July 31, 2024 | Season 1 Episode 17

Geoff Meyerkord

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About the Episode

In this episode of “Celebrating Justice,” we sit down with trial lawyer Geoff Meyerkord as he shares his inspiring journey of becoming a plaintiff's trial attorney.

From following in his father’s footsteps to striking out on his own, Geoff offers invaluable insights into the world of personal injury law. He emphasizes the critical role of having a supportive spouse, the profound need for empathy, and the unique challenges and rewards of the profession. Geoff also recounts a particularly impactful wrongful death case and the importance of building genuine trust with clients.

His “Closing Argument” he discusses the fundamental role of accountability and responsibility within the civil justice system.

Key Takeaways

Having a great spouse is crucial for success as a trial lawyer.
Empathy and the ability to stand in the shoes of clients are essential qualities for a trial lawyer.
Being a plaintiff's trial attorney requires a high tolerance for risk.
Building genuine trust with clients is crucial in the legal profession.
The civil justice system provides accountability and the opportunity for righting wrongs.

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Transcript

[Theme Song Plays]

Geoff Meyerkord: It’s not always easy these days for people to have empathy… How a denominator to be a plaintiff’s trial attorney would be, you have to be willing to accept risk… You can work hundreds of hours, thousands of hours, and you can spend thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars financing the case expenses…

Narrator: Welcome to “Celebrating Justice,” presented by the Trial Lawyers Journal and CloudLex, the next-gen Legal Cloud 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 triallawye2stg.wpenginepowered.com. Now here’s your host, editor of TLJ and VP of Marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands.

Chad Sands: Welcome back to Celebrating Justice. In this episode, we hear from trial lawyer, Geoff Meyerkord. Geoff admits to be successful, you need to get yourself a great spouse. In his case, he found a great wife in Laura, who spent many years running a large family and now runs the law firm, Geoff Meyerkord Law Group in St. Louis. To learn more about Geoff’s journey of following in his father’s footsteps to becoming an advocate for his clients, I asked him, “Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?”

Geoff Meyerkord: Well, I was blessed to have a father who’s a trial attorney, also a plaintiff’s trial attorney. My dad, Steve, I was old enough to be able to watch and learn and see his success. He became president of our state’s trial attorney organization, Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys, and was always around lawyers. Even in high school, I remember he got me out of school early one day to go to Jefferson City for his argument in the Missouri Supreme Court, and that was neat. So I knew that my dad really enjoyed his job. But then as I became kind of more of an adult in college and started growing up a little bit more. I guess becoming president of my fraternity down at Drury University, then called Drury College, that was a pretty big moment for me. I had to try to wrangle, you know, 80 or 90 Southern fraternity boys. And you can’t really do that with muscle. You got to do that with your words. And also, boy, I’ll tell you, I was never good at math. So anything to do with the STEM disciplines would not be nice to me, I can tell you that. So thank goodness for the liberal arts, you know.

Chad Sands: It sounds like you kind of always wanted to go to law school. What was the journey like coming out of law school? Did you go straight into the plaintiff’s side? Did you work on defense? How did you get to where your career is at now?

