12 minute read
Corey A. Hall, Hall Law Group, Santa Ana
UPWARD BOUND
AND BRINGING CLIENTS ALONG FOR THE RIDE
by Dan Baldwin
Employment law is where being a good lawyer is the most important. Anybody can calculate lost wages. I don’t even understand the point of getting a lawyer if the case is just about economic damages. A fair market value is easily calculable, but to address the non-economic damages to a client, to be able to tell the story of a human being and to take these abstract concepts and make them concrete, that’s the real challenge in this job,” says Corey A. Hall, founder of Hall Law Group.
Hall formed Hall Law Group three and a half years ago. He currently employs a staff of six professionals. The firm’s typical client is someone who has been a victim of employer mistreatment and who wants to—and who is able to under the law—do something about it.
UPWARD BOUND
Hall’s sense of justice springs from early childhood experiences. He grew up in a small, rural community with two older brothers who enjoyed “thumping” him around. As a hyperactive kid he also had run-ins with the local bullies. “The upside to this was that I was a pretty tough kid, especially compared to kids my age. When I would see someone getting bullied, I would step in and give the bully something to think about. I feel like a lot of lawyering is the adult version of this.”
His life turned around in high school when his grades were so poor that the principal would not allow him back unless he attended a summer program at Humboldt State University called Upward Bound. “Upward Bound legitimately changed my life. I began my lifelong love of learning that summer. I had never read an entire book prior to Upward Bound. After Upward Bound, I was reading everything I could get my hands on. I came back determined to get into a four-year college, and I took every single course required to do that. This is still the accomplishment that I am most proud of in my life,” he says.
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Anthony Abbey (Litigation Director), Daniel Rodriguez (Director of Operations), Susan Leedy (Discovery Coordinator), Corey A. Hall (Founder), Ashley Ramirez (Senior Legal Assistant), and Neil Bhartia (Trial Attorney)
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Thanks to his principal’s warning, Hall did graduate school, went on to college and in 2012 earned his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. He began working for attorney Joel W. Baruch, where he gained frontline experience trying cases “in the trenches.” As Baruch began to wind down his practice, Hall realized the opportunity to open his own practice. He says, “I always loved the renegade spirit in Joel’s office and the amount of freedom he had as a lawyer. I knew that the only way I could have the environment that I wanted would be to open my own practice, and so, in many respects, the decision to open my firm was made for me.”
OVERCOMING THE SUNK COST FALLACY
Hall’s move to his own firm required jumping a major hurdle. He had an enormous personal and professional investment in one area of the law and was contemplating a move to an entirely different legal environment.
“I realize now that I was suffering from the ‘sunk cost’ fallacy. I had devoted everything to learning how to do personal injury right, and here I was about to throw all that time, experience and know-how away. That kind of thinking is powerful and emotional, but it’s also wrong thinking—a fallacy.
“I think that’s why there was this emotional connection and kind of an emotional baggage. It took me a while to realize, well, yeah, that’s all that is actually—just the sunk cost fallacy. You can’t let investments of the past keep you from investing in your future.”
Hall says he is proud of facing that challenge and having the drive to make that all-important change in the direction of his career and the difference it has made in that career. “I own my own firm. I’m managing a great team the way I want to manage. I get to choose my clients. And I’m determining the way this business is. It’s strange in a way, but now I have permission to be the most authentic version of myself as possible.”
He says his management style was influenced by something Dwight Eisenhower said about progress. If someone pushes a string, it doesn’t go anywhere. But if that same person pulls the string, it follows. “My management style is really trying to take complete ownership for everything. If something goes wrong, I always try to find a way that it was my fault and try to fix it. And I want my employees to do the same. I want everybody to try to take ownership if they make a mistake. It’s their fault and it’s fine. I give a lot of permission for people to mess up. I don’t get angry at them. We try to figure out what went wrong and how we can improve it. But I constantly am trying to foster an environment of those mistakes stimulating where people can grow.”
BALANCING INEQUALITY
One of his first trials was for a young widow in a wrongful death medical malpractice case. This case shook him to his core, he says. “This was the first time I truly felt how noble our profession is and how honored I am to be a part of it. The intensity of that feeling ebbs and flows, but it has never gone away.”
Helping people in apparently helpless situations or facing enormous challenges within the system was a logical step for Hall. He was initially attracted to employment law by the need for someone to stand up to the strong inherent inequality of bargaining power between employers and employees.
“As an employee, your ability to support yourself is completely dependent on your employer. Your employer can terminate you anytime, which means you don’t have any real control over this crucial aspect of your life. And if they do arbitrarily terminate you, what then? You have lost your ability to support yourself. This often includes your ability to receive medical treatment. And equally important, you’ve experienced the pain and frustration of losing all this. It isn’t surprising, then, that many employers exploit this unequal power dynamic and take advantage of their employees. This is where I step in,” he says.
Extensive contact and open communication are hallmarks of his approach to client service. Clients know they have been abused, but they may not know what elements of their situation are important to a successful outcome for their case. Digging deeper into the relationship is not only essential to a good working relationship, but often makes case-making discoveries.
