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At 94 years old, attorney Don Ward of Ward & Ward Personal Injury Law still goes into work every day.
A longtime trial lawyer who has been practicing law since 1957, Ward has also been a mainstay with the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association, serving as an association past president and being honored with ITLA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.
“It has really been an educational process as far as I’m concerned, and it never ceases,” Ward said of being a trial lawyer.
Recently, Ward broke ground in a new area with ITLA, appearing as the initial guest on the association’s new podcast, “Legal Legends of the Hoosier State.” The podcast debuted in May.
Joe Williams, an attorney with Williams & Piatt LLC, serves as the podcast’s moderator.
Williams said the organization has for years been interested in recording the history of law and trial lawyers in Indiana, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the development of an ITLA podcast.
Post-COVID, Williams said ITLA Executive Director Jason Bell called to ask if he’d be interested in moderating the podcast.
“I was thrilled to do it,” Williams said.
Williams has been a practicing attorney for more than 17 years. He said he wanted to be a trial lawyer even as a kid and remembers job shadowing a trial attorney when he was in seventh grade.
Part of the reason he likes being a trial lawyer, Williams said, is because he enjoys any opportunity he gets to stand up in front of people and talk — something that comes in handy now with the podcast.
Getting started
The premise of the “Legal Legends of the Hoosier State” podcast is getting to know attorneys who set in motion changes to help trial lawyers like Williams and his clients.
Sarah Goldblatt, ITLA’s membership, marketing and communications director, said the genesis for the podcast came from an association staff meeting. Goldblatt said ITLA looked around at other state associations and saw what they were doing in terms of podcasts and decided to make their own.
ITLA recorded its first podcast in March and debuted it May 1.
Goldblatt said the staff was looking at past ITLA presidents and wanted to get their stories to share with members.
“We thought it would be nice if we could capture some of those stories,” she said.
Through the podcast, ITLA also hopes to get more young lawyers involved in the association.
The goal, Goldblatt said, is to record at least four podcasts per year.
Each episode will examine the personal history of its featured guest, Williams said. Where the podcast goes depends on who Williams is talking to, but the discussion will generally center around the benefits they’ve provided for ITLA and its members.
“I imagine it’s just going to organically go where it needs to go, depending on who we’re talking to,” he said.
First podcast with Ward
In ITLA’s first podcast, Williams talks with Ward about his start in law, his early days with ITLA and changes that have come about from the group’s advocacy.
In 1954, Ward, an Osgood native, graduated from Notre Dame Law School. The Korean War was ongoing while he was in law school, and he did two years of military service after graduating before starting practice in January 1957.
In addition to his time in private practice, Ward served as a Marion County deputy trial prosecutor from 1962–1965 and as deputy corporation counsel for the city of Indianapolis from 1975–1980, according to his firm’s website.
In the fourth grade, a teacher asked Ward what he wanted to be.
“And I told the teacher at that time I was going to be a lawyer. And you know, Joe, I never changed that opinion,” Ward said on the ITLA podcast.
His goal in law school was to become a trial lawyer representing the injured victims of society, he said. He described the beauty of being a plaintiff’s lawyer as taking what cases he wants and getting paid on a contingency basis.
After Ward moved to Indianapolis in 1957, he became involved with ITLA.
One experience with ITLA that Ward discussed on the podcast was the political process involved in raising the state’s wrongful death compensation cap.
He said ITLA knew it had to bring in people to testify before the state Legislature about the impact of the cap on their lives.
According to ITLA’s website, the $10,000 wrongful death limit was first raised to $15,000.
“Later, the cap was entirely removed,” Ward said.
Bell, ITLA’s executive director, said the feedback on the first podcast has been extremely positive, with a lot of accolades given to Ward for his work with the organization.
While it’s currently a quarterly feature, “I could see us getting to six a year,” Bell said.
The next episode is already in the works: On June 1, Williams was scheduled to drive to West Lafayette to interview Charley Vaughan Sr., an attorney and past ITLA president who worked to fight discrimination against children with AIDS and helped Ryan White return to school in the 1980s.•
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