Words & Photography by Michael Kinney
When career-minded professionals are asked how they got started in their life’s work, many will say they’ve known since they were kids what they wanted to do.
Eric Urbach is not one of them. The Edmond (Okla.) based attorney admits he sort of just fell into the law profession almost by happenstance.
But it didn’t take Urbach long to figure out that being an advocate for his clients was his true calling and the reason he founded the Urbach Law Firm.
“As an attorney I have clients and I can tell you that I do a heck of a lot of counseling,” Urbach said. “I do a heck of a lot of counseling, helping people understand and look at their options and give them advice. And that is something I have been good at all my life.”
Urbach, 51, was born at Deaconess Hospital in Oklahoma City before he was adopted and his family took him to Lawton (Okla.). After graduating from Lawton Eisenhower High in 1991, he came back to Oklahoma City to attend college at Oklahoma Christian University. He graduated in 1996.
It was at that point, Urbach was presented with the question of what to do next. He had no strong feelings on what to do or what direction his career path should head.
“It really got to be where I didn’t have anything else going,” Urbach said. “I was almost out of options at that point. Not out of options, but I didn’t have any direction. I have a cousin who’s an attorney, and at the time in undergrad, I started working as a courier for a law firm. I was just an errand boy. I washed cars, I did whatever they needed. I got to go to the courthouse a lot and do the filing for them and that type of thing. I really just didn’t have any other avenues going.”
Urbach applied to the Oklahoma City University Law School in 1996 and graduated in 2000. He passed the bar exam that same year.
Even though Urbach didn’t start off being passionate about being a lawyer, he soon found out he had several of the ingredients needed to make a good one.
“Whenever I was in school, a lot of it was oral recitation and answering back and forth to the professor. Well, the topics came easy for me,” said Urbach. “I began to learn that I think the right way. As an attorney, it was easy for me to see both sides of an argument and understand the concepts that we were talking about so you just start to feel like you’re doing the thing that you’re fit to do. It was a light bulb coming on type of a deal. I felt very comfortable with the material right away.”
After passing the bar, Urbach dabbled in a number of different areas of the law, such as family law.
However, for the past decade, Urbach’s emphasis has been on personal injury work. He started out defending insurance companies until he realized he was better suited to be on the other side of the table defending the injured.
“The difficulty in that type of law is you would think that every car wreck is just the same old thing,” Urbach said. “But it is not because of the people involved and the circumstances of it. There are a lot of little nuances that you have to consider whenever you are counseling a client.
Urbach said his personality is what makes him an ideal personal injury lawyer. While others may try and use fire and brimstone tactics to go after insurance companies, he likes to use a different approach.
“I believe you get more with honey than vinegar,” Urbach said with a smile. “People say I want a bulldog lawyer, But I am talking to somebody who holds the checkbook. Do you think I want to make them mad at me? No, I want them to like me, like we’re working on this thing together. Let’s talk about this together. The give me this or I’ll see you in court kind of stuff does not work. But there is a time to be firm and I don’t ever cower down to the insurance adjuster.”
This style has served Urbach well. He has been named one of Super Lawyers’ Top-Rated Personal Injury Lawyers since 2016.
The Urbach Law Firm (1 S. Broadway) has become a staple of the Edmond community. So much so that most of his business comes through word of mouth. That and a giant billboard, which he says is just a reminder to his former clients to not forget about him the next time they are in trouble.
In his more than two decades in practice, Urbach has strived to represent his clients to the best of his ability. In that time, he’s learned one undeniable fact that he uses as the foundation any time someone walks into his office in need of an advocate.
“Everything is negotiable and most things are a negotiation in any relationship really,” said Urbach. “That’s really what I’ve taken away from it all. And there are other areas of law that if you ask other attorneys, they may tell you something different, but I think that’s what I would say.”
(Branding Profiles are a great way for entrepreneurs, founders or CEOs to give potential clients or potential workers insight into who they are doing business with. Telling your story doesn’t have to be some drab and basic write up in the About/Our Story Section. Michael Kinney Media turns it into much more. Contact us to find out what MKM can do for you.)
Instagram: mkinneymedia
X (Twitter): MKinneyMedia
Youtube: Michael Kinney Media
Photos (SmugMug): Michael Kinney