Luke Dow

I think what being from Austin gives me is a lot of connections within the legal community. Whether it's personal injury lawyers, defense lawyers, patent lawyers, construction lawyers, I just know a lot of lawyers in Austin, having grown up here. The Austin area, I enjoy the outdoors a lot, it's very outdoor driven, whether it's playing golf or being on the lake or tennis. While Austin is a big town or it's becoming a big town, in a lot of ways it's still a small town, so the defense and the plaintiffs' bar get along pretty well and are pretty collegial to one another. I've got board certified in Personal Injury Trial law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization 9 or 10 years ago. And what that entails is you have to have tried a certain number of cases to a jury, have so many years of experience, have a number of recommendations, a few of which come from the bench judges, and then you have to sit for a one-day exam. And of that exam, I think half of the people who sat for the Personal Injury section passed. You have to care about your clients. You have to want to serve them completely and thoroughly. And I say thoroughly because we can't pull the plug when things get tough and you're going to trial. You need to stick in there. So you've got to have a lot of perseverance.