My name is Ron Orlando. I’m a senior associate attorney here at Harding Mazzotti and I work with the Mass Tort Department. It involves plaintiff personal injury, it’s not class action, and it involves litigation against faulty medical devices, problematic pharmaceuticals and it’s nationwide litigation. So it’s very interesting. I look at being a lawyer as being a service to our clients in terms of helping to improve the products that are identified as being bad or a problem or that should have been warned in a different way or should have been made in a better way under different quality control. One of the things that I found and being a lawyer that I enjoy most in all the different facets of personal injury that I’ve worked in is that I’m learning things every day, scientific things, legal matters, understanding people’s employment situations, constantly learning and constantly applying that language so it never grows old. I hear constantly that, you know, “One thing I like about your firm is that we can get you on the phone. We can talk to you. I can email you and I get a response,” and I’m happy to do that because I feel that they need some of that personal touch rather than just think they’re just a case among thousands. We view clients as more than just a number. We view you as a person who has gone through something you didn’t expect to happen and now you are faced with injury, illness, and we’re going to help you through that and we care about doing that and I think that separates us from many firms. We have always been a firm that has believed that we serve the greater community and that we have a responsibility to be there for the community. We do many different things almost on a monthly basis, from providing bicycle helmets for children, from helping to feed people at Ronald McDonald houses, to helping to put on community events where we can put educational programs or just have fun with the people who are our community. So we’re a part of the community and we try to live that. Here, I think the partners have worked hard to have an inclusive environment so that not only the attorneys feel welcome but the staff are encouraged to learn. The staff are encouraged to do their best work here too. And it’s that collaborative inclusive nature that I think you don’t always find at other law firms and it translates into that employee or that attorney going the extra mile, putting in the extra effort, knowing that we’re all working for a mission of helping these people as best we can and that contributes to the whole.
