Paul Marriett – Chicago Personal Injury Lawyers
Paul Marriett grew up in a proud IBEW union household, graduated from RPS, attended Rock Valley College, and completed B.A. degrees in Philosophy and Political Science, with a minor in Religious Studies from Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. Paul earned his J.D. from Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, Florida and completed his last semester at John Marshall Law School, in Chicago, Illinois.
What Paul is most proud of as part of his educational accomplishments is being an alumnus of the greatest trial lawyer training program in our country and is a grateful graduate of the inaugural class at the Gerry Spence Method Trial Program at Thunderhead Ranch in Dubois, Wyoming. Paul also maintains active professional memberships through the Illinois Bar Association, Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, and the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys.
The first step in his practicing legal career was prosecuting restraining orders/no stalking/orders of protection against violent individuals through the Cook County, Illinois Domestic Violence Legal Clinic at the Harrison Street Courthouse in Chicago, Illinois. From there Paul was a staff attorney at North Florida Legal Services in Panama City, Florida where he represented clients in family law matters (divorce, custody, paternity, guardianships, and adoptions), probate, and BP Oil related claims where tens of thousands of businesses, individuals, and their families, suffered staggering financial losses from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
After opening his first office in Rockford in 2013, the office concentrated primarily in general criminal defense matters ranging from traffic, DUI, to significant felony level offenses. It was after representing his first plaintiff though, and attending courses through the Trial Lawyers College, that he knew representing real people against corporations and the major insurance companies and their teams of lawyers was how he could be the most effective at helping people.
Since taking on personal injury related and worker’s compensation matters, Paul has been able to be a shoulder for his clients to lean on when things get tough. When a client and/or a client’s family is suffering with grueling physical therapy sessions, surgeries, physical pain and suffering, financial uncertainty, loss of a loved one’s life, or a permanent, traumatic injury that changes the nature of an individual and/or their family’s life, Paul is there for the people he represents.
You may hear about fictionalized accounts about lawyers attending medical appointments with a client, visiting a client in the hospital, going to their clients’ homes and jobs, or going out to the scene of where injuries occurred with their team of investigators, our office does all of those things because it helps us get the absolute best results for the people that count on, and depend on us to help them recover and obtain justice for their past pain, present suffering, and future hope.
Over his career Paul has been able to help thousands of people throughout Winnebago County and elsewhere around Northern Illinois on cases ranging from basic traffic offenses to wrongful death lawsuits against Fortune 500 listed companies. He’s a Winnebago County resident, happily married, with three energetic children, a yellow Labrador, and a Boston Terrier. Helping injured people is more than a job for him.
When he’s not actively working in court/office, or with his family, he shares useful injury law based podcasts, articles, and training materials with his peers (whether they like it or not), and is always up for a conversation, class, or strategy session with another lawyer on how to improve his counseling skills, or maximize client returns. He has other hobbies too, when there is an occasional break. Paul takes his family to one or two new national parks every year, hikes over 100 miles per month, is an enthusiastic and avid outdoorsman, and a lifetime member of two local charitable groups Rockford Masonic Lodge, and the Tabala Shrine Temple.
With Paul’s training through the Gerry Spence Method, he keeps a small number of active files for several reasons but primarily because to do this work the right way, each client and their respective case deserves an absolute commitment and focus on them. If you ever hear the term “volume mill” or “volume practice” this is commonly referred to as a “bulk office”. Such offices will sign every case possible, let someone treat with minimal points of contact, and try to settle a case as soon as possible. For cases involving a small(er) injury, some offices are suited to being able to handle 1000 or more of those cases in a year.
For significant cases, with significant injuries or relating to a death, they require thorough, intensive investigative work, and a well-honed approach in building the strongest case possible for trial; these types of cases cannot be handled passively as is the norm at a volume practice. It’s for this reason that Paul narrowly focuses his practice on cases involving substantial and significant injuries to individuals and their families.
This goes way beyond a lawyer simply knowing the facts of their client’s case. It involves knowing their client’s story of how deeply the injury has damaged themselves and their family’s life.
Imagine a herniated disc injury involving an invasive surgery to repair. This injured person deserves more than just a demand saying to an insurance company that someone has experienced pain post-surgery or walks with a limp after a crash with significant problems in mobility. This injured person deserves a level of advocacy beyond just reviewing a set of medical bills and sending in a 1–2-page request for an insurance company to pay out some portion of their financial reserves. This person and their family require substantial and personal inquiry about how even a sub-part of an injury can deeply impact the client, and their family to build a higher verdict at trial.
Taking on the earlier example of a person suffering from a post-surgical problem from a disc herniation surgery ( microdiscectomy) brought on by a motor vehicle crash. This client couldn’t sleep from their pain. This client was unable to adequately tend to their duties at work, and/or at home and was sure something was “off”, or “wrong”. This client’s family was concerned and frequently upset at them, and there was a lot of strife in the household because of the injured client’s behavior. Learning what that means, talking to the person, and their family will lead this client’s lawyer doing their investigation the right way to follow up those problems in the client’s personal life by reviewing the client’s medical records about their diagnosis’ such as irritability, weight loss, anxiety, depression, etc. and then talking to the client’s doctor about what chronic pain can do to a person;
- How does it impact their sleep;
- How does that lack of sleep impact the rest of the client’s life;
- Do these conditions explain what a lack of sleep is actively doing to this person, etc.
Once we’ve identified the issues a person and their family is experiencing after an injury, we start building our case.
On just the issue of sleep being impacted as a part of someone’s damages, we’ll typically review hundreds to many thousands of pages of medical records and tab each individual diagnosis or medical billing code with issues to discuss with the client’s doctor with an ultimate goal of being able to tell the client’s story to twelve jurors by building the client’s case showing every single way that they’ve been harmed by the actions of the defendant(s).
Paul is always happy, and always willing to talk to anyone about their injury, or an injury that has happened to a family member, or friend.