You don’t have to be a personal injury plaintiff lawyer to belong to the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association, but the organization does provide a great deal of valuable information and education to personal injury attorneys in the state. Members can access a variety of information on their website including verdict data and trial transcripts. The focus of the group is on litigating attorneys, including plaintiffs’ lawyers, divorce lawyers, etc. Defense attorneys (the lawyers who are on the other side of plaintiffs’ lawyers) cannot have a full membership in the organization but they are allowed to join. The organization is having its annual review seminars in Nashville and Memphis in November. For more information see their website.

There has been a fair bit of press recently about the dangers of text messaging while driving. As a lawyer who handles personal injury cases, I’ve seen my fair share of accidents caused by inattentive driving. When it comes to texting while driving, no one is safe. Let’s take a moment and remember some of the many recent tragedies. Keep in mind, most of the time the only indication of the cause of a fatal accident is the fact that a text message was sent or received moments before the accident was reported.

Amanda Martin, 17, in a one-car accident in Charlton, Massachussetts

Bailey Goodman, Meredith McClure, Hannah Congdon, Sara Monnat and Katie Shirley, 17 and 18 year olds, New York

Maureen Waites, 64, rear-ended by a text messager, Great Britain

Ashley Miller, 18, drifted and struck the car driven by Stacey Stubbs, 40, Arizona

Jim Price, bicyclist struck by text messaging teenager

David Brown, 53, struck by Michael Smith, 43, who had been recently texting, Great Britain

You may notice that we’ve changed the website format recently. We’ve adopted a new Wordpress theme, one that really conveys the ‘life is a journey’ concept pictorially. You’ll notice the same theme even in the artwork in our office. Lawyers tend to intersect with people at fairly random, but critical, life moments. It’s our job to make sure our clients can stay on the path, so to speak.

The website changes were not too hard to make thanks to the Wordpress template/theme system. I’m also working on increasing the informational value of the website, both through blog postings and through static information pages. If you’ve never created a blog or website, that may not mean much to you at all, but you’ll probably notice that some parts of this website have static information on them (they are listed to the right under Site Map)–those are “pages”–and other parts are more conversational (like this)–this is a blog posting.

I’ll be adding more information on personal injury claims and the divorce process. There’s plenty of data and statistics regarding personal injury accidents that might be useful to someone considering pursuing a personal injury claim. And, there were several changes to divorce law recently that could be compiled for reference.

We’ve gotten comments from our clients about the website over time. If you’re familiar with both the old and new versions then I’d love to hear your feedback on the changes.