Asked & Answered: Jared Powell brings human touch to injury law in Milwaukee

Listen to this article

Jared Powell views personal injury law like leading his clients through the jungle, an analogy that stuck with him after reading Rick Friedman’s “On Becoming a Trial Lawyer“ before attending law school.

“He talks about your job as a trial lawyer is to navigate the jungle of litigation for your client. Your client’s never been there before, it’s scary,” said Powell. “The lawyer lives in the jungle.”

He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and attended law school at Santa Clara University School of Law. A Las Vegas native, Powell began his practice there before relocating to Milwaukee in 2024 to set up shop. His firm, Badger Injury Law, specializes in personal injury law using a no-frills, client-focused approach.

Powell recently sat down with the Wisconsin Law Journal to discuss his firm’s mission to fight for the everyday people.

WLJ: You really focus on taking a more human approach to personal injury law. So, with a very saturated market, what specifically sets you apart from other attorneys in the space? What specifically do you feel that you do differently?

Powell: I think there’s two things that really come to mind, and one of them is a more logistical, kind (of) technical aspect, and the other is a more human-driven approach to my practice. On the technical side … the majority of cases we see are car crash cases, and one of the things I tell my clients is that car crashes happen in patterns … so the injuries are really predictable because those happen in patterns too. … One of the things on the technical side that is really important that they don’t teach you in law school is the medicine — how to be able to advocate for your clients and explain their injuries to a jury and, more importantly, how to undo (when) the defense is going to hire experts who are doctors who are going to come in and say (they’re) faking it or they are not as hurt as they say they are. Understanding the medicine is really critical in cross-examining defense experts and undo, really frankly, the lies they come in and peddle to the jury.

The other aspect of it, the human aspect, really revolves around spending time with people. I’m a trial lawyer. A lot of lawyers, especially around the country and certainly in this market, there are a lot of personal injury attorneys (who) say that they are, but they really never try cases, or if they do, it’s only once in a while. I think it’s really important in our current climate where lawyers are more and more shying away from the jury system, and in my opinion, it’s important to press cases as hard as you can, ultimately to jury trial. Because it’s the people in our communities (who) get to decide the value of cases. In that same vein as the advocate, the mouthpiece for people, their suffering has to become mine. … The courtroom isn’t the most friendly, human-oriented space. … We take away the cold unfeelingness of the courtroom. That can only happen if you spend time with your clients and get to know them as people. … You see a lot of these big firms, especially firms that advertise, they sign up so many cases, the people who hire these lawyers, the lawyers on TV or the billboards or whatever, they never get to meet these people. The much more important part of my practice to me is that humanity. The technical skills are there for sure, they’re very important, but the humanity and getting to know people and actually seeing people as human beings and not just a case number, that’s a big part of what sets my practice apart from others.

WLJ: There is a lot of skepticism around personal injury law, at least from the general population. Some people think it’s chasing settlements and that there isn’t that human aspect to it that you talked about, never meeting the people on the billboards and perhaps these people are profiting off of the pain of others. How do you combat that perception in your practice? You also speak about clients who are hesitant to sue. Are you seeing that the perception is typically what holds people back?

Powell: Part of the reason for this stereotype, you know this like ambulance chaser stereotype that lawyers just want to make money, there’s a reason for that. It’s because some of them, that’s what they are doing. How I combat it in my practice, is like I said, is by not behaving that way. Spending time with people, getting to know people, I want when people hire me to understand that even though I’m a lawyer and have a bunch of degrees and all these things, at the end of the day, I’m just a man. I’m just a guy doing a job. I view myself as a civil servant. I’m a husband. I’m a son. I’m a brother. I’m a friend. I’m all those things before I’m a lawyer. I think that a lot of times people in this profession they forget that, especially the people who see themselves on TV and advertising all over the place. They forget they don’t get to do what they do without the community. It’s a privilege to be able to serve human beings.

I look at myself — I can’t control what other people do but a big believer in lead by example. I hope that by doing that and being vocal about it I’ll inspire other people within this profession, particularly younger lawyers who are trying to figure out what they are doing, who they should follow, which mentors they should pick and those sorts of things. I’m certainly not the only one doing it by the way. I want to inspire new lawyers and old lawyers alike, frankly, to lead by example and practice that way and get rid of these stereotypes.

