“The word ‘normal’ is so boring, until life isn’t.” This is the belief of attorney Michael Akiva, managing partner of pre-litigation at law firm Jacoby & Meyers out of Los Angeles, CA. He and the rest of the professional legal staff at Jacoby & Meyers make it their mission to help clients get their lives back to normal after an accident.
Following up on personal injury cases involving accidents such as hit and runs, car and truck accidents, pedestrian accidents, and wrongful deaths, can prove difficult and even traumatizing for those who have just experienced those accidents, which are frightening and disorienting in themselves. Fortunately, experts like Akiva are there to help at every step of the process, from securing medical care to achieving the best possible outcomes for their clients.
Seeking Justice and Providing Support
For Akiva, being an attorney is more than making sure the client leaves the courtroom with settlement money. After representing corporations for some time, he felt he was missing the personal, impactful force behind fighting for the rights of the injured and decided to leave the firm he was at as a result.
As he puts it, “Helping individuals navigate through one of the most challenging times in their lives and assisting them in reclaiming a sense of normalcy is incredibly fulfilling.”
This theme of helping people get back to their lives is an important one for Akiva and is what motivated him to become the personal injury lawyer he is today. His new position does not come without challenges, however, as he notes the need for both resilience and adaptability in his line of work. “One of the most significant challenges is dealing with the emotional toll of my clients’ experiences,” Akiva explains, highlighting how difficult many of his clients’ lives become after their accidents.
He overcomes those challenges by striving to earn his clients the maximum compensation possible for their injuries, knowing that doing so will be the most he and his team can do to make them feel whole again. “The rewards of helping my clients regain a sense of normalcy and achieve justice,” Akiva adds, “make it all worthwhile.”
More Than Just Another Lawyer
Many practicing lawyers fall into the trap of having little work experience outside of the legal field, rendering them inflexible and reliant on others to compensate for faults in knowledge or an understanding of how to work through problems. Akiva avoids this trap by making sure he remains well-rounded, which started during his time in college.
Before attending law school, he studied business with a finance emphasis, providing him an intimate understanding of the financial implications and intricacies involved in personal injury cases, thus enabling him to examine cases from both legal and financial perspectives to help his clients receive the full compensation they deserve.
Akiva also served as the editor of the UCLA Law Review while in law school, honing his argumentative and presentation skills. Finally, his managerial experience equips him with the ability to handle multiple cases at once while making sure each client is properly tended to so that they receive the attention and dedication they need to power through the case.
It’s through these experiences and roles that Michael Akiva has been able to succeed as the personal injury lawyer he is today. Since starting his career, he has earned his clients millions in settlements, helping them reclaim the lives taken from them by the careless actions of others and return to a welcome state of normalcy.
Members of the Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper (the Indy) were not involved in the creation of this content.
