Lawrence T. Ruder

“Being your champion means carrying what you can't carry right now.”

To be your champion is incredibly challenging. And it's often heartbreaking. But as your champion, I am right beside you, offering my knowledge, my energy, my commitment to you and my passion to ensure you or your loved one gets justice. When I say “I am here to help,” it's not an empty promise by a huge, machine-like personal injury factory. It's a personal promise from me that I will do everything I can do for you to get maximum benefit.

Being your champion is my opportunity to be myself on your behalf — compassionate, caring, creative, no holds barred, and most importantly, helpful in ways you may not have expected. Helping you get the care you need right now. Helping you understand and get through what is often a frustrating and difficult pathway to recovery. Helping you even after your settlement to make sure all is going as smoothly as possible.

That work has recovered over $80 million for people living with serious injuries, and for families carrying the loss of someone they loved. Some of it has outlived the cases themselves: closing arguments published in the textbooks other trial lawyers learn from, and peer-reviewed articles in the Trial Journal of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association.

And some of it never shows up in a verdict: the Ruder Scholarship for Hispanic law students, and pro bono counsel at Most Blessed Trinity Parish in Waukegan and St. Gall Parish in Chicago. Serving Chicagoland's underserved and immigrant communities isn't a footnote to the practice — it's part of why the practice exists.

That's what champions do. And that's what I do for you.