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    Apr 17, 2024 | Season 1  Episode 2

    Christopher Campione

    Founder | Campione Law

    Presented by

    Cloudlex Logo Small
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    About the Episode

    Mr. Campione is an advocate of justice for all. His concentrated areas of focus include personal injury, business, and real estate law.

    Christopher David Campione has always held a deep passion for helping others. His unmatched dedication to the pursuit of justice and aggressive defense of his clients sets him apart from his colleagues. Mr. Campione is an advocate of justice for all. His concentrated areas of focus include personal injury, business, and real estate law.

    Listen as he shares his journey of becoming a trial lawyer and starting his own firm with just $4,000 in his pocket. He discusses the influence of his family connections to the law and his own reluctant path to becoming a trial lawyer. Christopher highlights the importance of treating clients well and building a reputation through word of mouth. For his “Closing Argument,” he addresses how consumers are fed up with some of the tactics of PI attorneys but touches on the much bigger picture that makes the work so important.

    Key Takeaways

    • Building a successful law firm requires treating clients well and building a reputation through word of mouth.
    • Significant cases can have a lasting impact on both the client and the attorney, providing a sense of justice and making a difference in people’s lives.
    • The decision to settle or go to trial depends on the specific circumstances of each case, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
    • There is so much more to what goes on in a Personal Injury trial than most people realize

    Chapters

    • 1:19 min / Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?
    • 2:46 min / What makes you unique?
    • 3:47 min / A case that matters.
    • 6:16 min / Christopher’s “Closing Argument"

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      Transcript

      {Theme Song Plays]

      Christopher Campione: I don’t get along with most lawyers because I don’t think I’m very lawyerly in a lot of ways. We took it to trial and we got roughly 15 times the policy limits. It really just came with treating people good and helping them out. I had about $4,000 to my name and I opened up my own firm.

      Narrator: Welcome back friends to Celebrating Justice. Presented by the Trial Lawyers Journal and CloudLex, the next-gen legal cloud platform built exclusively for personal injury law. Get inspired by the nation’s top trial lawyers and share in the stories that shape our pursuit of justice. Follow the podcast and join our community at triallawyersjournal.com. Now here’s your host, editor of TLJ and VP of marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands.

      Chad Sands: Welcome back friends to Celebrating Justice, the podcast that shines a spotlight on the nation’s most remarkable trial lawyers. In this episode, we’re speaking with Christopher Campione, senior partner and owner at Campione Law. Join us as we dive into his life and career and how his unparalleled commitment has made a profound impact on the lives of those he represents. As always, I started by asking him, why did you want to become a trial lawyer?

      Christopher Campione: Believe it or not, I come from a long family line of attorneys. Nobody in the personal injury space, but my father, he’s a bankruptcy attorney. My mother was an environmental attorney. Watching them grow up, I had no desire to be an attorney, but I happened to be attracted to a future attorney in the form of my wife. When we graduated, I still did not intend to practice law. It was something I kind of wanted to do on the side and focus on honestly my real estate career. And I had hoped that I would work for the gentleman who I was clerking for at the time. He was, you know, a solo practitioner, small firm, him, and usually one secretary. And I was hoping to get a job with him in some kind of council role. But he told me, he said, Chris, you know, unfortunately, I think you’re too much of a liability. Words that kind of stick with me still to this day. He told me, I think you’d be better off starting your own practice. So, I took about a week, started putting together a website, a logo. I had about $4,000 to my name, and I opened up my own firm in a windowless office in the same building that he was in.  

      Chad Sands: That’s funny. So I know that there’s a lot of personal injury firms down in Florida. What aspects of your personal or professional journey do you believe really contribute to the way you approach practicing law or kind of separate yourself? Because it’s very competitive, you know, not only in Florida, but across the country for you guys.  

       

      Christopher Campione: Yeah, it’s absolutely competitive. But one thing I’ve always kind of had a knack for, and I think this kind of leans into me not really wanting to be a lawyer. And I don’t really, I don’t get along with most lawyers because I don’t think I’m very lawyerly in a lot of ways, which allows me to relate to the average everyday person, right? So I mean, when I first started my firm, I didn’t have any marketing budget or anything like that. It really just came with treating people good and helping them out within your circles, right? And then from that circle, those circles expand to other people and other people and other people. And if you do a pretty good job, when you treat people how you would expect to be treated in that situation, you naturally have that kind of snowball effect. So when you can reach that level where, hey, now I can afford to compete with the big boys.

      Chad Sands: That makes sense. So I know, especially for trial lawyers, there often emerges a case that leaves a lasting imprint. Could you share a particular case that significantly influenced you?  

