Trucking accidents are a complex and often misunderstood area of law, impacting countless lives each year. What does it take to advocate for road safety and mentor aspiring lawyers in this demanding field?
According to Deena Buchanan, a trucking attorney with years of high-stakes case experience, a commitment to road safety starts with a deep understanding of trucking law and the dedication to make a real difference on the highways. She highlights how essential it is for attorneys to cultivate empathy and vigilance, particularly when dealing with the aftermath of tragic accidents. Deena shares her hands-on approach to mentorship, from guiding associates through depositions to sharing her unique insights into trucking regulations, allows her to instill these values in young lawyers. By blending technical expertise with compassion, she believes lawyers can create meaningful change for both their clients and the community at large.
In this episode of 15 Minutes, host Chad Franzen sits down with Deena Buchanan, Founding Partner of Buchanan Law Firm LLC, to discuss her journey in trucking law and her mission to enhance road safety. They talk about Deena’s unique mentorship approach, how she trains young lawyers through real-world case preparation, and her insights on tackling trucking accident cases with empathy. Deena also gives practical advice on how attorneys can sharpen their skills by thoroughly analyzing evidence.
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Intro 0:01
You’re listening to 15 Minutes where we feature community leaders sharing what the rest of us should know but likely don’t.
Chad Franzen 0:13
Hi. Chad Franzen here, one of the hosts of Share Your Voice, where we talk with top notch law firms and lawyers about what it takes to grow a successful law practice. This episode is brought to you by Gladiator Law Marketing, delivering tailor made services to help you accomplish your objectives and maximize your growth potential to have a successful marketing campaign and make sure you’re getting the best ROI your firm needs to have a better website and better content. Gladiator Law Marketing uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and decades of experience to outperform the competition to learn more. Go to gladiatorlawmarketing.com, where you can schedule a free marketing consultation. My guest today is Deena Buchanan, theFounder of Buchanan Law Firm LLC. Deena is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and the Georgetown University Law Center. After graduating from law school in 1998 she worked for a large law practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and later for a Fortune 500 company in Philadelphia and other large law firms where she worked on several high profile cases. In 2008, Deena returned to New Mexico and opened her own firm, Buchanan Law Firm LLC, to provide representation to individuals and employment and personal injury matters. In addition to her legal work, Deena has a deep appreciation for the natural beauty of New Mexico and the American Southwest. She can often be found hiking the trails, skiing with her family, or capturing nature with her camera. Deena divides her time between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Deena, great to have you today. How are you?
Deena Buchanan 1:36
So nice to see you.
Chad Franzen 1:38
Thanks you as well. Thank you. Hey, tell me how and when did you know that becoming an attorney was going to be your thing?
Deena Buchanan 1:48
Jeez, I was very young, and I always ask my parents why, and I never accepted their answer. So my parents, we don’t have lawyers in the family. And so they started thinking that I was going to go into law at a very young age. It’s probably about nine years old. When I started getting that response from them, I feel bad for them now.
Chad Franzen 2:12
So they they figured you had characteristics. I’m an attorney. When did you decide that that this is what I really want?
Deena Buchanan 2:20
Um, you know, I was probably in late middle school, early high school, I got involved in the United Nations club. And, you know, we did a lot of competitive, you know, debate, style things there. And I was just fascinated by international law and the resolutions that we wrote. We got to interviews and ambassadors and personnel, different embassies at the UN and it just gave me this real appreciation for the impact that you can do as a body. And then you know that translated eventually into to law.
Chad Franzen 2:58
So take me through kind of your journey as you kind of started as you broke into the legal industry. How did that go?
Deena Buchanan 3:05
Well after college at the University of Pittsburgh, I went to law school. I was working at that point on publishing a piece about the introduction of the equal the EEO act, and in the media business. My uncle was a station manager at a TV station in Pittsburgh, and I had the opportunity to interview a bunch of the women who worked with him, and a woman I called my aunt Estelle, who was the HR director at the TV station, and we created a case study about how this TV station really changed, you know, their practices, and brought women on air, and brought women into management and stuff to comply with the act. And that was really cool. I got to go to the National Archives in DC, and then a few months later, I was in law school at Georgetown, and it was just wonderful to go to Washington. So that was awesome. And then after law school, I moved to Albuquerque. My ex husband is from here, and I’d always been interested in the southwest. So we got jobs out here, and moved out here, went home to Philadelphia for about eight years and then moved back in 2008 with our family.
Chad Franzen 4:26
While you were in Philadelphia, you worked for some larger law firms and some corporations. What did you kind of do there?
