Derek Hays

Show Notes

In this episode of Celebrating Justice, Derek Hays shares his compelling journey from a career in advertising and animation to a life devoted to personal injury law. Drawing on values from his upbringing in a preacher’s family, Derek reveals how empathy and sympathy became the cornerstone of his practice, enabling him to connect deeply with clients and juries alike. Derek recounts pivotal cases, from representing a single mother managing disability care while injured, to standing by a family devastated by a trailer fire that took the life of a young child. His narrative showcases his commitment to unearthing every detail to advocate fully for his clients’ lives and stories.

In his “Closing Argument,” Derek stresses the importance of truly knowing clients, beyond the facts of their injuries. He emphasizes the necessity of storytelling to convey the full impact of clients’ experiences, particularly against efforts by insurance companies to depersonalize victims. Through meticulous case preparation, Derek explains how he brings clients’ humanity into the courtroom, allowing juries to truly connect and understand the depth of loss or injury faced.

Chapters

1:26 – Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?
5:54 – What makes you unique?
10:59 – A Case that Matters
16:51 – Derek’s “Closing Argument”

Key Takeaways

• Client Connection is Crucial: Derek emphasizes that getting to know clients personally — understanding their family, background, and community roles — strengthens the case by making it real for the jury.
• Empathy and Sympathy in Advocacy: He believes a true advocate must empathize with clients’ situations while also feeling genuine sympathy for their struggles to present their stories effectively.
• Uncovering Every Detail: Derek discusses how a diligent approach to evidence and company culture led to revealing substance abuse issues within a trucking company, deepening the case’s impact.
• Human Stories Over Legal Facts: Facts alone don’t suffice; Derek finds that clients’ stories must be told authentically so that juries feel the emotional weight of their experiences.
• Countering Insurance Company Tactics: By personalizing clients’ narratives, Derek helps juries see past the insurance companies’ attempts to minimize clients’ trauma.

Transcript

[Theme Song Plays]

Derek Hays: So for me, going to law school was a second career. The driver of the commercial truck at seven o’clock in the morning was high on crystal meth. And then we found out that there was a culture of meth in that facility. Got to learn everything there is to empathize and sympathize with your client so that a jury can do the same thing. 

Narrator: Welcome to Celebrating Justice, presented by the Trial Lawyers Journal and CloudLex, the next-gen legal cloud platform built exclusively for personal injury law. Get started today. 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. In this episode of Celebrating Justice, we sit down with trial lawyer, Derek Hayes. Originally aiming for a career in advertising, Derek’s journey took a turn after his time at Disney Animation Studios, leading him to his true calling, following in his family’s footsteps of service.  By advocating for others, he found his purpose in helping those in need. Much like the values he grew up with as the son of a preacher to get to the stories. I asked him, why did you want to become a trial lawyer?  

Derek Hays: So for me going to law school was a second career. I actually am the son of a preacher. So grew up in a situation where as a preacher’s family, you were always there to serve others in the Methodist church, which is what we were part of. The parsonage was typically next door to the actual physical church and in the Southern States, Alabama, where I was born and reared most of my life. And then Florida, as a parsonage family, you were on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So my dad served the local church in that capacity as a senior pastor. 

And ultimately the preacher’s family was there for everything. All the covered dish suppers, all the hospital visits, all the meetings at the church, the visiting people in times of death or horrible situations in their family, they would come to us or ultimately as a preacher’s family, we would go to them. So I learned to serve others. In that scenario, again, as a child and something I took through my formative years, the idea of always trying to do the best I could to help anyone in any situation, whether it’s financially or physically, or giving the gifts that I’ve been given to share for others and with others. 

But as I graduated college, I finished with a double major in English and advertising. I thought I was going to be an advertising guy. That was going to be my career path. I had grown up, uh, my high school years in the. Panama City and Pensacola and Fort Walton beach area. So I airbrushed on the beach. I had a portfolio of airbrushed items that I had put together and I had a degree in advertising and thought that was going to be what I would do. And I’d gone to Orlando to seek my future in the advertising world. Well, ultimately it was a time when the economy was starting to tank. And as a result, when I interviewed, I realized pretty quickly, I was interviewing with people that 20 years experience in that field. And so as someone right out of college. 

It was difficult to get a foot in the door, which is all I wanted. So being Orlando, there’s Disney and Disney has a tremendously large advertising department, as you can imagine. So I went to Disney to seek that first job. So as a result of that, I got hired in animation at Disney. And with that being said, it came to the point where they were shutting down the animation department in Orlando and physically moving everyone out to California, to Anaheim to work at the animation department there. So I had my choice. I had to think about it, figure out what my path would be. And at that point in my life, in my early twenties, for whatever reason, I decided I did not want to move to California. I’d been raised in the South. I only knew the South and felt like that was where I wanted to stay. And so I reach out to friends and family members and discuss what other career path I might choose. 

