it’s a sprint all out.

Chad Sands: I got like fifty… I don’t know what my 400 was, but it was painful.

Tanya Ortega: And then it’s like your body starts to tighten up on that last hundred fifty meters, man. And you just that’s pure will.

Chad Sands: And unfortunately in seventh grade I saw somebody run past me as I approached the finish line.

Tanya Ortega: Man, well you live to fight another day though man, you know, you’ll get them on the next one.

Chad Sands: Also know what makes you unique though is that you were the Gerry Spence Method 2024 Civil Trial Warrior of the Year. Can you tell me a little bit about that award and your experience at Thunderhead Ranch? How did you decide to go out there? Or you’ve been studying Gerry Spence since law school and were like, I want to finally do this. how did you make that leap and sign up?

Tanya Ortega: Yeah. The Gerry Spence Civil Trial Lawyer of the Year, that award means so much to me because it’s a reflection of everything that program has done for me and my clients and my family. I went to Thunderhead Ranch, I want to say less than a year before I went to the Curry Trial, which was the reason for the award. So after going to the ranch, within a year, my first trial, was the reason that I got that award. And that’s how much that program means to me and how much it did for me. So let’s start unpacking that. When you get to the ranch, that land is breathtaking and it’s holy because you start to think about all of the trial lawyers, generations who have come before you and spent their blood, sweat and tears in the same buildings that you’re standing in.

Working on your own craft. It’s hallowed ground. And to give those who came before you the honor that they deserve, you spend every day, morning till very late at night working your tail off. Because that’s what that place brings out of you. That’s what it deserves is every part of you. So it starts with the land. And then you start to work on yourself. That’s the first part of the program. Through certain group Psychodrama and activities, you confront your own pain and fear of abandonment, inadequacy, insecurity. Because the belief is, how can you sit in the ashes of someone else’s pain and truly understand it if you’ve never taken the time to understand your own pain? How can you recognize the scars of someone else’s heart when you don’t even know what your own look like?

And so we spend quite a bit of time unpacking all of those emotions and feelings that we’ve been taught by the way to never let out, to put it behind a fortress of brick walls. Because remember, that’s what folks say is good lawyering. Your feelings get checked outside the door. You only talk with your head. That’s the expectation of a good lawyer.

But this program teaches you that that’s false. And it allows you to actually be human in who you are and feel your feelings and process things that have happened to you in your life. At the end of that piece, I realized for every one of my classmates that what I was struggling so hard to hide, all of those scars of my heart that I was trying to hide from everyone so that I could put on this facade of perfection that I thought were my shadows, were actually my superhero capes. That’s what’s made me who I am and why I’m so, I guess, dogmatic and trying to be in service of someone else, because I know how it feels to be unheard, unseen. And then there’s another piece, and that’s the connection that you forge with your classmates, because we do all of this personal work with each other, and we are all bearing witness to each other.

Bringing down that fortress of walls. And when you do that and you sit with each other in those moments, you become a spiritual family. And these are the people who I may not talk to every day, but if there is anything I ever need in this world, those are the people I’m calling first. So you get a community of warriors, you can call it any time, and who know you better than probably most of your family members. And there’s not a lot of programs who can offer you that. And then the final piece comes into applying this to your trial work. We break down each part of the trial. The instructors help you understand by doing rather than telling, but they help you understand that each piece now comes from a feeling place, a place in your heart, as opposed to it being a talking head and talking from your head space as opposed to your heart space.

We’re taught, I think, in law school and maybe by older generations of lawyers that using big words and talking about big concepts in a way that nobody understands, “Well, that’s a dang good lawyer.” And this program teaches us that if you talk to the jury like an old friend having coffee and we’re being vulnerable with each other about old wounds and traumas.

That’s where real connection happens in the courtroom and that my friend is magic.

Chad Sands: The magic in the courtroom. I know it’s hard to choose one but can you share a story about a case that had a significant impact on you and how you approach the way you work?

Tanya Ortega: I’m gonna talk about the Curry case. That’s the case — oh man. That case was a journey. It started more than five years ago. And that was the gentleman who I met across the desk and I shook his hand and I made him a promise. And that’s how it started. 

