The first thing that it takes to be successful, for any litigation attorney that does trial work in a court room setting, is preparation. I’ve been doing court room litigation, been doing insurance defense litigation for almost 20 years now. And I had my first trial in, I believe 2006, and I was second chairing that trial, so I was working under a first chair attorney partner in the law firm that I was with. And the number one thing he told me going into that trial was, “Try to anticipate what questions I’m going to ask and be ready to give me an exhibit, give me a question to ask the witness, or whatever, before I even need it.” So being a second chair attorney at that trial really helped me to focus my practice. And preparation is the very number one thing that any lawyer should do going into any setting, whether it’s a court room, whether it’s just a hearing, whether it’s a telephonic hearing, whether it’s a deposition, preparation is always the key.

I’ve been practicing here in Arizona since 2000. I grew up in the mid-west. I grew up in Nebraska, went to a small undergraduate school in Lincoln, Nebraska. I went to law school at the University of Kansas and moved out here in 1999, got my first job as an attorney with a firm doing direct representation of insurance companies and really felt that I wanted to get into litigation after that. So I spent about a year and a half after that first firm working in medical malpractice defense, got my first taste of a court room, and then around the year 2003, I jumped over into construction defect litigation. And that’s what I’ve been doing since.

Since I’ve been doing construction defect litigation now for a little bit over 15 years, I’ve gotten the opportunity to kind of get to know my craft and then have been asked to present for various bar associations. I’ve presented for the Arizona State Bar Association. I’ve presented for the Maricopa County Bar Association. And then I’ve presented lectures for other trade organization, such as HalfMoon Seminars, which really targets it’s audience to engineers and to civic lawyers, lawyers that represent various towns and municipalities.