The second part of your question, when we talk about people’s hesitancy to get a lawyer and pursue a claim or file a lawsuit, I think a lot of that has to do with misconceptions about what the process actually is. I just gave my big spiel about being a community member and serving the community, suing people and pushing them into bankruptcy via a big judgment isn’t service to the community. I wouldn’t do it if that’s what the outcome was. The reality is that most of the time that people are filing lawsuits and pursuing their claims in litigation, it’s pretty typically because of insurance decision-making. These billion-dollar insurance companies, they do a great job at pushing this messaging that ‘the reason rates are going up, the reason you have to pay so much in insurance is because of these greedy trial lawyers.’ The reality is that most of the big judgments I’ve gotten through my career to this point, the reason the numbers are so big is because the insurance companies get punished for their poor decision-making. My clients are harmed by an insurance company’s insured, but the insurance company’s insured is harmed in a different way by their insurer’s failure to abide by their insurance contracts. You see cases, and this is the stuff the public doesn’t ever get to see or hear about, where I try to settle the case for significantly less money than what we end up getting at trial, and the only reason why we can go get as much money at trial as we can is because the insurance company decided to leave every single person out to dry along the way, my clients included. … The reality is the people who you’re suing are never — almost never, I can’t say 100%, but almost never — in my practice, I have never collected against an individual human. I’ve always, always, always collected against an insurance company. … So, when we sue people, even though a lot of times we’re suing the individual person, there’s this misconception that that’s who pays. And that’s almost never the case.

WLJ: There’s this sense that you sort of have to ‘sell’ your services and the legal process because you get this hesitancy. With a saturated market — Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay, these major cities — we talked about advertising, you have to get your name out there somehow. How to balance that fine line of ‘I need to market to the market to get them in the room, but then I also have to think that they have an actual case?’

Powell: The self-promotion is like my least-favorite part of the job, but it’s a necessary evil, right? People need to know who you are, and they need to understand that you’re providing a service for them. I can’t speak for people (who) don’t hire me, but the people (who) do hire me get a significant amount of my time and attention. A big part of what I do is educating my own clients in what their rights are and how to pursue them. … The reality is there may be multiple avenues of pursuit for somebody’s legal rights, and what I tell all my clients is I work for them. My job is to give them the options and make sure they make educated decisions. I certainly have opinions. I certainly know what I want them to do, but at the end of the day, this goes back to talking about the humanity in my practice, I give clients my advice but ultimately, it’s not lost on me. I work for them. So, when we talk about this idea of how do we strike this balance of how do we get people in the door and then balancing those things against somebody’s maybe apprehension to filing a lawsuits … my concern in those types of dynamics is making sure my clients are educated in outcomes and they’re making good evidence-based decisions for them and their families.

WLJ: What’s your stance on AI in litigation settlements, trials, etc.?

Powell: I definitely use data. I definitely use AI in certain areas. When I take cases to trial, I focus group the cases to no end. I am constantly looking for information in mass data to help inform me what the value of the case is in the community I’m trying the case. I want as much help as I can get in terms of juror attitudes toward the specific facts of the case before I get there. How I explain it to clients is like a lot of us are sports fans, especially here in Wisconsin, like you wouldn’t expect the Packers to go play in a playoff game and not practice all week. They’re showing up prepared, and it’s the same in what I do. … The catch is a lot of lawyers, especially with the injection of AI into our profession, they blindly rely on computer data and I don’t think that prior results don’t always indicate what the current case is worth. …That doesn’t mean that I don’t allow data or prior experience to inform me regarding case value. I take all those things with a grain of salt that this case is its own case. This person is their own person. No two people are the same. No two experiences are the same, and we need to take all that into consideration when we talk about case value.

AI is an awesome tool, but it is computer-oriented. It’s not a human. As close as they can get it, it’s still not a human. And, in reality, the most important part of this profession, especially as we talk about pushing cases to trial and having jurors and juries decide our outcomes, the most important parts of our cases are the human element. AI can’t touch that. We have to make sure we don’t lose sight of the humanity.

