Josh Teague

I grew up in Gilmer County, Georgia. My family moved into North Georgia in the early 1800s and has called this state home ever since. I am the product of small-town Georgia — of people who work with their hands, who know their neighbors, and who don’t ask for help until they truly need it.

That is who I represent, and I represent them all over Georgia. From the mountains to the coast, the vast majority of this state is not Atlanta. It is small towns and rural counties where a serious wreck can wipe out a family’s savings, cost someone the job they’ve held for twenty years, and leave them facing an insurance company that assumes they’ll take whatever they’re offered.

The insurance companies I go up against don’t understand those clients. The adjuster deciding what your injuries are “worth” is usually sitting in an office in another state, looking at a computer screen. They don’t know your community, they don’t know what you do for a living, and they are not on your side. I know how these cases are actually decided — the values of the people in the jury box, and the courts and judges outside of the city where those cases are tried.

My Background

I attended Kennesaw State University, where I graduated Cum Laude, before attending Florida Coastal School of Law and graduating in the top 20% of my class. Throughout my senior year of high school and college, I worked for a small law firm. During law school, I clerked for two Superior Court Judges and completed an internship with a Federal Prosecutor’s Office.

I was lucky to spend a significant amount of time in internship and work-study programs that each offered a different insight, and gave me a perspective on cases that many lawyers simply don’t have. In fact, I met my wife, LeeAnn, while she was working for her grandmother, the Clerk of Superior Court, and I was completing a work-study program.

What I Do

I focus my practice on representing people who have been seriously injured, and the families of those who have been killed, because someone else was careless. I represent people who have been:

• Injured in a car wreck
• Injured on a motorcycle
• Hit by a tractor-trailer or commercial vehicle
• Left with a wrongful death claim after losing a family member

I handle these cases throughout Georgia. You do not have to live near my office, and you do not have to come to it — much of what I do for a client can be handled by phone, text, or email, from wherever they are recovering.

I built my career in the courtroom. I began my practice as a criminal defense lawyer, standing between ordinary people and the full weight of the government, and I know how Georgia Juries and Judges think. That experience shaped everything about how I handle an injury case. I do not treat a claim as paperwork to be shuffled toward whatever the adjuster is willing to pay. I prepare every case as if it is going to be tried, because that is the only thing an insurance company actually respects.

I still handle a small number of serious criminal matters each year, including DUI and other felony cases. The attorneys in our firm who devote their practices entirely to criminal defense handle the rest, which frees me to give my injured clients the attention their cases deserve.

Why I Fight

I choose to fight, every day, for people who cannot fight for themselves. I do this because I have felt powerless, I have needed help, and I have depended on others who stood up for me in my life.

I grew up in the 1980s and 90s. I spent all of my time reading every comic book I could find, watching superhero shows and movies, and playing video games until bedtime. I found comfort in heroes who stood up to the powerful forces that terrified everyone else and who fought for people who couldn’t fight back. Those childhood heroes taught me to empathize with the underdog, fostered compassion for the people who found the least understanding among everyone else, and instilled in me a distrust of the powerful, who so often bully and take advantage of everyone else.

As I got older and began to follow the news, it was clear that what I saw as a child wasn’t going to change. Stories about the most powerful — the government and large corporations — abusing and taking advantage of people were commonplace. Except the heroes fighting back were lawyers. I knew at that point in my life that I wanted to be a lawyer. Not to get rich, become famous, or have a prestigious career, but to fight. To fight for people who had been run over by something far bigger than they were, to hold the powerful accountable, and to be a voice for those who felt they couldn’t be heard.

Nowhere is that imbalance clearer than in an injury case. On one side is a person whose life was turned upside down in a matter of seconds. On the other side is a multi-billion-dollar insurance company with a business model that depends on paying out as little as possible. Their playbook is not a secret:

• Call the injured person early, before they have a lawyer, and get a recorded statement
• Offer a quick, small check while the medical bills are still coming in
• Blame the injury on a “pre-existing condition” or a prior wreck
• Delay, deny, and hope the person gets tired, desperate, or runs out of time
• Treat a life-altering injury as a line item on a spreadsheet

That is what I stand between my clients and every single day.

Why Here

After law school, I turned down the path most of my classmates took. I had no interest in working for a large corporate firm in Atlanta, billing hours on behalf of the same companies I had spent my whole life watching take advantage of people. I came home instead, and I built a firm from nothing in the community that raised me.

I have never regretted it, and I have never outgrown it. My practice has grown well beyond the county I grew up in, but the client has not changed: the working family, the small business owner, the person nobody in a high-rise conference room was ever going to take seriously. Those clients exist in every corner of this state, and most of them are a long way from Atlanta.

I fight for my clients with everything I know. I work their cases with empathy and passion. I feel their anxiety and their pain. I do these things because I want to make a difference, not because I want to make money. I want my life to be of service to people who feel hopeless.

That is why I continue in this fight day after day: for the injured, for the families left behind, and to hold the powerful to account — every day for the rest of my life.