Deena Buchanan 4:33
So when I was at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, I was in the employment law department and worked on class action litigation for some of the age discrimination cases that they were handling for like Bell, Atlantic and there were a few others that involved the changeover from a pension plan to what they called a cash balance plan. They were massive, massive. Cases, and then some smaller cases too, that I was able to have a more hands on role with. And then I went to more of a regional law firm called Wolf Block. And then from there, in house to Toll Brothers. I was the first employment lawyer at Toll Brothers, and I got to do a combination of litigation. And we did. We were in over 20 states at the time, so I got to fly around the country doing litigation and employment law stuff throughout the company. So that was pretty crazy. It was a great, great experience. And then I moved back to New Mexico because I had little ones, and I was they say in house is a step back, but my in house job was not that, It was pretty intense. So it was wonderful. It was just really hard to travel that much with a baby on the way and a toddler at the time.
Chad Franzen 5:54
How did your kind of your experience working for those large firms or maybe a corporation? How did that help you now in your current role as a plaintiff’s attorney?
Deena Buchanan 6:05
It has been amazing. You know, after I came back to New Mexico as well, I represented access insurance carriers, they hired me to represent trucking companies, hospitals, large, large manufacturers, oil companies in really high stakes litigation as well. So with all of those experiences, I really got a deep understanding of how companies work. When I was at Toll Brothers, I was a corporate assistant secretary or something, so I had an official corporate role, and I was allowed to go to board of directors meetings at times, to make presentations to the board. I got to work with the C suite executives on a regular basis as well as department heads. And you really get to kind of see how an organization lives and breathes and functions, and where its focuses are, and how it makes decisions, and who’s at the table, what documents are out there, how communications are shared through a company, and especially because we were publicly traded, we had, you know, the ramp up to sec disclosures and you know, Bob’s statements to the shareholders and stuff. So it was just amazing. And I draw on that knowledge every day when I get ready for corporate representative depositions, I ask for documents. You know, I teach my associates how to, you know, follow the trail of decision makers. And when I teach, I often teach lawyers, you know, how how a company works, to kind of just so that they understand what they’re asking for. Because, you know, a lot of times plaintiffs will ask for a document by a title that they’ve heard some other company use, but the company just says, well, we don’t have that document. Well, they may not have that document, but they might have a document that plays that role within the other company. So it’s kind of understanding what these functions are, so that when we go for information, we can just ask good questions too. I mean, if when I was on the defense side, I’d get questions and say, Well, what are they asking for? And it was just some term of art that they thought that they were swinging around in the industry, but it really didn’t apply, or it didn’t apply to that company.
Chad Franzen 8:18
So so, you know, you obviously had some great experience. You clearly learned a lot. But, you know, opening up your own law firm, I’m sure that offered some new things that maybe you didn’t know. Were there any kind of maybe big surprises, or things like, Oh, I, you know, I didn’t think about that, you know, right, when you started out.
Deena Buchanan 8:35
Oh, gosh. I mean, there’s so much to running a business that is so different from anything that I learned in law school, or, you know, practicing at law firms, or even, you know, luckily, I had the corporate experience for several years, because that honestly gave me the best insight into, you know, profitability and making hard decisions, because I was at Toll Brothers in 2008 when the crash happened in the housing industry, and I was involved in a lot of, you know, layoffs across the country, and watching those decisions be made, it taught me so many valuable lessons about running a business. But when you put up your own shingle, and you’ve got to focus on profitability. There’s so many things from, you know, spending on technology, scaling when to scale, when to hire, when to scale back. You know when to focus on one practice area versus multiple? You know how to brand yourself. I mean, those things have all been a journey for me in the last five years.
Chad Franzen 9:44
Yeah, but what so you know, you’ve, you’ve kind of zeroed in on employment and personal injury matters. What would you say are some keys? If you have a quick answer to this, what are some keys to successfully representing clients in those types of cases? Employment and personal injury matters.