WLJ: Especially when you’re representing people at perhaps their lowest point. Do you think there’s a risk of AI dehumanizing the legal process the more it gets leaned on?

Powell: Practicing law, obviously, spans a significant amount of topics and services. I think AI has its place in terms of certain areas of practice. When we’re talking specifically about what I do in personal injury and trying cases, we need to understand that AI is a tool. … Where some misconception gets brought into the law, and I won’t speak for areas outside of my practice, some attorneys think it’s a magic fix to the things that have plagued us. … Value in personal injury cases comes from taking them to trial and telling the human story.

The reality is that the only way you can go tell the human story is for you, as the trial lawyer, to spend time with your clients. There is no substitute. You cannot ask other people to do it for you. The only way for you to speak for the victim is to know who the victim is. … There’s no substitute for that. … The AI, there’s no substitute for a lawyer sitting down with their client, knowing who this person is and being able to go into a courtroom and talk about them like they’re a friend or family member.

WLJ: You’ve probably handled some intense, emotion-driven cases. It’s no secret that lawyers will take the emotional work home with them. What keeps you grounded or what gives you a stronger sense of purpose when it gets tough?

Powell: I think the profession as a whole has done a lot better job than we have prior in terms of understanding the psychological and emotional toll that dealing in human suffering can cause on the lawyers. It’s not unique to our profession. … It’s a tough thing and you have to make sure you don’t become desensitized or calloused to those sorts of things when you’re around them all the time. It’s something I really, really stress to my staff, my colleagues. For me, I have a tremendous foundation of support from my friends and my family. I think that’s really important. I think it’s important for lawyers to understand how to unplug. My wife’s an attorney so she kind (of) gets it. … My wife’s a tremendous person and a big source of foundation support for me being able to understand that, at the end of the day, the work’s still there tomorrow. I can go home and be a husband. I can enjoy my dogs. … I think a big part of being able to have that mindset stems from understanding that I’m not a good lawyer if I’m not a mentally healthy lawyer. My clients need me to be healthy and happy if I’m going to do the job for them that they need me to do.

I think a lot of lawyers, especially this old-school mentality that we work until all hours of the night and whoever can put in the most hours is the best lawyer, I don’t believe in that at all. That’s not to say I don’t believe in hard work, but my clients need me to be a good, happy, healthy, well-adjusted person to be able to go into a courtroom and bring them the results that they expect and they deserve.

WLJ: Speaking of serving the community and clients, you had a very successful career in Las Vegas and chose to relocate your firm here to Milwaukee. What drew you to Wisconsin?

Powell: I grew up in Las Vegas and did my undergrad at UW in Madison. At least for me, I’ve always had that draw to Wisconsin. Madison has such a special place for me. When I graduated, I went to the law school that gave me the most money. I accepted a scholarship; it was always the plan I’m going to go to the school that gave me the most scholarship money. So, I went to Santa Clara University in the Bay Area in California. That’s where I met my wife. We relocated to Vegas. I practiced in Vegas for the last six or seven years, something like that. And we had season tickets to Badger football, so we were back in Wisconsin for seven, eight times a year. I have a bunch of friends in the state still. The more that we were here over the last couple years that we’ve had our season tickets, I just kind (of) nudged my wife one of the times we were here and said, ‘What if we didn’t go home? What if we stayed?’ We were looking for a change of scenery. It was one of those things where when we started to look at whether to be in Milwaukee or Madison or anywhere else in the state, from a technical perspective, and this isn’t to talk negatively about my colleagues, but in Milwaukee, specifically, I didn’t see anybody outspoken about what it is that I find important in the profession. … I moved here several months ago and tried to get to know the city as best I can in the short time. The people here are just tremendous. … I am so so happy and proud and excited to say that I live in Wisconsin and to serve this community. … I’m so thankful that I’ve been accepted as a part of the Milwaukee community and as a member of the Wisconsin community at large.

WLJ: I know you’ve been traveling back and forth for a while, but what’s something on the Milwaukee Bucket List?

Powell: I’ve never been to Summerfest, so we’re going to knock that off the list right away.