Here at Shapiro & Appleton& Duffan, we have a great team of support staff members including paralegals, secretaries, and investigators. First of all, the paralegals and secretaries tend to be very experienced with an average of over 15 years of experience doing personal injury law work. Some of our staff have been doing injury law and railroad F.E.L.A. cases for decades.
Moreover, we tend to keep our staff with us for longer than the average personal injury law firm. Many of our staff members have been with our law firm for over a decade. This gives great continuity for the law firm and allows us to serve our clients efficiently. My secretary, Vera, has been with me for 8 years and my paralegal, Roz, has been with the law firm for 19 years. We go to great lengths to try to keep our paralegals and secretaries happy by paying them fairly and having a good environment to work in. We figure that happier staff means that they are going to treat our personal injury clients better and more professionally. We also don’t skimp on having sufficient staff with the typical lawyer in our office having two staff members that just work with him on his cases. The goal is to get your case moving forward as quickly as is possible to a successful conclusion. Having the right amount of staffing with experienced, happy legal assistants allows us to provide the best personal injury representation that money can buy. We try to treat each client as an individual and make sure they get individual attention rather than more factory assembly line way that some of our competitors appear to do it.
Our staff of investigators also are top of the line. Our investigators also have decades of experience working on personal injury and F.E.L.A./railroad cases. Many of them have decades of experience in handling the investigation necessary to win cases for injured railroad workers and victims of automobile crashes. The folks we hire as investigators typically also had decades of experience in the railroad world as conductors, engineers, or maintenance of way workers before entering injury law investigation at our firm. The contacts that these men have with people still at the railroad and in the rail unions allows us to keep up to date with what is going on on the railroad and have access to the information to prove cases involving train wrecks and injuries to railroad workers. The skills that these investigators bring to bear in the railroad context are also useful in getting the proof necessary to win car crash cases such as taking witness statements, photographing accident scenes, as well as understanding insurance and medical issues surrounding injury cases. The quality of our investigators is really what separates our law firm from other lawyers in personal injury and F.E.L.A. law.
It is rare that I finish a personal injury case without the client complimenting me on the terrific job that was done by my secretary, my paralegal, and/or the investigator assigned to the file. Clients really appreciate these professionals who allow the attorney to look good as he does his job in a serious injury case. I also try hard not to forget that it is a team project. Having such strong players on my team allows me to be a successful and effective lawyer on injury and wrongful death cases. I am grateful to be associated with the great people at Shapiro & Appleton& Duffan.