Jon Groth

Jon Groth grew up in Milwaukee with no lawyers in the family — his father was a city firefighter who fixed neighbors’ lawnmowers, and his mother handled billing at a nursing home. He started college as a jazz saxophone major, switched to philosophy and then political science and worked for politicians in Madison. A clerkship at a Chicago personal injury firm, spent all day on the phone listening to people’s problems, showed him he liked “helping others with strategy.” He has practiced only personal injury law since 2002.

Groth says the lawyers whose faces are on a big firm’s marketing are often not the ones doing the practicing, while he does both. The day before his “Celebrating Justice” interview, he drove three and a half hours from Milwaukee to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for a four-hour deposition and three and a half hours back. He says his firm is not afraid to try a case, and it tries to help people in a kind, supportive manner — a bedside manner he thinks some lawyers lack.

A referral from a conference acquaintance in Arizona brought Groth a client who flew to Wisconsin for a Packers game, stepped onto a metal staircase and fell about 20 feet, crushing his ankle. The insurer offered roughly a hundred thousand dollars and refused to account for a future fusion surgery; the defense named an expert, then withdrew him. The jury returned a half-million-dollar verdict while the client was at dinner. Groth remembers the client pulling into the courthouse parking lot, hearing the number and lifting him in a bear hug.

“It really comes down to four words: do the right thing,” Groth says. He illustrates it with opening a coffee shop door for a young mother juggling a crying newborn. In practice, that means fighting for clients at the beginning, middle and end of a case, including taking a case to trial knowing he may lose his own money. His most recent trial was a $6 million dog mauling verdict he will never collect on — a case other attorneys turned down because there was no way to recover.

Groth Law Firm, S.C. is in Brookfield, Wisconsin (grothlawfirm.com), and Groth founded it on March 1, 2010, cashing out savings and his 401(k) with two young children at home and a third yet to come. The firm focuses on personal injury, handling auto and motorcycle collisions, trucking crashes, product liability, premises liability, nursing home neglect and animal attacks, along with professional liability. Groth makes a point of visiting clients at their homes because it builds a personal relationship.

Groth’s results include a $6 million verdict in a dog bite attack case, a $3 million settlement in a premises liability case, settlements of $1.15 million and $1 million in trucking crash cases and a $450,000 car crash settlement. He has been selected to Super Lawyers from 2014 through 2024, holds a 10.0 Avvo rating and is a life member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. The National Trial Lawyers Association has named him among the Top 100 Trial Lawyers in Wisconsin and its Top 40 Under 40.

Groth graduated cum laude from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay with a political science degree in 1996 and earned his J.D. from Marquette University Law School in 2000, when he was admitted to the Wisconsin bar. He began at Pitman, Kyle & Sicula, S.C., handling personal injury litigation from 2000 to 2003. Since 2008 he has taught business law and management as an adjunct professor at Cardinal Stritch University, and he belongs to the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Wisconsin and the American Association for Justice.