Twenty Years of the Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC by Kurt Young

In February of 2004 I had a difficult decision to make.  I had joined a new firm a little over a year before, and it wasn’t a good fit.  I had gone there after almost nine years at another firm that kind of came apart thanks to one partner not wanting to sell their controlling interest in the firm to the others.  

The choice was try out yet another firm or do something crazy, start my own firm.  I had some serious roadblocks.  First, I had a 30 day window of opportunity. In  the move from the firm of nine years I lost six out of seven of my clients.  Unbeknownst to me the partners at the new firm were deliberately tanking the transition as they wanted to get my former senior partner to join them, and bring ALL of the firm’s clients with her.  And it’s pretty near impossible to create a 600% increase in your client base in a year.  And my wife was trying to turn around an inner city church that was constantly resulting in her cutting her pay.  

Any new firm would have to be done on the most modest of shoestring budgets, I managed to borrow from my mother basically three months worth of expenses for what I designed. So, the race was on.  I had 30 days to find an office, set it up, help transfer all of my files, which meant getting every client in to sign a gaggle of forms, and basically create something from nothing.  

And it was a race against the clock.  But I found an office in a good location.  Saved a few dollars by agreeing to paint the office and pay for it myself, thanks to everyone who helped do that.  I found a place that resold used office furniture and between them and Sauder we were set on that.  Bought three computers, two copier, scanner printers, three two line phones, hung a room partition that turned two rooms into three, and on the morning of March 11, 2004, I opened.  

Now the first month, it was me.  That was it.  I had reached out to a former colleague at the firm I was at for years.  She was willing to work multiple jobs so long as part time with me was one of them.  But due to cash flow, I did the first 30 days solo.  But it took off from there. 

A key settlement check came in, clients started finding us, we were able to bump Lisa to full time, and things took off from there, in part thanks to a client’s wife calling me and asking me a favor.  I remember even saying, OK, but don’t get your hopes up on what I can do.  She was asking if her son could intern for us to get college credit and see if he wanted to be a lawyer.  Well, he not only did his internship, we hired him and he worked through his graduation from both undergrad and law school.  

Speaking of employees, in our 20 years we’ve helped employ seventeen people with either full time or part time jobs.  Two of those were of counsel attorneys, which means they also had their own practices outside of our office, and they helped employ four more people over that time.    

And we have consistently tried to help out our local paralegal programs at the University of Toledo and Stautzenberger College, the essentially pre-law program at Lourdes University and both Toledo School for the Arts and Toledo Public Schools.  We’ve had the privilege to have eighteen interns over that time with three of them eventually joining us as employees.  

And thanks to those employees and staff we have made a difference.  We have managed to guide thousands of people, over 5,600 to date, to some type of legal help.  Along with our Workers’ Compensation practice, we have also, with the help of our of counsel partners, helped people in Personal Injury in two states, Social Security Disability, Probate, and more.  

In the Workers’ Compensation practice, that has meant approximately 9,000 hearings before the Industrial Commission at their offices in Toledo, Lima, Dayton, Cincinnati, Mansfield, Columbus, Cambridge, Youngstown, Cleveland and Akron.  Including seven trips to the final or Commission level hearing. In case you’re wondering, that is about 450 per year or an average of 9 hearings per week.  

But we’ve not just been handling administrative Workers’ Compensation  hearings during that time frame.  There are two types of appeals to court on our Workers’ Compensation Cases.  One involves a jury trial in the county in which you were injured and we have filed several hundred of these appeals, trying several of them.  We have also taken cases up to the  Tenth Appellate District Court of Appeals (for some fights go to the court of appeals in Columbus on Workers’ Compensation medical or money benefits issues), we also handled cases in the Sixth, Third and Eighth Appellate Districts.   And we have fought three fights to the Ohio Supreme Court, winning two of three S tate of  Ohio ex rel. Johns Manville v. Harold Housman; State ex. rel Daimler Chrysler v. Industrial Commission ; and State ex rel. Estate of Sziraki v. Administrator Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation.  

During that time we have been busy trying to make our community a better place.  Our employees worked with Toledo Area Jobs with Justice offering voters free rides to the polls for nearly a decade until I became to prominent in local politics to stay and be considered non-partisan.  We also have worked the YWCA Hope Center helping out domestic violence victims.  We have volunteer with the Seagate Food Bank, Mobile Meals and others try to help stamp out hunger and Promise House Project to end youth homelessness.  And we have members serve in unpaid positions at four churches.  

We have also done our best to make the legal profession better with I have hadtwo articles on the practice of law published in that time frame.  I have also been an instructor at Fifteen Continuing Legal Education Seminars for the Akron Bar Association, The Toledo Bar Association, and the Ohio Association for Justice.  And that’s just Kurt.  Our other of counsel attorney Russ Gerney has spoken to other ones.  

And during all this time, I have also held three other paid jobs at various times, including Toledo City Council Member at Large, Instructor Stautzenberger College, Board Member of the Lucas County Board of Elections and some pretty intense unpaid servant roles.  

How have we done?  The firm and I have received thirteen different awards for practicing law, four political awards and two awards for his work in the community.  So not bad if I say so myself. 

But none of that would be possible without the support of all of our families, our vendor partners, our incredible team members here and those who have left, and our clients.  We all want to thank you for whatever way we’ve worked together to make this possible, an we look forward to our next big anniversary.