46 – Tim Whiting – The Journey of a Trial Lawyer with Perseverance

What this episode covers

In this Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael Cowen sits down with Tim Whiting, of the Whiting Law Group in Chicago, for a conversation exploring the journey which has led to Tim’s outstanding $9M settlement on a recent trucking case. While Tim primarily handles trucking cases in his practice, this wasn’t always the case. Tim’s story begins from humble beginnings and feeling “poor” as a young boy. When given a homework assignment about what he wanted to be when he grew up, the only thing he could think of was not to be poor. In the process of researching what he wanted to be, he stumbled upon a book by Melvin Belli, a prominent lawyer known as “The King of Torts” which immediately locked him into the desire to become a lawyer and not feel poor. Tim went on to law school on a wrestling scholarship, which also led to an introduction by his wrestling coach to a well-connected attorney who ultimately introduced Tim to his first job at a large insurance defense firm in Chicago. After about 5 years, feeling miserable as ever, still struggling financially, and watching some good and not so good plaintiff lawyers win large sums of money for their clients, Tim decided “that was the side of the fence I needed to be on” which led to his decision to be a plaintiff lawyer. Ironically, when he told his then boss that he was quitting to start his own plaintiff’s firm, his boss not only laughed at him, but also told him he’d fail within 6 months and he’d keep his chair open for when he comes back. Starting his firm from his apartment, Tim was hungry for success and started calling up defense and plaintiff lawyers that he had met and taking them out to coffee to give them his sales pitch and tell them he would be very available to their clients and get great results for them. One case led to another and he found some success which led to his nomination for the Top 40 under 40 award in Chicago. Things continued to grow as he moved into an office suite, hired his first assistant, and brought on 4 other lawyers all to find himself several years later still feeling pretty unhappy, even though he was no longer poor. Having a kind of one-on-one intervention with himself, he thought inside “if this is what it looks like the rest of the way, this is not what I want” as he was running rampant doing all kinds of cases with a large docket and feeling some self-doubt having never really experienced any formal trial training. This is when he decided to scale back to 3 lawyers and take on about half the number of cases. Feeling better already during this process, he happened to take on a trucking case where the company had $1M but the losses were much more. Having never been a part of any attorney organizations before, and as fate would have it, the AAJ conference was in Chicago that year and Tim decided to go. For those who have been to an AAJ conference before, you can imagine all the great information Tim was able to absorb through AAJ’s Trucking Litigation Group listening to people like Michael Leizerman and other top trucking lawyers speak, and also chasing down Joe Fried in the hall (a story that lives in infamy to this day). Tim credits this conference, Joe Fried, Michael Leizerman, and other great trucking attorneys for inspiring him to make the leap and have a more trucking focused practice. This podcast continues through Tim’s journey going to Trial Lawyers College later in his career, with he and Michael then sharing their opinions on when is the right time for an attorney to devote the time and energy to Thunderhead Ranch. Tim also shares a quote he used to have on his mirror in his wrestling years “Champions aren’t born, they’re built” and how he continues to build himself in a way that is insightful and meaningful every day. His genuine and very honest conversation in this episode makes it clear Tim is proud of his work and has not only excelled in his journey to becoming a successful trial lawyer,