Angel Reyes  Founder & Managing Partner of
Angel Reyes & Associates

“It’s critical to be fighting for regular folks, not for big companies,” says Angel Reyes, founder and managing partner of contingency fee law firm, Angel Reyes & Associates. “We’re helping people that otherwise wouldn’t be able to help themselves.”
 
Headquartered in Dallas, the law firm is true to what people say about the Lone Star State: that everything is bigger in Texas. Except for Angel Reyes & Associates, it’s not about hats, hair, or attitude. It refers to their fight for justice – a fight that often pits them against the country’s biggest insurance companies.  
 
“What I think it takes to be a great trial lawyer is hunger. Not just hunger to have the right result, but hunger to have the just result,” says Spencer Browne, another partner at Angel Reyes & Associates.
 
While the two trial lawyers ultimately arrived at the same destination of 8222 Douglas Avenue, they walked their own unique paths to get there. Yet, like most trial lawyers, they were united under the same moral calling: becoming a voice for the voiceless.  
 

Angel Reyes: from Wall Street to Main Street

 
After graduating law school, Angel landed the kind of coveted job his classmates dreamed about: a position at one of the oldest law firms in New York City. But instead of helping people, Angel was assigned to corporate securities and finance work.  
 
“It put me in a world that, frankly, I didn’t come from,” says Angel. “So I left. I went from Wall Street to Main Street to help people.” 
 
That’s when Angel accepted a new position at a different law firm, one that primarily represented insurance companies. It was also the job that steered his law career in a completely new direction. 
 
“One night in my office, a janitor came in and asked me if I spoke Spanish. My family’s from Puerto Rico, so I actually do,” Angel explains. “She then told me that her son had been in a terrible accident [after hitting a bull on a ranch]. She asked if I could help, and naively, I said of course, I’m a lawyer.” 
 
After visiting the man in the hospital, Angel saw how severe his injuries were. But he soon realized the potential for insurance recovery since it was the ranch that owned the bull.  
 
“I went back to my firm wanting to represent this family…and they looked at me like I had a third eye,” Angel quips. “They said no. So, I thought, maybe I’ll just do it for free. And as I got into the case, I realized I’d rather do this than answer to [corporate] folks.” 
 
With a new fire beneath him, Angel quit the law firm to finish the case. And from the lawyer’s fee, he invested most of it into advertising his legal services on Univision, an American Spanish-language television network. It was the single decision that led him to founding his personal injury law firm, Reyes Browne Law.  
 
“Most of our clients tend to come from a lower socioeconomic strata in the country, and as a result, they’re the voiceless,” says Angel. “They literally wouldn’t have a voice without firms like ours stepping in.”  
     

Spencer Browne: making the game safer

 
“I was born to help everyone around me, not just myself,” says Spencer. “It’s the way to make our society better, to make us safer.” 
 
Coupled with a passion for politics, it’s no wonder Spencer landed in law school. At his core, he was hoping for a future as a politician. But there was something else bubbling underneath his fervor for public service – he just needed the right place and the right time. For Spencer, that place started in New York.  
 
“While in law school, I got to clerk for the National Football League. During that clerkship, I saw the great Johnnie Cochran deliver a mediation opening statement on behalf of his client who was injured through no fault of his own,” remembers Spencer.  
 
“It was life-changing to see [Cochran] not only advocate for his injured client, but also for a rule change to make the game safer for all who play. It still sticks with me today – I remember everything about it.” 
 
Making the game safer for all who play isn’t just what Johnnie Cochran accomplished – it’s a metaphor for both the history and duty of trial lawyers. 
 
“The backbone of society was created by trial lawyers, even before modern times. There was Cicero during the Roman times. [In the 1900s], there was Clarence Darrow who brought about modern consumer safety,” explains Spencer. “It’s not about how much money we get for a client…it’s about how we make the world better and safer.” 

Accountability for bad faith tactics

 
Angel Reyes & Associates exclusively represents the victims of automobile and/or truck wrecks, specifically battling against bad-faith insurance practices. Though such tactics are labeled ‘bad faith,’ they’re commonly used by insurers to avoid fulfilling their contractual obligations to policyholders.
 
“You buy [insurance] so that, when something bad happens, they cover you,” Angel says. “You would be surprised at how many folks who do buy insurance –  whether it’s homeowner, auto, or liability – make a claim that gets denied. This is happening all across the country, and it’s denied largely because it inures the profits of the insurance industry.” 
 
