Workers’ COMPanion
LAW OFFICE MONAST
JANUARY 2018
www.monastlaw.com | 614-334-4649 | 5000 Arlington Centre Blvd. Bldg 2, Suite 2117, Upper Arlington, OH 43220-2913
DRIVING MY PRACTICE FORWARD IN 2018 While I’ve been practicing law for 32 years, it’s only been about five years since I left my old partnership and struck out on my own. Those five years have been some of the most educational of my life, not necessarily in the minutiae of the law—after a couple decades you get a pretty solid handle on that —but in everything that goes into running your own small business. In that regard, I feel that my efforts have definitely paid off. I’ve had friends
and members of my church come to me for all kinds of help, and I’ve been able to guide them through the legal process to a successful outcome. I have dozens of clients
In law school, you learn a lot about analyzing facts and arguing your case, but nobody bothers to teach you anything about keeping a practice afloat. Of course, this makes sense as most small-firm attorneys like myself tend to view their firms as a service instead of as a money-making business. After all, my goal is to help regular folks achieve the best outcome from a difficult situation, rather than to keep my eye on the bottom line. When you’re in a larger firm or even working closely in a partnership, this kind of thinking works just fine, since you’ve got another body to bounce ideas off of. But when you’re the chief, cook, and bottlewasher all at once, it forces you to think about how you’re going to reach out to the people who need your help. It makes you realize that, no matter how empathetic, understanding, and knowledgeable you are concerning your clients’issues, it’s not going to mean much if people can’t find you in the midst of all the noise. The trick is to find that delicate balance between using your resources wisely to reach the greatest number of people who could use your representation and still managing to offer that vital one-on-one connection with every client. It’s also important to offer educational resources to help people understand workers’comp. Not everyone needs an attorney on their workers’compensation claim, but I guarantee that anybody opposing their claimwill have their own representation. Even if they’re not my client, if I’m able to help even one person get the compensation they deserve, then I’ve done my job. “It’s incredibly gratifying when you can call up somebody months after their case is settled and discover that they’re doing great.”
who have become almost like family to all of us at the firm. Over the months that
we work with our clients, we get invested in their cases and lives. It’s
incredibly gratifying when you can call up somebody months after their case is settled and discover that they’re doing great. It’s inspiring to see how hopeful and driven people remain in the midst of crisis.
Looking forward into 2018, I’m eager to reach more of those people. When they’re losing wages for months of missed work and the medical bills are mounting, my only goal is to be there, offering a helping hand. Everything I do is in service of that goal.
–Jim Monast
1 614-334-4649
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