Manuel Balam

When Manuel (or Manny, as most tend to call him) was about 11 years old, he did an elbow drop on his dad’s back to stop his dad from beating his mom. Perhaps in that moment, Manny vividly learned a harsh reality of life: sometimes people need someone else to stick up for them and take the hits for them. This is what Manny has done every step of the way to get where he is—fight hard and grueling battles, sometimes for basic survival, many times for others.

From growing up on Welfare and food stamps, to maneuvering around and surviving drug dealers, gangsters, and violence in his neighborhoods, to surviving the rigors of an elite high school and later college and law school through hard circumstances, Manny understands the circumstances, suffering, pain, and troubles of unfortunate life incidents, as well as the sense of hope and happiness when overcoming them. In fact, Manny even worked for almost 14 years for an insurance defense firm, serving as a handling partner, litigation defense counsel and coverage and monitoring counsel over defense firms. So, it should be no surprise that the big, well-funded, often-abusive, and often-oppressive tactics of defendants, their insurance companies, and their attorneys do not bother Manny. He’s endured and suffered worse.

Manny relentlessly takes tough fights to the corporate machines, businesses, nursing homes, and employers (and their insurers and attorneys) that have skillfully refined the art of trying to avoid compensating victims for harm they have caused. The law should be about justice and not who has more money and attorneys to suppress information. But, given his life experience, Manny is well-suited to fight for this justice for his clients—and to go head-to-head with the most aggressive or abusive of defense attorneys and the insurers funding their tactics.