Brandon Thompson, Ciresi Conlin LLP

What are the biggest challenges you currently see in personal injury law?

From a practitioner’s perspective, I think one of the biggest challenges we face is an erosion of collegiality. It’s far too easy these days – in all aspects of life – for people to have a tendency to look at things with an “us or them” mentality. We all of course have clients to represent and jobs to do. But at the end of the day, we lawyers have so much in common in terms of the goals we are trying to achieve. This job is hard enough as it is; the more we can work together, even when we’re adversaries, the better.

How do you manage work/life balance?

I have the incredible good fortune of being married to my medical analyst, so I think I’ve got a much more fluid work/life balance than most – we can talk about cases almost any time, whenever a thought pops into one of our heads, which is an awfully good thing for our clients! That said, between the two of us we have five kids ages seven to fifteen so our “work/life balance” usually involves balancing work while running back and forth to all the other things life requires.

What is one thing you would change about Minnesota if you could?

I absolutely love enjoying the outdoors in winter, so if I could change one thing about Minnesota it would be to guarantee 1-3 inches of snow every day from November 15 until the day before I leave with my kids for spring break.

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

I was an avid mountain climber before I had kids, and I’ve been to the highest points of all fifty states. I used to be able to name them all, too, although that skill may have faded with time!