VISION for Change Batta Fulkerson is Giving People a Reason to View Personal Injury Law Firms Under a New Light By Dan Baldwin
Breaking Away Dan Fulkerson and Paul Batta, Co-Founders of Batta Fulkerson Law Group, Inc., have always had the mutual goal to eventually start their own law firm. However, leaving the security of working for a busy law firm to start your own is not always easy. It often requires a big leap-of-faith and a deep desire to want to do things your way. “Dan and I opened Batta Fulkerson because we want to do things differently. We wanted to concentrate more on the quality of the representation we wanted to bring to our clients over quantity of how many we can represent, which is more the norm,” Batta says. Fulkerson adds, “We also wanted to change the way people look at personal injury attorneys. We were confident that our firm would be successful if our main objective was to always be client-focused. We had plenty of experience in the highvolume personal injury world, but we knew there was a better way to service clients. We felt that if we built a firm with the intent of always going beyond what is expected by our clients, new clients would soon follow.” As a first-hand survivor of a serious car accident while in law school, Paul Batta is able to best understand what accident victims require in representation due to his own personal experience as a victim. He incurred substantial injuries which required him to need back surgery and aftercare for injuries he suffered. This experience has given Paul (and the rest of the firm) the unique ability to relate to and have empathy for their clients’ injuries and hardships in a way most other personal injury firms cannot.
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Attorney Journal Orange County | Volume 179, 2018
Being client focused is obviously working very well for this relatively new law firm. In just two short years since the firm opened, they’ve grown to seven attorneys and a total staff of sixteen. The firm works predominantly in personal injury with a strong focus toward car accidents, motorcycle accidents, and dog bite injuries. They also handle premise liability claims and product defect claims. “We do not select cases based on ‘revenue expectation,’ as we take smaller, ‘soft tissue’ cases as well as horrific catastrophic injury claims. We select our cases mostly on who our potential new client is. We love to help genuinely good, nice people. We can usually determine if the attorneyclient relationship is a good fit based on personality during client intake,” Batta says.
Staying True to the Vision The firm recently settled a case for a five-year-old girl who suffered a fractured leg while at a “trampoline gym.” At the time, she was three years old. Gym personnel were supposed to separate small kids from big kids, but failed to do so. A large 15-year-old boy was allowed in the same area and after one of his jumps he landed on the girl and caused the fracture. The gym denied the claim due to the waiver that was signed. The girl’s mother called several other personal injury attorneys who told her there was no case due to the signed waiver. The mother is a single mom and active military. She was deployed overseas right after retaining Batta Fulkerson. Her daughter was left in the care of the child’s grandmother.