What is a Personal Responsibility Lawyer? (Is that even a thing?)

For many years now, I have been what most people–including me–would call a “personal injury lawyer.” I even have a law firm, and you can visit our website or call us at 512-HURT-BAD (yep, it’s kind of a cheesy number, but you’ll remember it!). This means simply that I represent people who have been hurt by someone else’s negligent act. It almost always involves some sort of physical injury (some people put defamation, libel, slander, etc., into the “personal injury” category, but I never did that kind of work). A personal injury attorney tries to get the injured person money for their injuries. That money is for things like paying medical bills and lost income. Those are pretty easy to calculate. The money is also to compensate the injured person for the “pain, suffering, and mental anguish” related to the injuries. Of course, that’s a lot harder to calculate because there’s no easy dollar figure to assign to it.

 

But now, I’m not a personal injury attorney. Oh, if you watched me work a few years ago, and then watched me work now, you wouldn’t notice much of a difference. (Although I hope I’ve gotten a bit better at it!) But if you could get into my head, hear my motivations, and make me explain my strategies, you would notice a big difference.

 

A personal injury attorney basically says, “Look at my client! She’s hurt! Hurt bad! Isn’t it sad! It’s terrible! Don’t you feel sorry for my poor client?!”

 

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. No, really. There really isn’t anything wrong with that because there is a lot of truth in it. The people I represented when I was a personal injury lawyer were truly hurt. Even worse, many of the people I represented weren’t physically injured themselves, but their spouse or child had died. I’m a husband and a father, and the thought of being in those shoes terrifies me. All of those things that I listed are perfectly legitimate things to say about these good people.

 

At the end of every case, I would feel a certain sense of accomplishment. I felt that I had helped someone who needed my help. I had stepped into their bad situation and made it better. Maybe only a little better, because the law doesn’t give full satisfaction. It doesn’t bring the loved one back to life. It doesn’t undo the pain of the mangled body, or make it function like it used to. It can just get money, and that only helps. It doesn’t fix.

 

But I felt I had only impacted that one case. I had only helped that one client. That’s a good thing, but I found something better.

 

What if every personal injury case is a personal responsibility case? Because it is. There’s always a reason someone was killed or suffered a terrible brain injury. We call them “accidents,” and they are. But they’re not. When a truck driver slams into the back of the driver stopped at a red light, that’s an accident. But checking college baseball scores on his phone while he’s driving that tandem trailer truck (I promise I’m not making this up) wasn’t an accident. It was a choice. Slamming into the back of the car ahead of him, killing the driver and seriously injuring his wife, was an accident. But the accident was caused by a choice, not chance.

 

Like I mentioned above, I’m a husband and a father. I try to teach my kids that actions have consequences. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s fantastic so long as your actions follow good choices. Then, consequences are blessings. But woe unto the one who makes bad choices! Those consequences ruin lives. Sometimes they ruin other people’s lives.

 

In the cases I handle as a personal responsibility lawyer, my clients are those other lives ruined by someone’s bad choices. My job is to shift the consequences back to the one who made the bad choice. We use the civil justice system–frustrating as it can be–to demand personal responsibility by those who make bad choices.

 

This approach changes everything, because here’s another thing I know to be true: when people are permitted to avoid the consequences of terrible choices, they will continue to make terrible choices. A person who drives a big truck and checks his phone and doesn’t pay a price will continue to drive a big truck and check his phone. I even believe that consequence-free bad choices in one area of life encourage bad choices in every area of life. If that driver is given a pass on this bad choice, he’ll make another.

 

We all use the streets and roads, whether for traveling the country or going to the grocery store. We’re sharing the roads with other people. I don’t want to be on roads where people can make bad choices and force consequences on others–maybe me or my family. As a personal responsibility lawyer, I hope to make us all a little safer.

 

There’s also another side to the coin of being a personal responsibility lawyer. Sometimes, people are trying to take responsibility for their lives, trying to help others, and trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Trying to exercise their God-given rights that are supposed to be protected by the United States Constitution and the various state constitutions. And then the government comes in and throws up a roadblock, essentially prohibiting a person from enjoying the consequences of their good choices.

 

I get a special kind of glee representing these people and suing the government. It’s usually very difficult to cause the government to bear the consequences of bad choices, but hopefully we can force removal of the impediment to my client’s enjoying their consequences.

 

If you need us, call us.

 

NOTE: I am not certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. If I tried to get certified in “personal responsibility law,” the State Bar of Texas would look at me funny. Neither am I certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in any of the categories they actually recognize, like Personal Injury law.

 

FURTHER NOTE: Nothing on this website is specific legal advice. Nothing on this website creates any kind of lawyer-client relationship between you and me or Lovins Trosclair, PLLC. If you need legal advice, please call a competent lawyer. If you want to call me, you can reach me at 512-HURT-BAD.