Once mentored by ABOTA, now elected to trial lawyer group

Patrick Nolan, a trial attorney at DeWitt Algorri & Algorri LLP, has been inducted to the American Board of Trial Advocates. Nolan's induction comes 11 years after being selected as an ABOTA fellow.

Nolan is the first former law fellow to be inducted into ABOTA.

ABOTA's Fellowship, which looks to train young litigators, partners recent law school graduates with ABOTA members.

"[Patrick is] incredibly enthusiastic, incredibly prepared at all times when he's in trial and has really shown the ABOTA model of stability and professionalism," said Steven C. Glickman, ABOTA member and chair of the Los Angeles ABOTA Fellowship Program.

Induction into ABOTA is by invitation only. Each member goes through a vetting process that takes roughly five months, according to Glickman. Nolan was inducted into ABOTA in March.

Nolan credits the fellowship with putting him on the path of personal injury work. Most recently, he has been involved in a bad faith litigation case alongside Mark S. Algorri and Bruce B. Palumbo. Norbert and Sindy Saavedra v. Sheila Guynes, BC557669 (L.A. Superior filed April 17, 2017) and Saavedra et al. v. Integon Insurance, 2:18-cv-06689-GW-RAO (C.D. Cal filed March 4, 2020).

Prior to attending law school, Nolan taught high school for 13 years to students who got out of juvenile detention. He said he became interested in law when he realized many of his students needed legal help urgently.

Nolan said he considers his experience as a teacher "the biggest reason for his success so far."

"When I was a school teacher my job was to take complex and sometimes very boring ideas, but make them easy to understand and interesting to a group of people that didn't want to be there in the first place a lot of times.

"[I]t's also a good description of what the average juror is. They're not familiar with the law, they're not familiar with various facts and to be able to put it into a comprehensible story that they can not only understand, but that they're emotionally invested in, I had to learn how to do that in the classroom and I've just transferred that over to the courtroom."

ABOTA claims 7,600 lawyers, who practice plaintiff and defense, across 96 chapters nationwide and is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the right to a civil jury trial.