And I had a brother that had just finished law school and talked to him and talked to a few other friends that were just out of law school and decided to take the LSAT. Just to see how it worked out. I did very well in the LSAT and then thought, okay, law school’s it. So I moved from Orlando to Atlanta to go to law school. And with that in mind, I realized pretty quickly that that path of helping others was starting to come back into my world again. So as I started in law school and started clerking at a personal injury firm, and I also clerked at a, uh, firm that did federal criminal appellate work, we represented people that were post conviction of federal crimes. 

So I did that briefly, I learned the ins and outs of the appellate court system, the federal system, it’s very tough. Uh, as I was told by the attorney I work for, if you can try a case or appear in federal court on any level and get by with that and, and do well with that, you can absolutely try a case in any state or, or superior court.  And, and I did, I learned pretty quickly that they’re tough in federal court. Judges love to be judges in federal court. They love to tell you they’re a judge in federal court. They love to make you follow the rules and that’s all wonderful. It was terrific, but it translated very well into my career, uh, in, in, in Personal injury now in state and superior court primarily. 

So with that in mind, after I finished law school, which I actually did law school in two years, I went year round, uh, which they don’t allow you to do that anymore, ultimately, but, uh, finished law school and then started in the personal injury arena now, a little over 27, almost 28 years ago. And, uh, I’ve loved it.

Chad Sands: So were you the guy on the beach kind of doing the airspray?

Derek Hays: Yeah. Little airbrush huts. I did. License plates, t shirts, hats, you name it. I’ve, I’ve airbrushed volleyballs, whatever would somebody would bring.

Chad Sands: The son of  a pastor and seeing that kind of exposure to trauma and being there on call for clients. Is that what makes you unique as a trial lawyer or, or what sets you apart? Well, there’s, there’s  

Derek Hays: empathy and there’s sympathy and in my opinion, to be a great trial lawyer, you have to have both. You have to empathize with the situation for the people and also on a personal level, have the sympathy for it. I can better understand where my client is in life after the traumatic car wreck or whatever the situation may be. If I can put myself as best possible in their, their situation, their specific circumstances, as an example, many years ago, I represented a lady who was a single mother and she was in a car wreck, not terribly traumatic, but she had to have shoulder surgery as a result of the wreck, not horrible, but still. 

Pretty bad injury and surgery was involved. And in getting to know her and getting ready for trial in that case, I found out that she not only was a single mom, but one of her kids was severely disabled, but she was a sole provider. She was the only one there that could take care of him. But during the course of time, while she had the shoulder injury, and even after the surgery, she couldn’t do it. 

She couldn’t take care of him. So she had to have friends and family members and people from her church and neighborhood to come help assist her in caring for this disabled son. And for her. It was not only the physical side of the injury, but it was the emotional part of the injury. She connected with her son on a level that we can’t understand unless we’ve gone through it ourselves. 

That was her time to bond with a child who was not vocal. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t communicate, but yet he and mom had a. The kind of bond that we can’t really understand. And even though some other people were able to step into that role for her and take care of the son and do the things that needed to be done, it’s a bonding thing that, that only mom and son could really ever have. So it was the kind of. Um, relationship that in trying the case, I communicated that to the jury. I was able to bring the son into the courtroom to have her demonstrate. Now, this is a couple of years after the surgery. So she had recovered completely, but to demonstrate what her routine was and pulling him out of the wheelchair and how her son would latch onto her. And he was in his early twenties, but yet he was still. A child, basically, uh, someone who required that, that complete care. So the jury was able to understand and empathize and sympathize with her that having a shoulder surgery and having a time period where she couldn’t do those things that she normally would do meant a lot more to her than it would someone else. 

And it was reflected very well, thankfully, in the verdict for her because they connected with her. They, through the demonstration itself, but also too in personalizing her for the benefit of the jury, they were able to see that.  

Chad Sands: Makes a big difference connecting with the jury. Now, you have your own podcast, Injury Insider, with Derek Hayes, and one of the episodes, you went and shared some of the craziest lawsuits you came across, one being when a burglar broke into a home and accidentally locked himself in the garage, entrapped himself for eight days, survived on dog food and Pepsi, Then was arrested, obviously, when the homeowners came back from vacation, but then he ended up suing the homeowners and won $500,000. How does that happen in America?  

