Top Lawyer 2022: Thomas A. Grisoni, Personal Injury

It’s time to lawyer up! Our inaugural list of the Valley’s most respected legal eagles spans 39 specialties, from personal injury attorneys to business litigators. And all of them are peer-selected, so you know they’ll do your case justice.

Thomas A. Grisoni

Specialty: Personal Injury
Law School/Year Graduated: Arizona State University, 2007
Years in Practice: 14

There are a lot of personal injury attorneys in this town. How do you make yourself stand out in a saturated field?
Many personal injury attorneys or law firms shy away from litigation. Litigation takes time and comes with a lot of expense. However, I feel strongly that it’s usually the best path to maximum recovery when dealing with an insurance claim… [with] results that are many times more favorable than any offer made prior to initiating a lawsuit.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions about personal injury law?
Probably that people who are pursuing or otherwise involved in a personal injury claim are doing so for a quick money grab. This is largely fed by public misconception based upon stories like the McDonald’s hot coffee case. The reality is that people who are involved in an injury-causing event can have their lives turned completely upside down and face daunting obstacles like mounting medical bills, the inability to work their jobs, and overall disruption in their lives when dealing with their injuries and discomfort on a daily basis.

How does your field intersect with the “bad faith” field of law? How often do you have to go to trial against insurance companies?
Since I am mostly dealing with first-party and third-party insurance carriers that cover a particular loss, I do run into the bad faith field of law quite frequently… I probably have five to 10 trials set on the court docket on any given year, and usually over 50 cases in active litigation. Fortunately, most of those cases will resolve through alternative dispute resolution such as mediation or arbitration, and a full-blown jury trial is not necessary.

What are your hobbies and interests outside law?
When not working, I enjoy family time with my wife and four kids. We love the outdoors and traveling. We enjoy spending time at the family farm in Kansas, the mountains of Colorado and finding new and exotic beaches and islands to explore around the world.

“If I wasn’t a lawyer, I’d be…”
Working in the medical field, as that has always fascinated me.

How we Picked our Top Lawyers

PHOENIX magazine generates its Top Lawyers list via an online survey of practicing attorneys in the Greater Phoenix area. Partnering with Colorado Springs-based information research firm Data Joe, PHOENIX disseminates emails to each of the roughly 16,000 active attorneys licensed with the State Bar of Arizona, directing them to an online portal managed by Data Joe. The survey, which takes place over six weeks, asks respondents to provide the names of up to three attorneys they deem the best in 39 legal specialties. To spread the votes democratically, respondents are asked to nominate at least one attorney in each category who works in a firm other than their own.

At the conclusion of the voting, Data Joe tallies the votes digitally and verifies that vote recipients are in good standing with the State Bar. PHOENIX editors then set the vote thresholds in a manner that ensures the top 10 to 20 percent of vote-getters in each category make the Top Lawyers list. Our fact-checkers then call each attorney on the final list to confirm their affiliation with a Valley-based firm and obtain accurate contact information.

PHOENIX does not give preference to attorneys who advertise. Top Lawyers earn their place on the list purely by virtue of the votes they receive, and our sales staff does not see the list until the lawyers have been confirmed by our fact-checkers. 2022 is the first year PHOENIX has conducted Top Lawyers.