Miller & Cooper is a law firm located on the Southside consisting of attorneys Joseph Miller and Lori Cooper. They have no one else on staff.
WHEN DID THEY OPEN
THIS OFFICE?
The firm relocated to the Hodges Boulevard area in March from Philips Highway. They opened initially last May.
“We both live at the beach so it’s a little closer to home,” said Miller. “And it’s easier for our clients to get to than downtown.”
“I don’t mind the drive to stay away from downtown,” added Cooper. “Parking is a hassle.”
DO THEY HAVE PLANS
TO EXPAND?
“We hope to as we grow,” said Cooper. “Right now, we do all the work ourselves.”
WHAT TYPE OF LAW DO THEY PRACTICE?
“Family law, consumer bankruptcies for individuals and personal injury,” said Miller. “And some PIP [personal injury protection] for doctors,” added Cooper. “We also do some trust work, wills and guardianships.”
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PI AND PIP?
“PIP is where you’re actually representing a medical provider,” said Cooper. “You’re trying to, in layman’s terms, get their bills paid by insurance companies that have refused to pay. With personal injury, a person involved in an accident is trying to get the remainder of their medical bills covered and be reimbursed for their injuries.”
WHY ZERO IN ON
THESE AREAS?
“The reason we practice what we do is demand,” said Miller.
COLLEGE BUDDIES
Miller and Cooper met while pursuing their degrees at Florida Coastal School of Law.
“I picked Florida Coastal because I wanted to move to Jacksonville,” said Cooper, a Cocoa Beach native. “I thought it would be a good place to settle down.”
WHY DID SHE BECOME
A LAWYER?
“In Tampa, I got my paralegal degree at the University of South Florida,” said Cooper. “I worked six years for an insurance company doing personal injury and family law as well as plaintiff work. That’s what brought me to law school after working for attorneys all that time.”
DOES HER PARALEGAL BACKGROUND PROVIDE A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE?
“A lot of paralegals do all the work,” said Cooper. “As a paralegal, you realize after awhile that you are doing everything but going to court. If you just take that extra step and go to law school, you can do it all. It’s much more fulfilling to be an attorney. I recommend all paralegals become attorneys because anybody that works as a paralegal can do it. When we do decide to hire staff, I hope I’ll be able to treat them the way I wanted to be treated as a paralegal. I hope I can run my office differently with the background that I have.”
MILLER’S MINUTES
Prior to law school, Miller gleaned some legal knowledge from working for a personal injury firm part-time and from working at the prosecutor’s office — both in his home state of West Virginia.
WHAT IS THE LONG-TERM GOAL OF THE FIRM?
“We’d like to save the world,” said Cooper. “Our goal is to become a very stable firm, to grow enough to have more offices and to make a name for ourselves. We definitely try to give more personal service and offer a laid-back atmosphere. I’ve worked for big firms so I know how people can get lost in the shuffle. We don’t want to have that happen.”
HOW STEEP WAS THEIR LEARNING CURVE?
“At our old office, we had two attorneys that were quite established,” explained Cooper. “They helped us a lot, introduced us to people and mentored us throughout the whole process. We certainly didn’t just jump into areas of law that we didn’t know anything about. We made sure we knew how to do everything before we handled it. We also invested money in advertising and gained referrals from colleagues at school.”
WHAT WAS THEIR
BIGGEST CHALLENGE STARTING OUT?
“The uncertainty of not knowing where the next client would come from,” said Miller.
“Neither of us have a family to support so we can take the gamble,” added Cooper. “We took the risk and it paid off. It was hard in the beginning. We did a lot of criminal law. The first year we did general practice mostly, whatever walked in the door. Now, we’ve gotten to the point where we can be more particular and do the things we want to do.”
WHAT DO THEY CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE WITH?
“We try to listen to all our clients’ problems but there has to be a happy medium where you’re their lawyer and not their psychologist,” said Miller. “They tend to tell you everything.”
“It’s hard not to get personal,” said Cooper. “You have to learn not to take it personally, also. When you go into court and you’re representing someone who could possibly lose their child or that kind of thing, it’s hard not to take it personally. But in order to survive this career, you have to learn that you can’t help everybody and win every case.”
— by Monica Tsai