Personal injury lawyer Zach Pritchard discovered he had a head for the law in a Cartersville, Georgia, high school classroom, as well as the office of the local real estate attorney where he interned.
“He was nice to people, his clients were always happy to see him and he dressed and spoke well,” Pritchard, a 13-year veteran of the law, says of Jeff Watkins, now a Georgia Court of Appeals judge. “I thought, ‘This guy is cool; I might like to do this.’”
Pritchard later discovered he had a heart for personal injury law while laboring at a Cartersville (population 24,000) firm where he says he did things that grated against his personality.
“In personal injury law, you take care of people in a moment of great need. That was a passion of mine, but that opportunity wasn’t there at that practice, so I went to work for a personal injury firm in Marietta.”
The partners at Jones & Swanson welcomed Pritchard with enthusiasm, he recalls, but Cartersville – where his family looked forward to seeing him at the end of his drive home each day – tugged at him. So, after what Pritchard says was copious prayer, he opened his own personal injury firm in 2019.
“I love my wife and kids; they’re my ‘why,’” Pritchard explains. “But I was missing a lot of their lives while I was burning the road between Cartersville and Marietta.”
Pritchard says he opened his one-man show with the intention of keeping it that way, but the proverbial bell above the front door rang steadily and, before long, he had a growing firm on his hands.
To take advantage of the momentum, Pritchard opened a branch in Woodstock, Georgia, population 37,000. In September, he expanded his reach, as well as the cradle of his arms, even further with a third office in Chattanooga (population 184,000).
Pritchard says Chattanooga is an ideal home-away-from-home for his firm because his practice and the city share the same principles.
“Our firm’s core values are teamwork, accountability, success and happiness. Chattanooga embodies those same things.”
Pritchard also looks forward to handling the larger cases a bigger market can provide, he says.
Establishing operations in Chattanooga required Pritchard to grow his workforce, as he intends to tap into the Scenic City with not just a phone number on a billboard but also boots on the ground. In addition to the four attorneys and the battalion of 20 paralegals and other staff members that handle cases at the Georgia offices, Pritchard has added Chattanooga native Hannah Murrell to his roster of attorneys.
Members of the local bar who serve as volunteers for the annual high school mock trial competitions might remember Murrell from her days as a member of the Chattanooga Southeast Home Education Association team, which Hamilton County Chancellor Jeff Atherton has coached for many years.
Murrell says mock trial sparked her interest in the law and led her to study political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and then earn her Juris Doctor at the Nashville School of Law.
After graduating from law school in 2021, Murrell returned to Chattanooga and learned the ins and outs of personal injury law at Epstein Law Firm. A LinkedIn post led her to Pritchard earlier this year.
“I was looking to make a change in my career just as Zach was moving into the Tennessee market,” Murrell recalls. “He had every paralegal from the firm sit in on my interview. I liked that he cared about his employees’ opinions.”
While Pritchard will be spending some of his time in Chattanooga, Murrell will be working out of the firm’s local office – located at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and East 4th Street – full-time.
Whichever attorney greets a client after the proverbial bell above the front door rings, Pritchard says the individual will receive the kind of attention an injured party deserves in their moment of great need – whatever the scale of their case.
As an example, he cites his work on a case in which a mother of three faced a daunting battle against an insurance company after injuring her back.
“It was a hard-fought battle to litigation over a four-year period. I said no to several offers and then took it to trial, and we netted $100,000 over their last offer.
“It wasn’t a groundbreaking, million-dollar case, but we cared about our client and we did what we said we were going to do. As hard as that case was, it reminded me of why God placed me in this position and why I need to always use my gifts to the best of my ability.”
Find Pritchard Injury Firm online at www.pritchardinjuryfirm.com.