      Christopher Campione: Yeah, a case that had a lot of impact on me was probably the first case I was ever a part of trying. It was one of the first cases, personal injury cases, I had ever gotten or ever received when I had started out. It was a mother and a son. They actually lived in my neighborhood and were referred to me from a neighbor of mine. They were driving home in the neighborhood, when a drunk driver blew through a stop sign and hit the front of their car, causing pretty significant damage. He had a smaller policy. I think it was 10,000 per person, 20,000 per accident, which was tendered. But the client had a $50,000 per person, $100,000 per occurrence uninsured motorist policy. On the son, I believe they quickly tendered, but the mother, they were digging their feet in. They were offering two, four or five thousand bucks, something like that, well under the fifty thousand dollars she was entitled to. So we went ahead and pushed forward on the case. Fast forward probably two years, we got the case in front of a jury and right before that they had offered the policy limits, but we of course at that point said no, you’ve had plenty of opportunity to accept them. We ended up going to trial and I think we got a $690,000 verdict on that case, on a $50,000 policy. So it was a case where most attorneys would have probably said, hey, take the five grand or hey, when they offer the policy limits, take the money. That wasn’t, no, we didn’t do that. We took it to trial. We beat them over the head and we got, I mean, roughly 15 times the policy limits. So the client couldn’t have been happier. We couldn’t have been happier, but it’s kind of, it’s one of those cases that kind of, it tells you, hey, yeah, you can actually hold these people accountable. 

      Narrator: At CloudLex, we understand the challenges personal injury law firms face every day. That’s why we’ve built the legal cloud platform to help you stay productive and keep your cases moving forward. CloudLex provides a comprehensive suite of applications and features to support every stage of intake, pre-litigation, trial, and more. From innovative case management to insightful analytics and HIPAA secure client communication. CloudLex empowers your firm with the technology to thrive. Build your firm of the future and see for yourself at CloudLex.com. 

      Now here is this episode’s closing argument.

      Christopher Campione: I would like to kind of talk about why I like doing this job so much. And it’s kind of hard because people are getting beat in the face every day with billboards and TV commercials. They’re sick of it. And they think it’s, hey, you hit the lawsuit lottery, but there’s so much more to it. Most of the time we’re dealing with folks that have suffered traumatic injuries. A lot of times they’re from the lower segments of society. They’re from the people that need the money the absolute most. And when you’ve got these big insurance companies bearing down on these people, they don’t give a flip what your name is. They don’t give a flip what you do, where you came from. And you’re able to take these folks in, hear their story and go to bad form against these monstrous companies and insurance companies. 

      I mean, there’s something really special to that. And I can think of a couple instances. One gentleman, he was driving home from work. He was driving past a factory. There was a semi-truck parked off to the side of the road and had its flashers on when he’s driving around the truck. The semi-truck pulls out, hits his car, his car flips over into a ditch. Insurance company initially denied liability. They said pound sand. I want to say before we filed suit, they offered 5,000 bucks. We ended up litigating the case for probably about a year and we settled the case for a shy under $600,000. So it was great to get that award for him, but the really special part was to watch what this person did with the money. He took a large portion of the money and he bought himself and his wife and his kids a house. Something that they’re gonna have forever, I would hope. Something that may pass along to the kids, right? So you were able, I was able to take a situation that was bad and make something good of it. Not just bringing them back to where they were before, but kind of taking them to that next level in life where you hope everyone can get to eventually.

      One of the other kinds of occurrences that I see on more of a regular basis are the clients that went to big firm A or big firm B. And they were either told they didn’t have a case or the case sat there for a year or two and nobody did anything with it, right? And I can think of one. A young gentleman was T-boned by a commercial vehicle and unfortunately he was killed at the scene. And I can still remember some of the pictures from the scene. One that is just engraved in my mind. It was a picture of his hand, and there was blood and glass everywhere and it was his wallet and his wallet was flipped open. The picture of his wife and two kids. And that case sat at one of the big firms for about a year and nobody did anything with it. Fortunately, they ended up firing that firm and they found us. And we were able to take the case on. Now the case hasn’t settled yet, but I foresee it either being settled or tried, or receiving a verdict probably somewhere north of a couple million dollars, if not more. I mean, there are liability issues, but still it’s a case that deserved attention, right? And it’s some of those where you’re able to go above and beyond for somebody and really make a difference, hopefully in that case in the life of those kids and where they can go to school and what house they live in, right? I mean, bring something good to a tragic situation. It’s the stories in things like that that really stick with me.

      Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Christopher Campione. Thanks for sharing your stories, Christopher. To learn more about Christopher and his firm, visit his website, campionelawpa.com.

      All right, that’s a wrap. Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time. 

      Narrator: You’ve been listening to Celebrating Justice presented by CloudLex and the Trial Lawyers Journal. Remember, the stories don’t end here. Visit triallawyersjournal.com to become part of our community and keep the conversation going. And for a deeper dive into the tools that empower personal injury law firms, visit CloudLex.com/TLJ to learn more.