Christopher Campione

He came from a family of attorneys — his father a bankruptcy lawyer, his mother an environmental lawyer — yet had no desire to practice, planning instead to focus on a real estate career. After law school, the solo practitioner he clerked for declined to hire him, saying he was “too much of a liability” and would be better off on his own. Campione spent about a week building a website and logo, and with roughly $4,000 to his name opened Campione Law in a windowless office in the same building.

Campione says he is “not very lawyerly in a lot of ways,” which he believes lets him relate to everyday people in Florida’s crowded personal injury market. He started Campione Law with no marketing budget and grew it by treating clients the way he would want to be treated, letting referrals spread from one circle of people to the next. That word-of-mouth reputation, he says, is what eventually let him afford to compete with the big firms.

The first case he ever tried: a mother and son from his own neighborhood, hit by a drunk driver who blew through a stop sign. The driver’s small policy was tendered, but the mother’s own insurer offered a few thousand dollars on a $50,000 uninsured motorist policy. About two years later the case reached a jury, and Campione refused a last-minute policy-limits offer. The verdict was roughly $690,000 — about 15 times the policy. “You can actually hold these people accountable,” he says.

He pushes back on the billboard image of injury law as a “lawsuit lottery.” Most of his clients have suffered traumatic injuries and often come from the people who need help most, facing insurers that, he says, “don’t give a flip what your name is.” He recalls a client whose car flipped into a ditch after a semi-truck pulled out; the insurer denied liability and offered $5,000, and the case settled about a year later for just under $600,000. The man bought his family a house — a bad situation made good.

Campione Law, based in Jacksonville, Florida, handles personal injury matters including car accidents, trucking accidents, premises liability and wrongful death, along with business and real estate law. Campione also takes on cases that stalled at larger firms, such as a wrongful death claim for a young man T-boned and killed by a commercial vehicle, brought to him after the family fired their previous firm. Reported results include $3.5 million in a wrongful death case, $2.25 million in a trucking accident and more than $10 million across motor vehicle cases.

He earned his J.D. from Florida Coastal School of Law in 2016, graduating in the top 20% of his class with three book awards for the highest grades in constitutional law, criminal procedure and trial practice. At the same time he completed an MBA at Jacksonville University, finishing in the top 5% and joining Beta Gamma Sigma. Admitted to The Florida Bar in 2016, he belongs to the Jacksonville Justice Association, the American Bar Association and the Jacksonville Bar Association. The firm’s website is campionelawpa.com.