It was because of him that I learned brain injury science. Because that was one of his injuries. And I realized there’s a lot of lawyers that say, “I’m a brain injury litigator.” And that may be true, but every person is so different that I am a specialist of my client’s brain injury. I know my client’s injuries like the back of my hand. And so I made sure that I became a specialist for Mr. Curry’s injuries. And that’s another thing I think that’s really important when you make a promise to someone to care, that you know their injuries better than anyone on the planet. And you do this because in our practice, it’s not just about full justice, but it’s also about helping each client on the road to healing. It’s not enough to just get a diagnosis, but we need to make sure that we get them to specialists across the country where they feel better, where they get treatment that actually improves the quality of their life. It was through this case that I really started doing that in my practice for every client. Let’s talk about this case in the litigation. Holy heavens.

Chad Sands: Can you tell me what happened?

Tanya Ortega: Yeah, absolutely. Mr. Curry is a salt of the earth human being, one of the best you’ll ever meet. He’s been married to the same woman for 38 years. He’s been a sheriff deputy at the same department for the last almost 29 years before this crash happened. He’s been going to the same church where he was baptized at six years old, where he got married, his kids got married, and he still worships there.

He’s been a member of our county since kindergarten. And they just don’t make men like that anymore. To talk about someone who was deserving, that was him. And so he was driving on a road that he’s driven thousands of times in his lifetime headed to his department. And in fact, he was doing a favor for another deputy, taking paperwork to the department for her. When he was entering an intersection and at the same time, a young girl, college student, ran a red light from the left turn lane, turned in front of him and he had no warning, nothing that he could do. And for him, that was a head-on collision. His car spun and he just went for the ride. He was taken away in an ambulance and over many years, he had procedures, surgeries. Most significantly, he had a brain injury and neck injury that required two surgeries.

And he had a movement disorder called dystonia, which means he would convulse from his abdomen involuntarily. And he’ll have all of those things for the rest of his life. We were in a battle with the insurance company from day one. These insurance companies, they hire folks who will do anything. And I’m talking about as much as we dedicate our lives to helping, they are quite the opposite. And so it was told by a county employee that this case had the most motions filed of any case in the county ever to the point that we had to have a discovery referee appointed to our case. The defense pulled every shenanigan you can think of, Chad. At one point, I was with a firm and there was another way I wanted to go with this litigation and with the case and trial strategy. So I left my firm to start my own practice. And it was because of this case, because I made a promise to Mr. Curry to litigate his case in a different way and frankly invest all of my time, my energy, my spirit and my money to him because he deserved it. And that wasn’t the business model of the firm that I was at. Mr. Curry trusted me and we went on our way and we started my own practice.

But the insurance company took advantage of that and they tried to bombard us with every cost and every motion you could imagine. And it was just me and my good friend Nicolette Reeves at our office. We took down the army. They hired 19 retained experts. We only had five. They persuaded the judge to time qualify the jury for three months when the case only took two weeks.

But you can imagine what that did to tamper with our jury pool.

But nevertheless, man, we answered the call at every turn. In the end, we were able to tell our story to the jury and the jury believed us and they believed Mr. Curry and they gave him full justice. And there were two things I learned from that. Many things actually, but two things of note. The first is when you go to war, you need to have folks in your corner who you can rely on to support you, uplift you, remind you why you’re doing this work and to believe in you at times when you may not believe in yourself. And for me, I had a very dear close friend of mine in my corner, John Conard, who is one of the greatest trial storytellers ever. And so I would encourage folks who think they want to be a trial lawyer, who are ready to make this promise to their clients.

To go to the ends of hell and back, that you need to have some warriors in your corner like John Conard. And the second thing of note is what my good friend John told me day in and day out. He’d say, Tanya, there are no magic beans to this practice. There is no one size template or algorithm for every case. This is a craft and you have to work on your craft every day. And that means spending all the time in the world with the client, countless hours understanding their story, getting the essence of their story so that you can tell it to the jury. It’s the countless hours that you spend understanding their injuries so that you can help them with their healing and you can incorporate that into the trial story. That without that preparation, the verdict just isn’t possible.

That is the craft. And when you do it, magic happens.

Chad Sands: I see lot of parallels between, and I speak with a lot of trial lawyers who talk about storytelling, and there’s a lot of craft when it comes to screenwriting or telling stories. In stories, there’s the first act, second act, third act, and that there’s always the lowest point at the end of the second act where all hope is lost. In your trial, as this insurance company was trying to drown you and crush you guys, did you ever have that moment of like, I can’t do it anymore. Let’s hang up. Let’s… Walk away.