Derek Hays: You know, that’s why it was part of my craziest lawsuit podcast. It’s one of those that you scratch your head thinking what? What did this jury here and you know as an attorney i’ve learned through the years you don’t really No, the fact so you can’t second guess necessarily what that jury did if you believe in the jury system, but there had to have been some fact that made them in their minds feel that they needed to award money for him. Now, there are other factors that may or may not have come into play, like something called comparative contributory negligence, where, you know, the guy actually. Committed a crime. He broke in and on some level he put himself in the circumstances that he wound up in. He was locked in the garage and you think, how could this guy not open the garage door? How could he not break in the door to get in the house and get out that way? But I love that one, but my favorite, there was a gentleman that sued his wife because his kids were ugly. Did you hear that one?  

Chad Sands: I did not hear that one.  

Derek Hays: Yes, and, and it was either Japan or China, and I really don’t remember which one it was. I think it was Japan, but this man sued his wife because their two children were ugly. Uh huh. Well, the rest of the story is when he met his wife, she had already had multiple plastic surgeries. She had had nose surgery, eye surgery, other surgeries to enhance her beauty. So when he married her. He was marrying who he thought she was from a looks standpoint. 

Not realizing that she had changed her looks dramatically from what she normally would have looked like. And so he felt as though she had deceived him by having multiple plastic surgery. So he assumed that his children would look like she did now pretty, I’m sure with him involved as well, but instead the kids were, in his opinion, very ugly. 

Chad Sands: That is crazy. So let’s go to the other spectrum then and talk about cases that really matter, right? And really have an impact. Can you share a story about a case that you’ve had that had a significant impact on you?  

Derek Hays: Yeah, I can. Uh, the one that’s really, um, stuck with me through my career, it was early on in my career, I think maybe Four or five years into my practice, I represented a family where a two year old boy and a four year old girl and the grandfather were in a trailer fire. Unfortunately, they moved into this trailer the morning of the fire. The mom of the two year old and the four year old and her teenage son had left the trailer late in the evening to go get some food and they left the grandfather behind with a two year old and a four year old. And this is a single wide trailer and when they left, grandfather decided he was going to Take a shower. 

Well, he left the four year old asleep in the bedroom and he left the two year old asleep on a couch in the family room. Well, as he’s in the shower, he started seeing smoke bellowing underneath the door of the bathroom. He jumped out of the shower and he tried to go towards the bedroom, but couldn’t cause the flames were pretty intense there. 

So he ran towards the exit of the trailer and he grabbed the two year old off the couch, the two year old at that point was. on fire. It’s the grandfather who had also come out of the shower with the towel on. He was on fire. He ran out of the trailer and set the two year old down and by this time other residents of the trailer park had come out to see what was going on and they quickly tried to put the fire out on the two year old. 

The two year old and the grandfather tried to run back in and couldn’t to get to the four year old. Well, unfortunately, the four year old did pass away in the fire. She tried to hide under the bed and she died of smoke inhalation. The two year old was burned over 85 percent of his body. The grandfather was burned over 40 or 50 percent of his body, but ultimately in that case, it’s, it hinged on the fact that the trailer, which was a rental trailer, did not have any smoke detectors. 

And because there were no smoke detectors present as required by statute, it involves something called strict liability, where they strictly, uh, violated the statute, but by, because they didn’t have the smoke detectors that were required. And ultimately as a result of that, the four year old died and the two year old, you know, was, is — maimed is the only word to use for the rest of his life. He only has one finger left on one hand and a thumb left on the other hand. Facially, he’s completely scarred his head. The rest of his body is tremendously scarred as well. So in handling that case, it touched me in many ways. The family. Uh, gave me a photo of the four year old and they gave me a photo of the two year old before the fire that I actually still have in my office. 

And then I’ve also since then stayed in touch with that family. And that case was goodness, almost 20 years, a little over 20 years ago now. But it’s the kind of case that when you go through it and you connect with them on the level that, that I did. And develop the relationship that you are able to with a family like that and understand the loss, the, the tragic loss of a four year old child from a, and also to the fire itself. 

I kind of left this out was an electrical fire. There was one outlet in the trailer that the only outlet that worked. And the outlet shorted while the grandfather was in the shower. And that’s what started the fire. When you learn about these things and you see these things firsthand, you can never bring the four year old back. 

You can never make the two year old completely physically whole ever again. He’ll never be emotionally whole ever again. Money is almost insulting when you start thinking about what they’ve gone through, but you can’t at least set their life on a different path than it would have been on. Otherwise, they were able to, as a result of this, buy a home and, uh, get the health care for the rest of his life that the two year old who’s now in his twenties, uh, needed as a result of what happened to him. 

