Photo by Justin Clemons.
Bill Chamblee, a founding partner of Chamblee Ryan in Dallas, Texas, has been around horses since he was in fifth grade. “I've lived on a little horse ranch most of my life,” he says. “And I've done everything in the horse world you can think of.” That includes roping horses and taking part in hunter/jumper events with his oldest daughter. In 2009, he was named Reserve Champion in the Silver Stirrup Awards by the U.S. Equestrian Federation and the Performance Horse Registry.
Chamblee has also been a standout success in his professional life, competing in the courtroom as a defense trial lawyer. After graduating from St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, in 1985, he made his courtroom debut in a medical malpractice case defending a plastic surgeon. From there, he moved onto trying a motor vehicle accident case and then a transportation case. “I was very lucky in that I didn't start my career in one particular small area of law and wind up being only a med mal lawyer, or only a transportation lawyer, or only just a personal injury car wreck lawyer,” he says.
All in all, Chamblee has now tried more than 150 cases, obtaining more than 130 dismissals and defense verdicts. His clients range from individuals and small businesses to major transportation and retail corporations. Notable victories for the Lawdragon honoree include a take-nothing defense verdict on behalf of a Fort Worth, Texas, restaurant that had been sued for $10M in a multi-fatality dram shop case. After an eight-day trial, he obtained a unanimous defense verdict in a case involving a multi-vehicle freeway accident in Dallas.
And Chamblee also has an unusual specialization in, yes, equine law, defending veterinarians accused of malpractice. He spoke to Lawdragon recently about his often-colorful career in the trial lawyer trenches.
Lawdragon: What makes Chamblee Ryan stand out from other defense firms?
Bill Chamblee: We are truly a trial firm. All defense firms, they work their cases up, discovery, depositions, hearings. But if you really look at the statistics of lots of defense firms, their trials and the number of trials they actually participate in are not all that significant in volume or in number. Our firm has made its reputation by actually going to trial regularly and are known as a firm that is experienced in the nuances of trial.
LD: What would you say is the key to how you practice law?
BC: It’s to find the truth in every file and then do every single thing ethically that will allow that truth to prevail. Every file has a truth. It's either truth on liability, truth on causation, or truth on damages, and sometimes it's got truths in each of those areas.
And jurors want truth. If a juror believes that you're credible and that you're honest, they will latch onto you and they will latch onto the evidence you give them that shines a light on what is truthful. That is what most people that sit on juries seek. And so I make a big deal out of finding the truth in every file.
I had a trial recently where there was an accident, there was some degree of alleged injury or damage. It got exaggerated by the plaintiffs on the other side, grossly so. They wanted a bunch of money for what I would consider a minor accident. I spent hours on my closing and I'm thinking, "How do I communicate this to the jury?" And one of the things I said to the jury is, "There was an accident. But there's been accidents since automobiles first occupied a roadway, and there'll be accidents for as long as anything that moves occupies the sky or the land. The question is whether the accident resulted from the negligence of the defendant.” And the jury found no negligence. There weren’t enough facts to prove the accident rose to the level of neglect. That was the truth.
Jurors want truth. If a juror believes that you're credible and that you're honest, they will latch onto you and they will latch onto the evidence you give them that shines a light on what is truthful.
When you get down to damages, everything is a million or 10 million or 20, everything's an exaggerated dollar. Plaintiffs' lawyers are becoming better and better and better at doing all those things that will help produce an exaggerated dollar. The only thing that ever will win over that strategy is if you understand that you have to show the truth of what is wrong with the damage model. The second the jury sees the truth, they quit believing the other side. And the second they quit believing the other side, you win.
LD: How would you describe the scope of your practice?
BC: In recent years, I've done just about every civil case, from commercial litigation to transportation to every type of personal injury, from slip and falls to dog bite cases, to equine law, to oil field fire well explosions to building collapses. If it's in the civil litigation world, it's likely that I’ve had one or more trials in just about every area.
LD: Did you say equine law?
BC: Yes, I do quite a bit of equine work. I've been a horse person since I was in fifth grade. I've had them at my house. I've lived on a little horse ranch most of my life. And so somewhere along the way someone was like, "Hey, I know you're a lawyer and you know all about horses and that world." They had some equine law question and that just turned into where I started doing equine law. It deals with a whole lot of things, such as whether a veterinarian committed some act of negligence in the care and treatment of a horse. Some of these horses might be worth $5M. So if you're an equine vet and you cause a disabling injury to an animal that's a competitor, the damages can be significant.
LD: What other tips and techniques can you suggest for trial preparation?
