I started practicing in 1976 with my partner Mike Swor at another law firm. And he and I discovered we had a lot of things in common. We had common background kind of a blue-collar bag. He’s from the iron range; I’m from the east side of St. Paul. And things fit.

You have to find out if you trust that person. I think you got to meet the person, talk to the person. How do you feel about it is there on an organic level is there a trust?

It was a death of a four-year old child in a car crash and at that time that that occurred the wrongful death values for children’s claims were relatively low and I personally never could understand why anybody would not value the life of a young child very high. And it bothered me and we put together a very, very strong case for this family and it was supported by a story told in pictures. And we presented this story to the insurance company representatives on this big case, it was big coverage involved, and the litigation supervisor of this case literally teared up and 20 minutes later they offered their full policy limits, which was a seven-figure settlement.