Geoff Meyerkord: I went to University of Missouri, Columbia, Mizzou Law School when I graduated in 1996. Quickly got married in September of ‘96 to my wife, Laura, who is everything. Really, I guess one of the themes behind this entire podcast discussion is going to be get yourself a great spouse, in my case, a great wife, because you got to have that or you just, you know, it’s really hard. She’s the reason for everything, basically all the success. Laura was accepted into the master’s program for speech language pathology at Southern Illinois University, and that was all great, but I had a Missouri law license. I didn’t have an Illinois law license, you know? So I had to drive through the national forest and across the bridge into Cape Girardeau every day. And that’s got a great bar association. All the lawyers are wonderful. They all know each other. It’s a small enough town that it’s hard for an outsider, a city boy, if you will, to get a job back then, especially on short notice. It’s really hard. So I just started volunteering over at a public defender’s office in Jackson, Missouri. They let me in, they let me follow their lawyers around to court. And that went on for about six weeks of going to court, watching, watching, watching every day, driving, you know, an hour over the bridge and an hour back for no pay, you know, just to learn. One day I was in court and a lawyer, probably about 29 or 30 years old, Richmond A. Payne. He’s got a great name. He approached me and said that he was starting a law practice. That he was going to be a solo practice. And he’s looking for an associate and he’s watched me in court and would I want a job. And without finding out anything about the specifics, you know, I just said, yes. It’s like that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer just sticks his hand out when they’re negotiating a settlement for his coffee burn. And he says, I’ll take it, you know, without even hearing the terms. So Rich Payne gave me my first job. I remember it was $25,000 a year, but it had health insurance. Isn’t that great? I worked for Casey and Myer Accord, which is Tom Casey and Steve Myer Accord, my dad. They had started a firm in injury practice in 1983. So I joined in about ‘98, stayed for a few years, learned the business. And then with my dad’s consent, because I approached him first to talk to him, I decided to strike out on my own. And that was when I was 29 and a half years old, took about 13 or 14 cases with me. And he let me have about five or 10 of his cases that we had to split, know, fee split. That’s great. And that was the start of being an entrepreneur.

Chad Sands: So 25 years later, after going out on your own, what do you think makes you unique that has lasted and helped you been successful?

Geoff Meyerkord: I don’t know that I have anything really unique. I think that you have to have a commitment. A resolve to justice. And that’s more than just lip service. It’s something that you have to think about. It’s not always easy these days for people to have empathy, not necessarily sympathy, but empathy. You also have to be able to stand in their shoes. Our clients don’t always have the, you know, the doctoral degrees. They don’t always have even a good family support system. Heck, sometimes they don’t have a house or food. They can’t come to the office. Maybe they don’t have a ride. So you’re, you’re going to get them an Uber to their physical therapy. I’ve brought a client two cheeseburgers one time on a bus stop where he was sitting. And I delivered him a settlement check because he couldn’t get down to my office. So I just come out to him and I said, “I’ll bet he’s hungry.” So I brought some food for him. He thought that was great. I think he liked the McDonald’s more than the settlement check, honestly. So that’s that. And then I was telling someone the other day that I guess the other common denominator to be a plaintiff’s trial attorney would be you have to be willing to accept risk.

You have to have a high tolerance for risk. You have to know how to manage it and how to assess it. It’s a job where you can work hundreds of hours, thousands of hours with your team, and you can spend thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars financing the case expenses for a project that you have no guarantee at all is going to result in the payment of a fee, meaning that you didn’t get your client compensated. Not many people that work are willing to work without getting paid. They’re not willing to work without the promise, but the guarantee. Most people want to get their paycheck every two weeks, their salary, their wage. This is a job where you may not get paid. And then to put the cherry on top, not only may you not get paid, but if you lose, you may have to say goodbye to $50,000 or $100,000 or more because that’s your agreement with the client. So you then compound this risk with a settlement offer that is going to be made hopefully, right? At some point. Well, if that settlement offer isn’t high enough or isn’t fair, yeah, then you have to have a jury trial. And it’s a tremendous amount of work to put on the production. It’s known as a jury trial from the plaintiff’s because we have the burden. It’s a tremendous amount of work and I’ve done, I think, 16 or 17 now. I got three or four this year. Of course, when it works out for you, then it can be great, right? So yeah, you have to have a law degree. Yeah, you have to be kind of smart, but you got to have a really good support system and you have to be willing to accept risk and you have to always, always be cognizant of who you’re representing and that they are number one.

Chad Sands: I know it’s hard to choose one, but could you share a story about a case that has had an impact on you? Maybe how you work with clients or how you work in the courtroom?

