Monday, August 17, 2015
Mon, 17 Aug 2015
For Michael Gumprecht, an invitation to the Million Dollar Advocates Forum isn't about personal recognition as much as it is about giving his potential clients confidence and peace of mind that their cases are in capable hands.
Gumprecht, a 2010 graduate of Liberty University School of Law, was inducted into that group last month after winning a million-dollar payout from an insurance company in an auto collision case. He is the first Liberty Law graduate invited to join the group.
According to the group’s president, Donald Costello, about 4,000 lawyers nationally belong to the group – which is less than 1 percent of all attorneys.
The group acknowledges its members' "excellence in advocacy" and is limited to those who have won verdicts of at least $1 million.
In June, Gumprecht obtained $1 million for a Georgia man who was seriously injured while riding as a passenger in a vehicle owned by a company for which he was contracting. The man incurred over $200,000 in unpaid emergency surgery bills, according to Gumprecht.
The company's workers’ compensation carrier provided coverage to employees, but denied coverage to the man on the grounds that he was just a contractor.
The same carrier had a separate liability division covering the company's vehicles, and Gumprecht demanded full copies of any undisclosed policies. At that time he found a million dollar policy, but was told the man was excluded because the policy excluded coverage for employees.
Gumprecht used the conflicting denials to the victim's advantage, successfully arguing that if the man was not an employee, he had to be a contractor – thus covered under the liability policy.
Once coverage was confirmed, Gumprecht had to apply maximum pressure on the carrier's defense lawyers to obtain the full amount of the policy as opposed to a lesser payout. He was ultimately successful, and further proceeded to get the man's outstanding medical bills reduced to less than $50,000.
The case was significant for Gumprecht, who is running The Gumprecht Law Firm with just a few paralegals on staff.
He said cases like that one reinforce his decision to go out on his own.
"Obviously, it’s rewarding from a financial standpoint," he said, "but more than anything it is total confirmation that the entire risk was worth it."
And seeing a client break down in thankful tears is just another level of confirmation.
"My client was wiping his eyes while saying: ‘I can’t thank you enough. To go from (the collision and huge bills) to owing nobody and a check in my hand for over $600,000…there will never be enough words to thank you,’” Gumprecht recalled. “I’ve never had an experience like that before but I'm determined to have more, hopefully once again later this year."
Gumprecht attributes part of his success to his focus on a very specific area of law.
Instead of spreading himself "ten miles wide and an inch deep," he prefers to specialize in third-party liability cases like catastrophic injury and wrongful death.
“Often I see people who go solo, which is obviously a huge risk in itself. But in order to stay afloat, they hold themselves out in multiple practice areas.”
“It just seems like you’re not really mastering anything,” he said.
“Each area of the law is so huge, so to really know what you’re doing – which is necessary to be a credible threat – you have to be specialized. I am 100 percent focused on this area of law and if I wasn’t, the insurance defense attorneys would be able to tell and this simply wouldn’t have happened.”
Gumprecht speaks with a little incredulity when he thinks that his practice is only nine months old.
“We went from nonexistent to this and over 100 clients in about nine months,” he said.
In December, Gumprecht was named one of the "Top 40 Under 40" in Georgia by The National Trial Lawyers, and earlier this month he was also named a "Premier 100 Trial Lawyer" by the American Academy of Trial Attorneys.
"At the end of the day, I could care less about recognition. Awards or accolades mean one thing: potential new clients have the confidence I can get them the maximum recovery possible."
He credits his education at Liberty University School of Law – particularly the Lawyering Skills program – with sharpening his abilities, especially in communication.
"All of it was necessary to rebuild my mind into something that could handle every aspect of what goes into a case," he said.
"One of the unseen learning mechanisms at Liberty is the mind sharpening that occurs when you are forced to handle difficult tasks you don’t like to do, especially those not required at other schools."
"The lawyering skills program was an important part of setting myself apart, especially in terms of writing. Whether drafting a demand or a lawsuit, defense attorneys and judges can immediately tell when they're dealing with someone who can communicate their position in a clear and convincing manner. For an insurance carrier, it adds significant weight when calculating risk."
He added that other students should be confident in and grateful for the level of education they receive at Liberty, and that it could well be a step for more school representation in groups like the Million Dollar Advocates Forum.
"If you graduate from Liberty Law, you're far better prepared to be in there than graduates from most other schools," he said.