Deena Buchanan 10:01
Oh, sure. Well, with both of them, we have to lead with empathy. One of our core values at our firm is that we lead with empathy, and I teach it, I preach it. I hire based on that. And if people really are not passionate about working with individuals who’ve been hurt or injured in some way. They they won’t do well here, and they won’t be happy here. So I would say that if you’re going to work in this space for plaintiffs, you’re dealing with people at the very worst parts of their lives. You know you’ve got people that have been catastrophically injured or in chronic pain, or their loved ones are watching them go through it in the trucking cases, or they have had the loss of a loved one, and there’s so much that they have to deal with other than the lawsuit. So you can’t come in expecting clients to be you know, able to give you all of the information that you need or documents that you need. You’ve got to be very, very patient, and you’ve got to know, you know what they need and how to help them to help you. And then you know, the same thing with employment, you’ve you really have to come to it with empathy, because a lot of our clients I see have, you know trauma at work. We represent victims of sexual assault in the workplace. We represent people that have been sexually harassed and almost terrorized by co workers, retaliated against, you know, had their safety put in danger, sometimes physically, because of, you know, complaints that they’ve made. And so dealing with that and the loss of a job, it’s like a death for them. And so they may come to us, and they’re just out of sorts, and, you know, they’re dealing with a lot of grief, and so you just really have to come to them knowing how to help them for a while, and walk with them. So those, those are two. Those are two for sure, and then obviously, subject area knowledge. I mean, they’re both special areas of law, so don’t go into your first one by yourself. I get co counsel who is experienced in either area.
Chad Franzen 12:09
You mentioned trucking cases I know you’ve recently with sometime, maybe even in the past year, become board certified in trucking law. What does that mean? What does that mean to you, and how does that affect you?
Deena Buchanan 12:21
That was a huge accomplishment. For me. So it required a board examination that is issued by the National Board of Trial Advocates. And then there was a really extensive application that required a certain number of trials, a certain number of depositions in the trucking area, certain number of caseload that we have, you know, appearances in in court, emotions that you write. I mean, there’s a matrix of all the experiences that you get in doing trucking cases. And it took me a several years to build up my experience to be able to qualify for it. So I passed, oh, and then you also have to have extensive cles in the couple of years prior to taking the test and applying, and I was able to do that by going to a lot of conferences with some groups that I’m in.
Chad Franzen 13:15
So what does that? So are you focused mainly on, you know, representing truckers.
Deena Buchanan 13:20
I represent people that have been injured in trucking crashes. Okay, so that can be truckers. I actually have a handful of clients who are truck drivers. And you know, over the years, I have actually represented them in employment cases as well, because I’ve driven a tractor trailer now, I’ve gone to Trucking School in Montana and Alaska to just get my hands in the truck and work with instructors and learn how to do a pre trip inspection and learn how the regulations and rules really impact the driver. So sometimes I do represent truck drivers, and sometimes I represent people in passenger vehicles that have been hurt or killed from a trucking crash.
Chad Franzen 14:06
You know, people probably don’t pay much attention to that until they’re in that exact scenario. Are there so for somebody who’s naive or, you know, maybe there’s some misconceptions or something like that, what are some things about trucking law that maybe should be important to people who often drive on freeways or highways that.
Deena Buchanan 14:29
Yeah, so a couple things. In New Mexico, we are very prone to dust storms, especially this time of year, so it’s a really, you know, timely issue for people driving in places like New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, other parts of the West and the Midwest that get dust storms during a windy season. I definitely suggest following what they call The Smith System, and you can Google it. The Smith System has several principles that they teach truck drivers for. Basically defensive driving. So it’s like, you know, keep your distance, always give yourself an out. You know, it’s basically some really basic principles of maintaining vigilance about the space around you, and knowing how far your stopping distance is when you’re driving around vehicles. So if you are finding your if you do find yourself in a situation where you’re in very tight traffic with tractor trailers, don’t let yourself get boxed in between two big trucks on a busy highway. Stay in the past the fast lane pass. Give yourself good space before you cut back over in front of that trucker, because they may or may not be able to stop if there’s bad weather, you know, be really aware. Is it really windy? Does the truck driver you know on their truck, do you see lots of straps flapping or change flapping, or things looking loose, because there’s rules about tying down a load and securing it. Sometimes crashes happen because we don’t realize that their load is coming loose. And, you know, it’s almost impossible to predict that as a as a driver with a car, but it’s something that, you know, I saw this on a on the highway just a few weeks ago, and I told my husband, Get away. Get around that truck. I’m worried about the load. I am not fun to take a road trip with anymore, because I’m constantly saying these things to my family. Another thing, you know, like I said, bad weather, slow down. Keep keep distance. Give the truckers Space in New Mexico, and I know all through the West and the Midwest, we have, we have oil fields that have, you know, very kind of random, isolated little dirt roads and stuff off of the highway. So you could be on a highway, and then suddenly a tractor trailer has to make a hard right to get on a not very well improved road. And I know my friends in Minnesota have this in the logging industry. So if you see a truck ahead of you that looks like it’s changing to the left lane, it might be actually getting ready to turn right, and it’s almost impossible to predict. But a lot of crashes happen that way, where the cars will continue to go because it looks like the truck the trucks aren’t supposed to do that. That is not the way to make that turn. But truckers often find themselves in that situation because they’re not really slow going slow enough. They’re not prepared enough in advance. They don’t want to go past it and turn around and try again. So they will try to, you know, go out to make a sharp turn, and they will then cause an underride where the oncoming traffic will go under the trailer. And it’s very hard to survive that. So, you know, be just aware, if you know that there’s roads like that coming up because you’re local to the area, be very cautious. Bad weather, give them lots of space and at night, to just kind of be aware of spacing.