Tanya Ortega: Oh, man….

Chad Sands: Was there a lowest point that you remember?

Tanya Ortega: There were a few actually. The one that is coming to my mind is when you spend all this time and money, everything is on the line. And so the last trick in the book for the defense is to now delay. The depositions are done. The trial story is created. The witness list is made. All I need is the courtroom. And that’s when one of the defense attorneys, for whatever reason, decided that he could no longer do the trial in this case. And so he steps away. We’re in this purgatory of which defense attorney in this firm is gonna take this case to trial.

Chad Sands: And do you still have like a trial date at this point?

Tanya Ortega: We did at that point, but the judge is merciful to his credit. There was another trial ahead of us too, but he was merciful and gave the defense a continuance longer than what we wanted. But there was this moment, Chad, where they were asking for a very long continuance. With everything being ready, the package being ready to be delivered, we’re three weeks away from actually stepping into the courtroom where we can give this man the day that he deserves.

This is the shenanigans they pull. And they did it in a very sudden and dramatic way, if I can describe it that way. There was a sudden medical emergency, if you will. And so that’s why there was this request for months and months and months long continuance. But as a single practitioner with everything on the line, those months, they didn’t know it at the time, but that would have ruined us financially, emotionally. And I think spiritually.

Lucky for us, the continuance wasn’t as long. The judge did put his foot down and the day came for them. They ran out of excuses, if you will. The lowest point, that second act low point for me was whether or not this trial was ever gonna go. It was hopeless. If you can imagine all of the exams being written, the opening is written, the stage is set. Everybody’s in there, you if we’re going with acting, everybody’s in their costumes, just give me a courtroom and a jury. And finally, we did thank heavens. I’ll never forget that day that we got that call and that request.

Chad Sands: You had everything riding on it.

Tanya Ortega: We did. mean, when I say everything, I was told by a friend of mine later, he was like, “You know, I can’t believe you risked that much. How did you not realize that you are risking it all?” And I guess I was just so, I believed in this story and in my client and his injuries. It never even entered my mind that there was a possibility that could all go south. Never entered my mind. I just knew we were going to do well for him.

And we ended up doing well. Now looking back on it in hindsight, it was a big risk, but I’d do it all again. And we do. We do it every day for every client.

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Now here is this episode’s “Closing Argument.”

Tanya Ortega: What I’ve realized is the life and practice of a trial lawyer is that it’s never about us.

It’s actually never about the trial lawyer. From the time that we are entrusted with the case by the client and we spend all that time with the client and their families to understand the essence of what they’re going through and to develop their story. That part is all about the client and listening to them.

And then we move into the courtroom where we have the client’s story, we’ve developed it, and now we’re telling it to a group of jurors in a way that the jurors’ questions are answered. Their concerns have responses. And in that moment, it becomes all about the jury. 

Let me give you an example. A cross-examination of a doctor shouldn’t be me questioning the doctor about ions that are discharged in a neuro metabolic cascade after axonal shearing when brain cells get damaged in a trauma. Because that’s not what the jury wants to hear. The jury wants to hear the waiting room questions. “Doc, how bad is it? Is he going to be okay? What does this mean for him and his family?” 

And so it’s telling the story for the jury and it becomes all about the jury and not the trial lawyer trying to show off about how smart we are or how much I know the science or how well I know the evidence rules or how well I know the case. And what hit me recently was that even in thinking about all of the time and the energy and the spirit given to each case and each trial. That sacrifice, it’s not about the trial lawyer either. 

Because the real sacrifice are those people all around us. Those folks in our offices, our mentors and best friends, and most importantly our families, who willingly make the sacrifice of our absence, of our not being at the house or being with them on a daily basis because they know that the work we do is helping somebody else. I finally know that the calling that I felt so many years ago, and I feel it now again today, thank heavens, is living a life in service of others, of seeing someone else in the ashes of pain, handing and giving them a hand, pulling them up, dusting them off, lifting their chin, pulling back their shoulders, and letting them know that someone believes in them, sees them, and will go to the depths of hell to help them. 

The more of us who do this work with that perspective and that calling, then the more lives we can change and the better we can make this world. And that’s my hope.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Tanya Ortega. Thanks for sharing your stories. To learn more about Tanya and her firm, visit TheOrtegaFirm.com. Alright, I’m Chad Sands. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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 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 cloudlex.com/TLJ to learn more.