Community Highlights: Meet Rocky McElhaney

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rocky McElhaney.

Hi Rocky, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up near Buffalo Trail in Morristown Tennessee, a small town east of Knoxville. Many of the lessons I now use to help my clients are ones I learned in childhood at Central Point Baptist Church. It’s where my grandmother first taught me what to value in life and in what order: faith first, family second, friends third, and finances fourth.

My dad worked as a millwright, and my mom was an aide for Head Start. We lived paycheck to paycheck. I watched my parents work hard for what little they had. They overcame obstacles and made ends meet. They taught me that if you work hard, you can make it.

When I was 15, my dad, Larry McElhaney, severely injured his back at work. He filed a workers ’ compensation claim, but the insurance company refused to pay or provide surgery he needed. Every day, I saw the stress on my dad’s face grow as he struggled to deal with the pain of his injury and the financial strain of mounting medical bills. He fought the insurance company for three years, but they refused to give him the benefits he deserved. Despite all his efforts, eventually, we lost our house.

He was worn down and out of ideas, but my dad refused to give up. He hired a lawyer to help him fight. That lawyer was experienced, and with his help, we finally got justice. That was the moment I decided to become an attorney—to fight for people the way that lawyers fought for us.

I didn’t have much money for school, but I had core values to guide me and my parents’ lessons of the value of hard work. Those things gave me strength and drove me to succeed. I fought my way through college and spent four years working days and going to law school at night. I graduated law school with honors in 1999.

My reward has been the joy and satisfaction of spending the last 22 years passionately fighting for families who, like my own family years ago, were hurt through no fault of their own. It is my life’s calling.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I don’t think the road’s ever been easy, but I chose the harder path on purpose, and I think that choice is also the secret to our success. I started what is now called Rocky McElhaney Law Firm in 2002 with just two lawyers and two paralegals in a small office in downtown Nashville. My goal was to help real people, people who needed me—not the powerful. Over time, I hired other lawyers and paralegals who shared that same goal, people looking for more than a paycheck. I found those types of people to be more compassionate to clients and driven to fight harder for them than most.

I believe those goals and values helped us deliver successful outcomes to our clients again and again. But it wasn’t always easy. Staying true to your beliefs can be hard, especially when you find those values require you to go against the grain.

In 2002, most personal injury firms were airing commercials with actors portraying injury victims surrounded by girls in bikinis happily cashing in their settlement checks to buy luxury boats or fancy cars. I found them to be tasteless and utterly false, but they were the status quo at the time. And they must have been effective because PI attorneys kept running the same types of spots, and every advertising expert I talked to urged me to do the same.

It was a risk, ignoring expert advice, but I did it anyway. I knew the story those ads painted was fiction. The injury victims I knew weren’t celebrating and buying boats. They were trying to deal with lost wages and piles of medical bills and struggling to put their lives back together. So, I made a very different kind of tv commercial. I told true stories. I spoke directly to clients who were looking for someone to help them get justice. I tried a simple, straight-forward approach. That approach proved to be very successful, and over time, the tone and content of competitors’ ads began to change and to mirror my own.

We earned a reputation for honesty and courage, standing up to billion-dollar insurance companies and big business when families needed it most.

Along the way, I did some pretty cool things professionally: negotiated with the Governor over the 2014 reforms to the state workers’ compensation system; won a landmark victory against General Motors which allowed hundreds of union workers to receive more compensation for their work injuries; fought and won an eviction battle against Chase Bank for a local civil rights hero who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; argued six cases before the Tennessee Supreme Court that made real differences in the lives of people in my state; had the opportunity to help a lot of people and make a lot of friends; and shared tears and triumphs with some of the most remarkable human beings in the world, our clients. That’s what I would call a successful career lawyering for “the people,” and I’m endlessly grateful to those I’ve been able to serve.

In 2020, I was named Best Lawyer in Nashville by Nashville Scene readers for the 6th year in a row. I’m proud of that one because it’s a local award, and it’s given by local people.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Well, I think you should know that one of the most important things I learned early on was that I don’t have to come up with every idea or make every decision on my own and that sharing that responsibility with the right people can produce better results. I have a gift for finding the right people when I need them. I surround myself with talented and dedicated legal and business professionals. Our clients deserve nothing less.

We are injury lawyers. That’s all we do. We help people who’ve been hurt get justice. We handle auto, truck, and motorcycle accidents; wrongful death cases; worker’s compensation; social security disability cases; nursing home abuse; bullying; and other types of cases involving victims of injury.

People always wonder how they’ll pay for a lawyer. Like most Personal Injury firms, we advance litigation expenses until the case is settled. We don’t get paid unless our client does.

I think the most important thing you should know about my firm is that it’s unique. There are so many things that set us apart from our competitors. Many firms rush people in and out and often don’t even know their clients’ names. We treat our clients like family. We take time to get to know and understand them and to learn what’s important to them. We do this because we care and because that knowledge helps us serve our clients better. We have enough lawyers and highly trained support team members to give personal attention to each client.

When a client hires us, they get a team of gladiators in suits with a proven track record of success. We’re a local firm. We’re experienced. And we have the resources to fight the insurance companies and big corporations toe-to-toe and dollar-for-dollar.

We’re committed to the latest in technology and innovation which helps us tell our client’s stories, and we try cases when the insurance company won’t pay up. This is a real difference maker for those that entrust their cases to us. Insurance companies pay less to lawyers afraid to go to court.

When folks hire Rocky McElhaney Law Firm, they get a hard-nosed fight on their behalf. That is the reputation of the firm. We fight. I am very proud of that. We never put our interests above our clients. And we never will.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I grew up in a rural farming community in East Tennessee—a place where life boiled down to faith, family, friends and hard work. Those things shaped a lot of who I am today.

Growing up, Sunday mornings were for church where my grandmother taught the kids about Jesus and sang in the church choir. Sunday afternoons were for family. Time passed slower then. There was no cable. I played tag with my cousins in the yard, climbed trees or explored the fields and barn of the tomato farm. The grown-ups sat in folding lawn chairs under the big shade tree, drank sweet tea, and churned out homemade ice cream.

Being from a small town meant passing down to the next generation the important things in life. What you passed down was different for each family. In mine, it was baseball. Baseball filled my summers and connected one generation to the next. My Papaw McElhaney was a catcher, my dad was a catcher, and I was a catcher. Now, my 10-year-old plays catcher.

Baseball brought my family closer together. It healed my family at times when we couldn’t figure out how to do it ourselves. In 1985, baseball took my family to Williamsport, Pennsylvania for the Little League World Series. My dad coached that all-star team, and I played catcher. Now, I coach my boys here in Hendersonville, trying to pass on to them the same joy and humility it taught me long ago.

Today, I live with my wife, Penny, and our four kids. Penny and I both grew up having less than many others. When we first met, we realized we shared the same life-long dream of raising a family on a farm. We dreamed of a tree-lined drive leading back to a big farmhouse overlooking a pond and fields where horses grazed. We wanted to be able to sit on our back porch and look out at green pastures and Tennessee hills and watch the sunset each night while our kids roamed and romped through the grass like we used to do. That was our dream, and together, we made it come true.

Pricing:

• Most people cannot afford to hire a good lawyer, even more so when they are hurt in an accident, paying medical bills and missing work. That is why we offer our services for free and advance all expenses and costs until the case is successfully resolved. We do not get paid until we win for our clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.RockyLawFirm.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rockylawfirm
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rockylawfirm/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rockylawfirm
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/TheRockyLawFirm