Chad Franzen 17:57
What kind of inspired you to to choose this is kind of a field of interest? Obviously, it takes a lot of work. You had to, I mean, I would have to learn how to drive a truck, personally, like, what, what, uh, what caused you to, kind of, what inspired you to do this.
Deena Buchanan 18:11
You know, I handled several, uh, multiple death cases when I was on the defense side. And, um, catastrophic cases, you know, where maybe nine vehicles, 11 vehicles, 15 vehicles, or there was a bus, a bus meet semi, where a lot of people died or were seriously injured. And I just, I saw the devastation that it can cause when people are unsafe drivers. And I’ve really kind of found this as you know, I love digging into a complex problem. I love the technical side of it, the engineering and the reconstruction and the medical side, but I get such satisfaction knowing that I am making a difference and hopefully making the roads safer, because I do drive on these highways with my family. And you know, if I can make a point to a trucking company that they get safer, and I can save some other family out there, it just means the world to me.
Chad Franzen 19:20
You know, from all of your experiences there, you know, my guess, just as kind of somebody who’s ignorant to this type of thing, would be that a lot of the accidents are caused because people view trucks as an impediment to where they’re going, and they just want to zip around or somehow, somehow, get through the, get through the maybe that slowdown caused by the truck. If there’s some advice you could give to trucking companies as you try and make them safer. What would that be?
Deena Buchanan 19:43
Well, you know, distraction is a huge issue in trucking right now. Well, there’s two main things I would tell trucking companies make things safer. First of all, rollout side under we have these things called side underride guards that are available out in the. World, and in the United States, our government does not require that trucking companies use them. But over and over again, I have seen horrible, horrible outcomes because of like I said, when a truck is turning and somebody goes underneath it, trucks will cut people off, and there is no hope for those people. But there’s actually these little safety devices that you can put on the under the sides of the trailer that would prevent that from happening, just like they have in the back. You’ve probably seen those low bars that they that they have, so you can do a similar thing on the sides, and that would save countless lives. You would end up with injuries, but you would not end up with, you know, people literally losing their heads in the in the process. It’s off, yeah, so that’s and it’s not expensive. I mean, it’s, it’s not going to be cheap to roll out, but for the, for the the cost versus the benefit. I mean, you’d be saving so many lives every year, if we had that. The other thing is dealing with distraction, which is, there’s studies that say that distracted drivers are basically as impaired as people that are drunk on the road. And, you know, truckers are using their cell phones. Truckers are, you know, talking on the phone, even with hands free, and they’re distracted. I had a case where a trucker was looking on his phone at a GPS for directions because he hadn’t done proper trip planning and just roll. He just proceeded right in front of my client, who died, just really cut right across the highway because he just didn’t see a stop sign, because he’s looking at his phone. So, you know, there’s so many things to, I would say, use technologies out there. This is what’s out there. Chad. I mean, it’s amazing. There’s facial recognition software that you can fit in the cab of a truck that watches the trucker and sends an alert to the trucking company that says, hey, this person is nodding off. This person is out looking like they’re looking down at a phone, and it sends an alarm and it’ll correct the driver while they’re on the road. Wow. So can you imagine if all of the trucking companies out there got that technology, so many people’s lives would be saved?
Chad Franzen 22:19
Yeah, wow. That would be huge. You mentioned that you do some teaching. How have you or in what ways do you do that, and how do you successfully mentor, maybe a new or coach new attorneys throughout their career?
Deena Buchanan 22:30
So I, I love speaking at conferences. I just finished talking to the Florida Trial Lawyers last week, on Friday, I got to talk to them about a trucking topic. And then a couple weeks ago, I was in Charlotte, North Carolina with the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys, which I love. I also speak for the American Association for Justice Trucking Litigation Group. They’ve been kind to ask me to speak a couple times at their conferences, going to Minnesota to speak to the trial lawyers there a couple weeks. So I just, you know, anybody who wants to know something about trucking litigation, or, you know, I often will talk about things from just my experience, or from things specifically about having been on the defense side. You know, we’re representing corporations. What can I share about how things how things work? So it’s just really fun for me. I get to meet a lot of great people, and I just feel so good being able to share.