For insurers, liability claims aren’t considered income. They’re expenses. And Angel cites this as one of the biggest challenges his law firm faces to date – insurance companies prioritizing profits over people.  
 
“These insurance companies own more property than [many] organizations. With that kind of firepower, they work hard with big computer programs and algorithms to try and diminish the value of our clients’ cases,” explains Angel. “Even on small cases, they don’t hold back. Because the less they spend on a liability claim, the more [money] they make.” 
 
In one 2019 case, Spencer represented a man whose insurance company refused to provide him coverage after enduring a tragic car accident and suffering a catastrophic brain injury as a result.  
 
“The driver that caused the crash did not have [sufficient] insurance, but [my client] had underinsured motorist coverage just for this occasion. The problem was, his insurance company would not accept his claim,” explained Spencer.  
 
On his day in court, Spencer’s client alleged traumatic brain injury. That he lost his company. That his marriage was in trouble. Additionally, his wife, friends, and pastor all testified. Even his neurologist and neuropsychologist both testified on his behalf. Still, the defense insurance company offered him zero. That is, until a verdict came back with $4.7 million for his injuries. 
 
“That particular verdict sent shockwaves through the industry here in North Texas,” Spencer recounts. “Now, [companies] can no longer hide behind laws that were written to protect insurance companies. Now [they] must do what [they] were paid to do, and that’s protect those they insure.” 

Advocating for grieving families

Sometimes those insured have been tragically killed because of a car accident, and it’s up to Angel Reyes & Associates to represent the decedent’s family in pursuit of their justice. But in one such case, Spencer wasn’t battling an insurance company. He was trying a casino.
 
“[My client] lost their mother in a tragic bus crash while traveling to a casino in another state. The bus flipped over, and the mother was partially ejected and killed,” he recalls.  
 
But what truly stuck out to Spencer was that the casino denied responsibility for the crash from the beginning. And because the casino tried using every single legal avenue available to deny responsibility, Spencer felt compelled to pursue the case.  
 
And while it took nearly three years to get to trial – with the trial itself lasting more than six weeks – his client’s fight was not in vain.  
 
“The issue wasn’t necessarily just compensation for the loss of their mother. The issue was solving a problem, and that problem was profits over people, and profits over safety,” he asserts.  
 
It turned out that the casino had its own transportation system that was full on the day his client’s mother traveled to the casino. And instead of turning people away, the casino contracted with a different vendor who didn’t hire an appropriate driver. 
 
“The casino was solely focused on getting as many people on the bus, into their transportation system, and into their casino as possible – more than what the [original] bus company’s safety record would allow,” Spencer explains. “Because of that, corners were cut, and our client’s mother lost her life.” 
 
As a result, the jury’s decision found the casino liable for the crash and ultimately the woman’s death.  
 
“We’d like to think it sent a clear message to the casino, that the wellbeing of its customers, [especially] when they transport citizens, is more important than how much money they might make,” says Spencer.  

Maximizing client justice

Over time, Angel Reyes & Associates has built its company mission around maximizing their clients’ overall recovery – financially, emotionally, and physically. In fact, Angel prides himself on the law firm doing just that for all cases, of which there are more than 8,000.
 
“Handling that many cases and doing it well is a big management challenge because we don’t want to treat a small-value case any differently than a multimillion-dollar case,” Angel says. “We want our clients to leave knowing they got the same service as a VIP, and we fight like hell to make sure everybody understands that.” 
 
Successfully managing such a caseload is testament to both the law firm’s expertise and financial backing. The latter was especially important as the law firm’s growth began skyrocketing.  
 
“Our growth is what took us to Esquire Bank because, at the time, we were getting too close to our [previous bank’s] lending limit for me to sleep,” Angel explains. “We knew that if we wanted to keep growing, it wouldn’t be possible without Esquire.”   
 
Specifically, Angel’s referring to the sheer amount of capital it requires to take on a new client, especially for contingency fee law firms like Angel Reyes & Associates. Because with more clients comes more lawsuits, and with more lawsuits comes more case expenses. Fortunately, with its roots in the legal industry, Esquire Bank was prepared to “deliver in spades,” as Angel would say.  
 
“The most important thing Esquire allowed us to do was not hesitate to spend money to make a client’s case better,” Angel says. “There’s only two ways to make more money in this business. One, get more cases, or two, make each case more valuable.”  
 
Can you guess what’s better than that? Angel will tell you:  
 
“Getting more cases and making them all more valuable,” he smiles. “That’s where we found ourselves, and Esquire Bank was a big part of that.”