Advice and Counsel: Dorothy Heim
Heim Law Firm in Edmond has been representing clients and helping provide, as its slogan says, “everyday justice” for nearly two decades. But its founder and namesake came close to never moving to central Oklahoma; in fact, she almost didn’t become a lawyer at all.
Photo by Jordan Mobley
Originally from Denver, Dorothy Heim moved to Amarillo to attend West Texas A&M in pursuit of a degree in criminal justice administration. “After I graduated from college, I actually taught and coached at a Catholic school in Amarillo for about five years,” she says. “I didn’t even know I had a passion for that, but it turns out I did; I loved teaching and coaching.” That might have steered the course of her life in a different direction, if not for one lingering thread: “My LSAT score would have rolled over and I would have had to take it again after 5 years, and I thought, ‘There’s no way I want to do that.’ So I applied to various law schools, and actually came up here to visit OCU — and I vibed with it. I loved Oklahoma City from the get-go, it felt very welcoming, and so I went to school here and stayed here; I call it home.”
Heim’s professional focus is on personal injury law, representing victims of car wrecks, dog bites, slip-and-falls — cases in which a client is hurt by someone else’s negligence or wrongdoing. The choice was inspired by a mentor who showed her the ropes while she was still in law school, and by a genuine desire to aid people who need it; what she calls “a feeling of really trying to help people through, many times, a really difficult and painful time for them. For some people, things will never be the same, but you try to get them back to as close to normal as you can.”
Our pasts help shape who we become — even though Heim made a choice to leave the classroom behind years ago, the experience continues to influence her practice. “I think the teaching actually helps me in trying cases, because I think I take on more of a teacher role,” she says, “like trying to teach the jury what the case is about.” The approach applies to clients, too: “I believe strongly that people want to know what’s going to happen. They want to know, ‘What’s the process for this, what happens during this?’ And there’s certain things you’re going to need to do and be prepared for. Clients have to give depositions, and that can be very stressful. I believe that our clients need to be extremely prepared, not just a half-hour meeting of ‘Dress nice, answer the question asked and it’ll be fine.’
“People want to know all this stuff, I think, before a case is filed, so they really know what they’re getting into and to be a part of the process so they feel that they not only have control, as much as they can, but they’re getting informed responses. I can advise them, but at the end of the day people want to make their own decisions. Especially when they’ve been injured and maybe they feel lost part of their life or their mobility … this doesn’t need to be another thing that they feel they don’t have any say in or control over.”
If Heim’s approach, which relies less on an aggressive and combative attitude and more on guidance, is unusual in a field where many personal injury lawyers are more likely to say “I’ll fight for you” rather than “Let me explain this” — it may be just what a client is seeking. After all, another word for attorney is counselor.