Chad Franzen 23:34
Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. What about your leadership style within your own firm? How have you kind of shaped that culture at the Buchanan Law Firm.
Deena Buchanan 23:41
Well, just before you, you and I got on this call, I was sitting with my associate, and we had eight binders stretched out on my desk, and we were going through all of the documents to help prepare her for a deposition. She’s doing a pretty complex deposition, and this is her first one like that. So you know, basically what I do is I’ll have multiple meetings. She’ll send me, you know, drafts of outlines and her thoughts, and then we’ll meet. And, you know, we’re going to go through theory. We went through some of the law, I gave her some sample questions. We practiced, you know, what the examination is going to flow like, and then sent her back with, you know, a bunch of things to look at, and then we’ll, we’ll keep meeting about that up until the date that she does the deposition. So I’m pretty hands on, you know, I do really love it’s hard for me to delegate and let go, but I love watching my associates do depot. So a lot of times, you know, they’ll be on the depot, I’ll be on the Depo, and then on teams chat or something, I’ll be sending them, you know, questions or follow up or something, so that they do it, they get the experience, but they have some training wheels. Or if we do it in person, I’ll just sit in there. And then on breaks, we chat about, you know, like, Hey, I think we can clean this up. Or I. Ask these questions or something. So it’s, it’s great.
Chad Franzen 25:03
Yes, yeah, sounds like it, hey, how? I’m sure, I’m sure a lot of these situations that you get involved in in terms of representing people, they can be very emotionally charged. How? How do you kind of develop and maintain strong relationships while still being honest with your clients.
Deena Buchanan 25:24
Oh, with the clients they you know the key is, if you lead with empathy, and you’re a genuine person, and you really care about what they’re going through, then you’re really walking a journey with them, and they they can tell the difference if you’re just in it for money, or whether you really care about what’s happening. So you know, at our firm, you know, these cases are potentially huge cases, but we try not to talk about money honestly with the clients, or even really think about that. We think about telling their story. So you really have to get to know them and and go to their homes or spend time with them. You know, go have a meal with them. You know, chat with them on the phone during things, talk to them at the holidays. You know, I have clients who text me at the holidays, and I always love getting the text messages because, you know, they really become sort of our extended family. If you do that, then you know they they know when you call them to give them good news or bad news, that you’re doing the best you can and that you are caring about what happens to them more than anything.
Chad Franzen 26:36
I have one more question for you, but first, tell me how people can find out more about Buchanan Law Firm.
Deena Buchanan 26:41
Sure our website is www.buchananlawnm.com, and our phone number is 505-900-3559, so either way is a great way to call to reach out.
Chad Franzen 26:56
We talked about your kind of your influence on younger attorneys and your teaching experience. What advice could you give to somebody that would be valuable based on your, you know, extensive experience that they would never learn academically or in law school?
Deena Buchanan 27:14
One thing that you never learn in law school is the importance of really digging in to the evidence. In a case, you learn the rules, you learn the laws, but you don’t learn about how to use the evidence. So the first thing that I did as a young lawyer that I think really served me well long term was i i learned how to be very organized about documents. You know, what is the evidence? I’ve read through everything, summarized it in a spreadsheet, made sure that I only relate like once I looked at it, I could always find it again by coming up with some system, like using Bates numbers or or something. And it gave the partners that I was working for a lot of confidence in me, because they knew I knew the facts and I knew the file better than anybody. And if you start there and you do your research, so you know how, then you know what is the law, and what are your goals under the law, and which you know, whether it’s a defense or whether it’s the being the plaintiff, what do you need to prove? So, what evidence do you need and why? And then, you know, dig in to every document. It’s amazing what you can find if you just read it so many times, I see lawyers who skim through stuff, or they they ignore a bunch of documents, and they just focus on the things they think are important. But there’s gold sometimes in those, you know, spreadsheets or printouts or emails or whatever it is that are tedious to go through. So that’s what I would suggest.
Chad Franzen 28:39
Yeah, very interesting, good stuff. Hey, Deena, thank you so much for all of your thoughts and your insights. Really appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. Been great to talk.
Deena Buchanan 28:48
Thanks for having me. I so appreciate it. Okay, take care. Bye.
Chad Franzen 28:51
Thank you. So long, everybody.
Outro 28:55
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