Geoff Meyerkord: There was a case that we just resolved this year, and it involved, it’s a wrongful death case involving a young man who’s a father. He’s 29 and he’s driving to work in the morning and he gets rear-ended, pushed into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer causing a tremendous crash, explosion, fire, why all that counts is a terrible death. Young wife, about a year younger than him, two young kids and one on the way. And just like that on the way to work, you know, he’s gone. Completely preventable. I would say that the result, not only was it the biggest case for me personally in my career in terms of the size, but it was also just a tremendous amount of work, even though it was settled pretty quickly. And for all insurance limits that were available, it all worked out well. But just managing the settlement and all the indemnities and all this subrogation claims and the clients lived about three hours away. And so I guess one of the key takeaways that I would bestow if I could on other lawyers is: that’s a case where they lived in Northern Arkansas. Crash happened in extreme Southern Missouri. And the number one thing you have to do on a case like that is to make sure the clients know that they are number one. I lived in a hotel in West Plains for over two weeks. I drove down a couple of times just on a day trip down the back. I knew that the most important thing to do, if you will. The most important objective for me was to become friends with the clients and to be more than just a telephone lawyer or more than just a face on a Zoom call. I knew that having face to face interactions, many, many, many hours was going to be very important because emotions were so high in the family, you know, the extremes of sadness and anger. I knew that I had to be in order to be an effective counselor. I had to establish trust, not a false trust, but a genuine trust. And I guess the best way to create a genuine trust is what? Face to face, you know, sitting with someone and just spending time with them and not even sometimes talking about the case, doing kind of what you’re doing right now with me actually, you know. Asking her to tell me the fun things. What are some of the fun things that you’ve done? And so that case settled and yeah, I’m very happy that it worked out for the clients and that for certainly will be with me forever. And so, yeah, that was the one.

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Now here is this episode’s “Closing Argument.”

Geoff Meyerkord: It’s important that people be accountable for their actions. And it’s important that they be made to take responsibility when they’ve done something wrong and that dangerous conduct hurts someone or worse. We’re a country of second chances, yes, but we’re also a country that likes it when people accept responsibility. And it’s amazing, isn’t it, that it seems like that is one of the most difficult things to do. For many people, it’s hard. It’s hard to the extent that they’re willing to perjure themselves, they’re willing to fib. Just to avoid responsibility. I sometimes think it’s not even about the money. It’s more of a personal thing. So our definition of justice includes accountability, being responsible, and you’re going to get a second chance. Heck, you might even get a third chance. So we have to have a system to hold people to account. And what is that system? Well, we have two systems. We have a criminal justice system, and we have a justice system. And I’m on the civil side. We use the civil justice system to not only manage disputes, but we use it to right wrongs and we use it as a way for the community represented by the jury to make a pronouncement about conduct being dangerous and inappropriate, not acceptable or permissible. So we have the jury do that, and that justice that comes from a jury verdict, the amount of emotional energy that a defendant in our cases feels about not fessing up, not admitting a wrong. Well, that same amount of emotional energy is in my clients in terms of pent up demand for a pronouncement of apology. And if you’re not going to get an apology, then the next best thing is the community will make that apology for the defendant through a jury verdict. I sometimes think that it’s not about the money for a defendant. Well, I oftentimes believe that it’s not about the money for my clients. How many times have we plaintiff lawyers had a client tell us, “It’s not about the money, it’s not about the money?” I guess when I was younger, I was cynical and I didn’t believe that, but I certainly do now. So my closing argument is that thank goodness that we have a justice system. Thank goodness that we have a civil justice system that allows jury trials. It’s so important. Our democracy may not be perfect. We know it’s not perfect because we know mistakes can happen. But find for me a more fair and balanced system.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Geoff Meyerkord. Thanks for sharing those stories. To learn more about Jeff and his firm, visit their website, www.geoffmeyerkordlawgroup.com. Alright, 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 triallawye2stg.wpenginepowered.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 www.cloudlex.com/tlj to learn more.

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