Page 13 - Los Angeles Vol 5 No 3

It’s 2019, and Attorney at Law Magazine catches back up with Nicholas Rowley on the heels of yet another victory. But this win was not on one of the multimil- lion-dollar trials he has come to be known for throughout the country. is was personal.
e sixth time as a nalist and one of the youngest recipients, Rowley was recognized as Trial Lawyer of the Year by his peers in the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles. It was an experi-
ence he describes as humbling and beautiful. “ e night when I won the award and gave the speech was one of the most memorable moments of my career,” says Rowley, a partner at Carpenter Zukerman & Rowley and found- er of Iowa-based rm Trial Lawyers for Justice who tries medical malpractice, catastrophic- and personal-injury, and wrongful-death cas- es. “As people, we o en doubt ourselves and wonder if we’re good enough.” Am I a fake? Am I a fraud? Am I a great trial lawyer? Am I
a good person?
“All those things run through your mind,
and it feels really good when not just one per- son but the biggest trial lawyers’ organization in the country votes and says you are worthy of recognition as the premier trial lawyer in the country. It is a distinction that really means something.”
Much Deserved
Few could deny Rowley was worthy of this or any award. He is well known as the trial lawyer who will try any case anywhere against anyone if the cause is just.
Rowley says he gets a call from fellow law- yers who need trial help every week from New York to Alaska and everywhere in between.
“Most of my cases—I’d say 90 percent—are cases where other lawyers call me in, some- times at the last minute” he says. “ ey’ll say, ‘ e insurance company, the corporation, the government entity—they’re not taking me or settlement negotiations seriously and we’ve got to go to trial.’”
A good example is a medical-malpractice case Rowley recently nished trial on in Iowa. He was rst contacted about the case on a Sat- urday evening, agreed to be lead trial coun-
sel, got on a plane less than 24 hours later and picked the jury on Monday morning. He tried the case start to nish and got a verdict on Friday. e jury came back with a unanimous record-setting non-economic-damages ver- dict of $12.25 million in less than three hours.
Where Rowley estimates that most civil tri- al lawyers who are actually trying cases stand in a courtroom in front of a jury three or four times per year, he had nished a run of 14 tri- als in a 15-month period at the time the vote was cast for Trial Lawyer of the Year.
Rowley credits his teams at his CZR of- ces in California and TL4J o ces across the country, as well as the other lawyers who call him in for the trials a er they’ve worked up the cases, for relieving him of most deposi- tion, pre-trial-court-appearance and media- tion duties, which allows him to handle more trials. “As the trial lawyer I have become, I’m kind of a trial-to-trial-to-trial guy.”
By his side in most of these trials is Rowley’s wife and best friend, Courtney Rowley, who is one of the two authors and founders of Trial by Woman, a book and an organization that is working to open doors and pave the way for more women not only in the law, but also as professionals.
“We’re a husband-and-wife trial team and it’s great,” he says, adding that they’ve also co-authored a book called Running with the Bulls, which aims to help lawyers and injury victims get full compensation and civil justice.
eir partnership doesn’t stop there. With seven children at home ranging from 2 to 14 (Rowley has 10 total and plans to stop a er one more), the couple make it a point to spend most all their non-courtroom time with the kids. e two youngest children travel every- where with them.
To make it all possible, Rowley has started his own private-plane corporation, Justice Air Inc. Although he knows how to- y a plane, he puts his full-time pilots in the cockpit so he can work along the way. e recent Iowa case is a perfect example of why he needs it. It would have been di cult to book a ticket to a rural airport, pack up trial gear, drive many hours to one airport, go through layovers and drive to a rural courthouse between the call on Saturday night and the time the jury got called in early Monday morning.
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