I started doing this work, like many young attorneys, early in my career because this was the work that was assigned to me. But I quickly fell in love with it. From an intellectual standpoint, I find it interesting and fascinating. I enjoy doing it. From a personal standpoint, however, having worked as a defense attorney and having won many cases as a defense attorney, which resulted in an individual losing his or her benefits in cases where that individual perhaps wasn’t entitled to them, but my role as the attorney was to litigate it on behalf of the client, I felt that there was a need for individuals to have competent and effective legal representation in this area of the law where they had a voice.
One of the things I have found over the last several years of operating the Garner Firm is that feeling that you get when you call a client, and you tell them that their appeal has been successful or that they’ve won a case, and that their benefits are going to be reinstated, and that they’ve been vindicated. There’s nothing that compares to it. When you call somebody who’s had no cash flow for nine months or a year because their disability benefit claim has been denied, and their mortgages and arrears they’re in collections on their electrical bill.
They’re having a difficult time putting food on the table and paying for their medication and their medical treatment. And you call them, and you say your financial problems aren’t solved, but they’re going to start getting better real soon. And you’re going to have money coming in the door that will allow you to pay your bills, put food on the table, and go to the doctor. The stress that takes off of somebody’s shoulders, the joy that they have in their voice, and the relief and the genuine thanks that they feel makes getting up and coming to work every day worth it 100%.