On August 12, 2022 Oregon trial lawyer, Dr. Aaron DeShaw, Esq., received the Oregon Trial Lawyer Association's prestigious Presidential Award. The Presidential Award is given out infrequently for an outstanding lifetime achievement in the field of law.
Shortly after starting his legal career in 2000, DeShaw started writing Colossus: What Every Trial Lawyer Needs to Know, a book on insurance companies committing fraud by intentionally underpaying claims. The book was the basis for a national class action case Hensley v. CSC against insurance software manufacturers and over 580 insurance companies to repay policyholders for personal injury settlements not properly paid by their own insurers. The settlements totalled over $1 billion for policyholders, and several insurers agreed to quit using bodily injury assessment software (such as Colossus, Claim Outcome Advisor, and ClaimIQ) in claims against their own policyholders. DeShaw remains the leading authority in the United States on insurance claim software and on the format of insurance demand letters sent to insurance companies to obtain the best settlement offer for a lawyer's client and has lectured for many legal organizations in the past 20 years on this and many other topics.
DeShaw's two books on Colossus (for doctors and lawyers) released in 2002 and then in longer versions in 2004 on insurance claim software were the first books published by DeShaw's litigation publishing company Trial Guides. In the years following those books, Dr. DeShaw went on to oversee publication of almost all of the leading practice method books for plaintiff lawyers in the United States including Rules of the Road, David Ball on Damages, Polarizing the Case, Don't Eat the Bruises, Running with the Bulls and many more. He also consulted on Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plaintiff's with Trial Guides authors David Ball and Don Keenan (later self-published by Keenan), as well as Exposing Deceptive Defense Doctors by Dorothy Clay Sims (James Publishing) prior to publication.
DeShaw is considered one of the most influential lawyers in the United States on the practice of law for the plaintiff bar through his founding and operation of Trial Guides. "Trial Guides and its founder, Aaron DeShaw, have armed, honed, and inspired more plaintiff's attorneys than anything else this century." Leading trial consultant David Ball Ph.D., author of the landmark legal books David Ball on Damages, Reptile, and Damages Evolving.
The Presidential Award from OTLA is the first time DeShaw's efforts on behalf of the plaintiff bar have been recognized in 20 years, during which time he has operated Trial Guides without pay. DeShaw was selected by OTLA President Lara Johnson of Eugene, Oregon.
DeShaw has gone on in his legal career to handle natural gas explosion cases, multi-district litigation against drug companies, insurance fraud and bad faith claims, trucking litigation, as well as amputation, burn injury, traumatic brain injury, and wrongful death cases. He has been a single parent for many years, and was joined by his two youngest children when he received the Presidential Award at Sunriver Resort in Bend Oregon.
In 2022, DeShaw has also been selected for the American Board of Trial Advocacy (the only new member selected in Oregon), and Super Lawyers.
If you or someone in your family was seriously injured or killed and would like to talk to an award winning trial lawyer to know if you have a viable legal claim, contact us online, or call us today at (503) 227-1233 for a free confidential case evaluation.