Geoff Hamby

Geoff is a born and bred Arkansan who grew up in Van Buren. He has been calling the Hogs from Northwest Arkansas since he moved to attend the University of Arkansas in 2008. Geoff joined the firm in 2014 during his second year at the University of Arkansas School of Law. Geoff has worked on cases from coast to coast and is part of Oliver Law Firm’s Catastrophic Injury Team. Geoff’s primary duties on the team include depositions, scene inspections, jury research, & trial presentation.

When Geoff isn’t working, he and his wife Moriah stay busy chasing their twin toddler girls, Genevieve and Willow. Geoff enjoys playing golf, travelling, collecting watches, and working with his church. Geoff is on the Arkansas Bar Association Board of Trustees, the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association Board of Governors, the Arkansas State Delegate for The American Association of Justice, a former President of the Benton County Bar Association, and former Chair of the Republican Trial Lawyers Caucus

How a simple question led Geoff Hamby to a career as a trial lawyer

Geoff Hamby raised his hand as the law school professor in the civil procedures class outlined the rules for several different cases they were studying. Geoff had read through the cases prior to the class, so he was familiar with their content and he thought he saw a flaw in the professor’s presentation.

“You have a comment or question?” the professor said.

“Yes sir. I don’t think that’s what this case actually said,” Geoff told the professor. 

It was a bold move for any law school student, but Geoff wasn’t in law school. He was a 12-year-old middle schooler. 

“My mom was going to law school at the time, and she would make the 45-minute drive from our home in Van Buren to the University of Arkansas,” says Geoff. “It had snowed that day, and I didn’t have school but she still had to go to her classes. And since she didn’t have anyone to watch me, I jumped in the car and went with her.”

On the way, Geoff read the cases the classes would cover to help his mother prepare, and he peppered her with questions about what it all meant. 

“I thought, ‘Wow! This is pretty cool,’” Geoff says. 

His interest led to his observation during the first class, and the professor – Howard Brill, a long-time faculty member who has served on the Arkansas Supreme Court and as chair of the UA law school – took the 12-year-old’s feedback in stride. 

“He humored me and explained what the case said instead of what I thought,” Geoff says. “And from that point I was hooked. I wanted to do this forever. All through high school and college, my thought was always about what I needed to do next to go to law school.”

By his second year of law school in 2014, Geoff was working for attorney Sach Oliver, and he has risen from a law clerk to a trial attorney and partner with the Oliver Law Firm. 

For most cases, Geoff leads the initial research to uncover the “why” behind what happened to their client. The “what” typically is pretty clear – an 18-wheeler, for instance, plowed into the client’s car leaving the husband dead and the wife severely injured. Geoff looks for the evidence that shows why it happened. Did the 18-wheeler have bad brakes? Had it not been inspected properly? Was the driver on medications that made her sleepy? Did the trucking company provide inadequate testing and training for the driver?

Geoff also helps with depositions, with preparing clients to give their testimony, and with focus groups, jury research and other aspects of the firm’s famed Depositions Are Trial methodology. In trials, he assists Sach, the firm’s lead attorney, by running the slide presentation and keeping documents and exhibits organized and ready for the moment they are needed.

While Geoff knew early in life that he wanted to practice law, it took a few twists and turns to get him on the plaintiff’s side of the table. His father is an emergency room doctor, so Geoff originally thought he would use his law training as a civil defense attorney representing doctors against “those dirty plaintiff’s lawyers who are out there just chasing ambulances.”

In law school, however, he began to learn more about how the system works. He took a class on torts, clerked for a judge and public defender, and then clerked for Sach. Geoff realized that many efforts for tort reform are attempts to protect the people and companies that cause harm rather than helping those who have suffered through no fault of their own, in addition to being a clear violation of the 7^th Amendment. And he wanted to make a positive difference in the lives of people who truly needed help.

“When you’re representing the plaintiffs, you represent people and you represent families,” he says. “They have faces, and you know they have not done anything wrong. On the other side, there are people involved, but you are representing insurance companies more than anything. They are running formulas about what a case is supposed to be worth, they have spreadsheets to fill out, and the lawyers have to track their time every three minutes so they can bill it. The insurance system seemed cold and heartless to me.”

Geoff also didn’t see much opportunity as a defense attorney to get creative with cases. 

“We will sit and brainstorm for hours about one case,” he says. “We’ll say, ‘What if we try this? No, no, that’s not gonna work. What if we tried this? Oh, well, here’s how they shoot that down.’ We can go back and forth for half a day just trying to come up with some new way to approach the case. That’s not done on the other side because you can’t bill for that.”

Geoff was drawn to the Oliver Law Firm in particular, he said, because of its commitment to it’s clients. It’s not what he described as a “clean up crew” that takes a case, submits forms, sends letters, and gets whatever money is most conveniently available. 

“There’s no difference being made there,” he says. “No one is changing policies because of that. No client is now able to send their grandkids to college because of that. I genuinely believe that what we’re doing is not only helping our clients, helping our clients’ kids, and helping our clients’ grandkids by changing the trajectory for their family after these incidents, but we are also working with these trucking companies to change their policies.”

Defendants often don’t see what they could have done differently to prevent a tragedy, he says, but that’s something they learn as the case unfolds. So in winning for their clients, Goeff sees opportunities to help prevent similar incidents from occurring again. And as a result of their work, he says, companies have changed their training policies, revamped their inspection procedures, added safety equipment, and improved their hiring practices. 

As a 12-year-old raising his hand in a civil procedures class, Geoff never knew that was possible.

“When I realized the different realities,” Geoff says, “I was like, ‘OK, this is my lane. This is where I can make the biggest difference.”

Education:

• University of Arkansas School of Law (J.D. 2015)
• University of Arkansas at Fayetteville (B.A. 2012)

Practice areas include:

• 18-Wheeler Accidents
• Car Accidents
• Personal Injury
• Wrongful Death
• Dump Truck Accidents