Our people
One equal temper of heroic hearts…
…strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
To be clear, we didn’t write that—Lord Alfred Tennyson did. But if we’re going to build a legal team from some cherrypicked lines of centuries-old poetry, those last few lines of Ulysses are a good place to start.
Let us tell you about how we strive, seek, find, and don’t yield.
How we’re organized
I (Dustyn) am not one for formalities or tradition. On the one hand, maybe this wasn’t the best profession for me.
- On the other, maybe that’s why I am supposed to be a criminal-appeals lawyer and law-firm owner.
Even though this profession binds me to a lot of formality I don’t really care for, there’s a lot I get to do with this firm that’s quite a bit different. One way I’ve build this firm different is the organizational structure. I don’t like hierarchies or silos or “not my job”-ism. I like collaboration and activity. So here’s how our firm is structured:
Most of the behind the scenes probably doesn’t interest you any, but the one thing I want you to see is the very middle of the honeycomb. Client care is at the center of everything we do.
Client care is everyone’s job here.
Can’t say that we always execute perfectly (hey, we’re human too), but we always try to keep our clients right there in the center of our attention and efforts.
What we look for on our team
You probably want the people handling your case to be here for a reason. I do too. That’s why we have a standardized operating procedure for who even gets to work here in the first place. Here’s what our SOP says about who can work here:
- Unfailing empathy. You cannot do a good job with the kind of work we do if you can’t put yourself in the client’s or their family’s shoes. You just can’t.
- Creativity. We solve problems. If there’s a straightforward solution, it’s not really that big of a problem. To be successful at solving thorny problems, it requires some creativity.
- Good decision-making. The people who haven’t worked out at Coontz Law have made questionable decisions, even though those decisions weren’t wrong or contrary to our values, per se. But poor discretion is often a symptom of not exhibiting Veritas or Ownership, and it can frequently lead away from Results.
- Resilience. The single most important thing that has made for a great team member is that they’ve persevered through something hard.
Overcome. With The Hive.
Whatever you’re going through, we can’t promise it’s going to be quick, pleasant, or easy. In fact, it’s more likely that the opposite is true. Anyone who tells you different is blowing smoke up, well….
Anyway, like the honeybees we model ourselves after, our Hive doesn’t like blowing smoke. So we’ll be honest with you. And when things get tough we will strive, seek, find, and not yield.