“Clients have no idea. And even if you’re asking a specific question that is tailored to get that information out, they’re often editing a response to whatever question you’re asking in a formal interview sending what they think is relevant to that question. I cannot explain the number of times where I’m just having a general conversation with a client when he or she says something off the cuff that makes the case.”
A key factor in the firm’s success is Hall’s drive to keep his team eager, willing and motivated to approach each case as if it is going to trial. Settlement is always an option, but opponents
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realize that the length and effort required for trial is not a detriment to serving their clients fully. One client wrote:
Corey Hall is an incredible attorney who assisted me when I was in fear of my employer wrongfully terminating me as they attempted to use a scare tactic. He was very attentive and available to answer my questions and explained the law and was willing to walk me through each question I had. Since then I have recommended him to a friend of mine who was also encountering issues with their employer. Now I have no doubt or worry for the time being and can focus on continuing my work production as I search for another opportunity for employment.
Thank you Corey Hall.
The firm’s willingness to go all the way to trial often speeds up and enhances the settlement process, thereby assuring the client’s rights and a proper resolution to their case.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
“Often a client’s case is not only important for themselves, but for society as a whole. We explain that employers know they can get away with unethical and illegal practices and will continue to do so unless someone holds them accountable. In these cases, it’s especially important for our clients to understand this is a long-term commitment, but that we will take it finish line for them if they are on board,” Hall says.
Compensation in the area of non-economic damages plays a large role in many cases. It is easy to compute medical bills and other expenses. They’re specific and detailed through standard billing procedures. Non-economic damages, although very real, are challenging to calculate.
Hall says, “A new mother is wrongfully terminated after taking pregnancy leave. It’s easy to figure lost wages, but how do you figure the cost of lost time with, for example, that woman’s baby. What is the value of the time she spent searching for a new job and worrying about her legal case instead of bonding with that baby? What is the price of that? What’s the going rate? It’s our job to do the calculations and see that our clients are justly compensated.”
Many times clients do not understand their actual goals. Hall directs his team to find those goals so that they can determine the best avenues for achieving those goals. Different options require different approaches. In some cases, clients have been financially devastated, and they prefer a smaller, earlier settlement, over a larger settlement or jury verdict that may take years before they see any money, especially if there’s an appeal. In other cases, clients may not “need” the money immediately or they are strongly motivated by principle and deterrence.
The attorney/client relationship is one based on trust, and clients can sniff out when someone is being insincere. They appreciate authenticity, Hall says. “I don’t play the fancy lawyer game. I embrace that I grew up in a hillbilly town, and I don’t try to pretend that I’m something that I’m not. Even if this were a drawback professionally, I don’t think I would act more formally. However, and honestly somewhat to my surprise, I have had clients tell me consistently throughout my career how much they appreciate that I am real with them. I’m just me.”
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Corey with his beautiful wife Nichole, son Teddy (age 4) and daughter Josie (age 2).
When I met Corey, I was pleasantly surprised by his kindness and aggressive litigation advocacy for his clients. Corey was the only attorney I met with who treated me as a person instead of a number. I was impressed with his intelligence in creating winning case strategy and I knew immediately that he would easily wipe the floor with anyone daring to take on a court case against him! He was always miles ahead of the opposition and throughout my case, he was always honest with me and personally answered my calls to make sure I was okay.
Hall says one of the reasons for his firm’s early and ongoing success is their commitment to being up-to-date on an area of law that is constantly changing. He says too many attorneys fail to realize the complexity of employment law cases—that there are exceptions to exceptions, caveats after caveats, and that what may appear to be a slam-dunk case can change dramatically based upon seemingly minute details.
Hall is aggressively building for the future. He and his staff are working on cementing relationships with the local workforce. They are reaching out to the Spanish-speaking community. He has opened an office in northern California and will be expanding the practice up there as well.
He is also working on improving the firm’s “skeleton” to support more cases and recruit more attorneys. “We will always be a quality over quantity firm, but if we keep getting the level of quality cases we have been getting, we want to make sure the infrastructure is pristine so we can seamlessly bring in and train new staff,” he says.
All of his activities are not focused on work. Hall and his wife have lived in Orange County since 2014. They have two children—Josie, age two, and Teddy, age four. Hall enjoys music and has played the drums since he was 13 years old. “I have an electronic drum set in my office, and I play it almost every day. It’s a great way to blow off steam and reset,” he says.
He travels extensively and has visited more than 50 countries.
He says his life is pretty much just work and family. His true “hobby” is found at work where some types of work such as creating content, making new policies, improving templates, and so on legitimately feel like a hobby. “I love employment law. Because I truly understand what it is to be an employee and I am able to give employees something they never had before—I’m able to give them power; I’m able to give them a voice; I’m able to right a wrong.” n
Contact Corey A. Hall Hall Law Group 523 North Fairview Street Santa Ana, CA 92703 949-203-1682 www.hlgjustice.com
EXPERIENCE
Corey A. Hall, Founder of Hall Law Group
