Thirty years of practice in one community.

True Northwest Law Firm was founded in 1995 by Matt J Wagner, Esq, who had spent the preceding years in a large practice and had formed a clear view of what he did not wish to replicate.

The complaint was not about competence. It was about structure. In a firm organised around departments, a client's file moves between hands, and the person who knows the matter best is frequently the person the client has never met. Questions are answered by whoever is available. Deadlines are honoured, filings are made, and something nevertheless goes missing: the judgement that comes only from one person carrying a matter continuously from beginning to end.

The firm was therefore organised the other way. An attorney takes a matter and keeps it. That attorney conducts the first consultation, decides what investigation is required, appears at the hearings and answers for the outcome. Colleagues are consulted where their experience is relevant, and where a matter requires a second attorney the client is told who and why. What does not happen is the quiet transfer of a file to whoever has capacity this month.

Growth without departmentalisation

The practice now covers eight areas of law. That breadth was not pursued for its own sake. It grew because clients returned. A client represented in a serious injury claim came back some years later about a will. A business advised on its formation returned when a former employee brought a claim. A family assisted through a dissolution of marriage needed help with the sale of the marital home.

Answering those requests required competence in adjacent areas, and it produced a firm that can see how a client's affairs connect. A dissolution of marriage in which one spouse holds an interest in a closely held business is not only a family law matter; it is a valuation problem. A serious injury to an employed person is not only a personal injury claim; it raises questions about workers compensation, about disability benefits and about whether the employment can be preserved. Firms that treat these as separate matters, handled by separate specialists who do not speak, miss the connections. We keep them under one roof so that they are seen.

The community we practise in

The office has been in Blue Springs since the beginning. Our attorneys appear before judges they know, opposite counsel they will meet again, and clerks whose practices and preferences they understand. In a jurisdiction of this size, professional reputation is a working asset. An attorney whose representations to the court have always proved accurate is heard differently from one whose have not, and that difference is worth a great deal to a client whose matter turns on a discretionary ruling.

It also imposes an obligation. We do not file claims we do not believe in, and we do not advance positions we cannot support, because the cost of doing so is borne by every subsequent client the firm represents. That restraint is occasionally unwelcome to a prospective client who has been told elsewhere that a weak claim is a strong one. It is nevertheless the reason our assessments can be relied upon.

Fees, plainly stated

Personal injury and wrongful death matters are ordinarily handled on a contingency basis, which means that the fee is a stated percentage of any recovery and that no fee is payable if there is no recovery. The percentage, and the treatment of case expenses, are set out in the written engagement agreement before any work begins.

Other matters are billed at an hourly rate or, where the work is predictable, for a fixed fee agreed in advance. Wills, business formations and residential closings usually fall into the fixed fee category. Hourly matters carry an estimate at the outset and monthly statements that describe the work performed in enough detail to be checked. If a matter is going to cost significantly more than estimated, you will hear about it before the expense is incurred rather than afterwards.