BC: When you go to trial, you are supposed to be the writer, the director, the producer, and the actor. Actor is, how do you speak when you stand up? When does your voice go high? When does your voice go low? When are you smiling and when are you not? When do you get passionate and when do you get soft? What is the cadence and the tone?
As the writer, you start weeks before trial and you read, read, read every single solitary piece of paper, whether it's 2,000 or 10,000 pieces of paper, from depositions to medical records, to life care plans, to literature. You read everything that can potentially come into the case through discovery. And you have to make sure that you know it better than everybody else that walks into that room. You have to know it better than your adversary, you have to know it better than the experts. I'll watch someone and they'll have maybe one page of scribbled notes and I'll watch the cross not go off the way that it should. And I'll say, "You didn't write the play." I don't stick to a written script, but I know when I start examining an expert where it's going to start and I know exactly where it's going to end. I know exactly what they will say to every question I ask.
The key to trial is always start with truth and then be the writer, the director, the producer and the actor of your own play. You have to control how it begins in voir dire all the way to the last word you say in closing.
LD: Can you share an anecdote from a trial that surprised or amused you or something that sticks out as particularly memorable?
BC: We were trying a case in Dallas, a death case where a loved one had passed away and the plaintiff was the widow. During the trial, her lawyer asked her how she would describe her husband’s love for her. She said, “His love was unconditional.” Anyway, we get down to closing and the plaintiff’s lawyer starts his closing by singing the George Strait song, “Our love was unconditional, I knew it from the start.” I thought, "Wow, he's a really, really good singer." He didn't do the whole song and then he gave the rest of his argument. I've tried hundreds of cases, and he did something I've never seen another lawyer do, which is something that most people would be too scared or too embarrassed to do. But he did it with such integrity and such class that it came off even for the jury very well.
Closing arguments shouldn't be cheap, they shouldn't be lies, but they also shouldn't be boring. Closing arguments are a time to finally use your energy and your skillsets and your passion to advocate for whatever the truth is. You have to be genuine in what you do. And like this lawyer did, you have to be willing to step outside the boundaries of comfort.
Closing arguments shouldn't be cheap, they shouldn't be lies, but they also shouldn't be boring.
As far as the dumbest lawyer thing I ever saw in my life, I'm trying a case in a really, really, really small West Texas town. I'm talking, everybody knows everybody. The plaintiff, a young girl in her 20s, is claiming to have a traumatic brain injury from a four-wheeler accident on a deer ranch. And her lawyer went and hired all the experts to say she had a TBI. But I told the jury, "Before we start talking about whether an individual has a TBI, you have to know the baseline of the individual." The judge let me go into her high school records and what she scored in all her testing and then her college entrance exam. All of it was horrible, like the lowest you could be in English or in history or in math. And there's actually stuff in her file in high school about all these problems that she has with paying attention or being in the class and all that. It just showed this was an individual that didn't try at anything in her life ever before.
The plaintiff's lawyer stands up in his closing and tells the jury that her past shouldn't play a role in their decision, that it was just stuff she wasn't good at. He says she grew up out in a poor West Texas community and she didn't do well in school and she wasn't smart in certain things, but “Look where she grew up at.” I'm not making this up, but all 12 jurors gasp loud enough to hear it throughout the courtroom. One of them said out loud in the courtroom where everybody heard it, "Did he just say that?"
I already knew I'd won, but after he said that, there was no doubt.
LD: What are the biggest challenges that a firm of the size and focus of Chamblee Ryan faces in the current environment?
BC: Hiring attorneys. The hardest thing in the litigation world post-Covid for any firm is hiring people who can do the job, who want to do this job, who want to put forth the effort and the dedication and the time it takes to become good at litigation. It is the hardest thing, I think, for everyone. That's the biggest challenge.
I've got a whole bunch of people here who know how to do the job, but I need more young lawyers to join and to come on. I've even done a lot of hiring in the last year and the hardest part is finding people who desire to be trial lawyers and want to hire on at a trial firm.
I have people who come all the time and say, "I want to be a trial lawyer." But they do not have the dedication, the work ethic, to put in what it requires to become that. They think it's just, somebody gives me three or four files, and in a year I'm down at the courthouse doing the best I can to argue something. Well, that's like trying to take someone from high school and put them on an NFL football team. It takes a lot of heart, a lot of passion, a lot of drive, a lot of energy in order to get from law school to the point that you can become someone that a client can relyon in front of a jury. It's not a game you're playing. You have to do the things that are necessary to become that trial lawyer.
