Patrick O'Hara

Patrick O’Hara grew up around his father’s law practice and courtroom, and by high school he was doing mock trial and debate. “I loved arguing my position to a judge,” he says. To Kill a Mockingbird and Mississippi Burning fed his idea of justice. A scholarship took him to Pepperdine, where he did mock trial every semester and weighed becoming a prosecutor before choosing personal injury for its variety and independence. Mark Lanier hired him as a clerk after a phone interview, then made him the firm’s first law student hired straight out of school.

Patrick graduated second in his class and trained under Mark Lanier, but he says what truly sets him apart is that “I truly love people.” The Golden Rule is a foundation of his practice, so the client always comes first: when insurance falls far short of a severely injured child’s needs, he has often waived his fee. At 29, when his legal assistant was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he and his wife took in all four of her children, ages 11 to 22, rather than see them separated.

Patrick’s first trial as lead counsel, at 28, was a West Virginia mesothelioma case against the lone defendant that refused to settle. On day two the judge urged the dying client to take his money and go home. The man stood up and said no; the defendant would stay until the jury ruled. The jury found for him, and he died the following year. More recently, Patrick helped grandparents win custody of three children by proving through ballistics and forensic experts that their daughter’s death was a homicide, not a suicide; the appellate court upheld it.

Patrick’s closing thought comes from a loss. As second chair in a month-long mesothelioma trial, he watched a dying client sit in court every day against three defendants with weak cases, then lose. Consoling the family afterward, he learned no one had told them they had already recovered more than $5 million in pretrial settlements; the lead lawyer wanted a precedent-setting trial in a new jurisdiction. “I decided that day that I would never do that to a client,” he says. He fully informs clients and lets them choose.

O’Hara Law Firm, founded in 2014 in Houston, Texas, handles personal injury cases including auto and trucking collisions, premises liability and dog bites, catastrophic and brain injury, asbestos and mesothelioma litigation, and wrongful death and complex civil litigation. Results include a $450,000 settlement for a client struck by an 18-wheeler that ran a red light and more than $5 million in pretrial settlements for an asbestos client. The firm’s website is oharaattorney.com.

Patrick earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Wheaton College in 2004 and a J.D. summa cum laude from Pepperdine University in 2007, graduating as salutatorian, a member of the Order of the Coif and a Faculty Scholar. He is licensed in Texas (2007), California (2008) and Louisiana (2012), sitting for the second and third bar exams at Mark Lanier’s request as the firm expanded. He is a fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation and a member of the Houston Bar Association.