Plaintiff’s lawyer? Defense counsel? Many attorneys in private practice wind up doing some of both. In fact, many highly successful plaintiff attorneys began their careers at insurance defense firms. When I started practicing law in 1985, I worked for an insurance defense firm, primarily representing restaurants, hotels, big-box retailers, apartment complexes and several large grocery chains handling their premises liability claims.

When I opened my own practice in 2003, I started doing more on the plaintiff side but was still primarily a defense lawyer, focusing on premises liability claims for a national grocery chain. Over the course of my career, I have been lead counsel in thousands of premises liability cases, including slip-and-falls and trip-and-falls, negligent security claims and false arrest and malicious prosecution cases.