By the grace of God, he’s still with us. And you know, it’s, it’s the kind of case that when you go into it, you see it initially as another case, but very quickly you connect with them on a level that it becomes so personal and the connection is so deep that my career, I believe, was kind of formed more based on what I went through in that one case than anything else. 

You know, that, that one was one that there was so much involved. In the emotional side of things for mom, the emotional side of things for the grandfather, the emotional side of things for the two year old, um, even the 16 year old sibling that, that came back to the scene, you know, from, from when this happened to go through it, you can’t understand that emotion without ever going through it, but you can at least try and, and do what you can to help someone get through it. 

And that’s the rewarding part of what I do.  

Chad Sands: How did that litigation go? Did you have to go to trial?  

Derek Hays: Ultimately, we settled it shortly before trial. There were lots of things that led to settlement, one of which was the depositions of some of the people involved from a management standpoint. There were things that came out that we Proved to be libelous. 

We actually found from many of the other residents of the trailer park that there were no smoke detectors in any of the units, uh, someone who had claimed to go out and speak personally with each person in the trailer park to find out that they had a smoke detector, that, that he voiced his concern. We had a picture and shared it and none of the people had ever seen this man before. 

So there were a lot of things that logistically we were able to do to get them to the point where they settled it without. Going through trial, realizing the risk of trial was tremendous.  

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 www.cloudlex.com. Now, here is this episode’s “Closing Argument.” 

Derek Hays: I think one of the most important things as a personal injury attorney is to get to know your client. Absolutely get to know everything you possibly can so that you can personalize them to a jury. A jury’s gonna see your client as someone that’s taken ’em out of work for a day or a few days. To sit there and listen to what happened to them. 

They’re going to be upset. They’re not able to go to work or do things they wanted to do. They’re getting paid a minimal amount of money to spend their entire day at a courthouse, but they want to hear more than just this person was injured on a car wreck. This is what happened. These are the medical bills. 

This is what you’re asking them to give. You want to personalize that client so that they truly can empathize and sympathize with them and understand exactly what that specific catastrophic, tragic event has done to them in their life. Many years ago, I represented a family where mom and dad and a daughter were involved in a car wreck. 

And in that car wreck, the daughter was killed. She was starting the first day of her senior year in high school, family that only had one vehicle and dad was driving. So on the way to school, a commercial pickup truck was going somewhere around 90 to 95 miles per hour in a 45 mile per hour zone across the center lane and hit the vehicle in the back seat where the daughter was sitting. 

As a result of that, she died tragically. in the car wreck. They’re at the scene. Dad had the more severe injuries than mom and did survive the wreck. But in handling that case, I got to not only know the mom and the dad and everything I could possibly learn about their daughter that had passed away, but I also spoke to people in their church. 

I talked to their neighbors. I talked to other family members and in pursuing that case, I learned everything I could possibly learn about how good that family really is, not only to their community, but what they meant to everyone in their family and the daughter. I could personally. Personalize her on a level that a jury, they were crying. 

They understood beyond the, the fact that this child was, was killed tragically. They understood exactly what that life meant and what that life would have been had she been able to survive this. And, you know, this wreck never occurred. Also too, as a result of that, we found out a discovery that the driver of the commercial truck at seven o’clock in the morning was high on crystal meth. 

And then we found out that there was a culture of meth in that facility. And then we found out that one of the owners of the company had a daughter that was also addicted to meth. It went beyond just the car wreck and the girl dying and personalizing her. We found out even more by doing the work and that’s it. 

Doing the work to discover exactly how deep this meth situation was, not only for the driver that caused the wreck and killed this girl, but also in that company. You’ve got to learn everything there is to empathize and sympathize with your client so that a jury can do the same thing. If they don’t hear the story and all they hear are facts that you’ve written, Hears facts that you feel are important, and they are, but they don’t hear the story of who this person really is. 

They’re never, ever really going to be able to accept the client on a personal level that you want them to. And insurance companies will do everything they can, as we all know, to minimize that, to depersonalize the victim, to depersonalize the family, and to make it to the point where a jury does not connect with them on the level that you as a plaintiff attorney would want them to as a zealous advocate. As a communication expert to a jury, you’ve got to be able to let that story be told. 

Chad Sands: That was Trial lawyer Derek Hayes. Thanks for sharing your stories. To learn more about Derek and his firm, visit his website www.derekhayslaw.com. All right, I’m Chad Sands. Thanks for listening. 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 www.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.