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The walls of David Shrager’s downtown law office are covered by a collection of national accolades, recogni- tions, and awards. For 15-plus years as a criminal law- yer, DUI defense attorney, and most recently as Judge on the Court of Judicial Discipline, he has received awards etched with words describing him as Premier, Superior, Best, and Top Ten. But after you meet him you will quickly discover that for Shrager it’s not about the accolades. It is about serving his clients and getting great results. “I’d be comfortable living next to 95% of m y c l i e n t e l e ,” h e s a y s .
Hailing from a family of lawyers, the career choice came naturally. After two years of corporate litigation, however, boredom sunk in. He wasn’t built for sitting in an office all day pouring over documents, human interactions coming few and far between.
This isn’t for me, he thought to himself. So he quit. While he figured out what to do with his life, he took a job as a bouncer and bartender in area night- clubs—upscale and otherwise. The former was a nod to his background as an amateur fighter in the Golden Gloves.
Over time, though, friends would turn to him for ad- vice, anxious and scared over what DUIs and bar fights would bring them. Jail? Fines? What’s going to happen to me? I made one bad mistake... is my life going to be ruined?
The guidance he provided proved mutually beneficial. In helping others, he ended up helping himself, able to pinpoint an area of law that he knew he would enjoy and excel at.
“If you like helping people so much, why didn’t you become a prosecutor?”
It’s a question he hears a lot. Reflective, he points out the different aspects to justice, one being the ability to balance it with mercy and compassion. “That’s really important to me,”he says.
Sure, there are predators out there, but the majority of his clients are someone’s mother, daughter, father, son; struggling with drug and alcohol addictions or mental health issues. Far from being bad or evil human beings, they’re simply struggling with something bigger than they are. More often than not, the person they’re hurt- ing is themselves, and the criminal case against them is a symptom of the problem that’s gripped them.
Clients span demographics, ethnicities, and tax brack- ets. Many people have taken his business card—doc- tors, CEOs, judges, nuclear engineers—usually with a chuckle, until the call comes in the middle of the night. “When people realize how easily you can get in the system, be wrongly accused, or make a mistake, it’s scary. It’s easy to go from citizen to defendant in the blink of the eye,” he says. “Most people will think it will never happen to them but it’s a conversation I’ve had millions of times.”
Regardless of the situation, the reality is the same: right now, at this moment in time, someone needs his help. And he gives it, with one caveat.
“I have the world’s worst business motto,”he says.“After I help a client, I say to them,‘I don’t ever want to see you again.’ If I’ve done my job right, I will have made sure they don’t have these problems anymore.”
Regardless of the situ- ation, the reality is the same: right now, at this moment in time, someone needs his help. And he gives it, with one caveat.
His success has also come with immeasurable sacrifice, in part due to the 24/7 accessibility he extends. “Over the years, people would say,‘I can never talk to my law- yer.’No one can ever say that about me. It’s very simple: I treat people the way I would want to be treated if I were in that situation.”
That approach was also born out of necessity. “When I got started, I didn’t have any money. I was living in a dinky apartment in the South Side where you had to crawl over someone to get out of bed,” he adds. “I did everything by myself, leaving my card with anyone and anywhere. Many of my habits now came from necessity, but translated into being able to help my clients better.”
When someone does find themselves on the other side of the law, David takes a triage approach, iden-
Getting to the root of the problem is paramount. Each of us make millions of decisions every day. Some are inconsequential, but some can be devastating.
“If we all had a camera watching us 24-hours a day and saw anyone at the worst 10 minutes of their life, they’d look pretty terrible,” he says. “In an instant, you could make one bad decision and the next thing you know you’re a defendant.” Exclude one factor from any equation and suddenly, the story has a very different ending.
Let’s say you ran into a friend at college. Maybe if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have stayed for one more drink. If you hadn’t stayed, maybe you could have beaten the rain. “I don’t think a good person who’s made a single bad decision needs to be removed from the game of life,” he says. “So, what we want to do is help those people and put them back on the path. I want them to be productive citizens, working and paying taxes. We don’t want to warehouse people in jail.”
tifying what the situation is, how it can be fixed and what he can do to help someone sleep a little better that night.
“There’s nothing in the world that’s worse than laying your head on a pillow and not being able to sleep. When something haunts us, the last thought before we go to bed and the first one when we wake up, it’s the worst feeling in the world. I want to try to avoid people having that feeling. I want them to know it’s b e i n g h a n d l e d a n d I w i l l t a k e c a r e o f i t ,” h e e x p l a i n s .
If and when you ever do have to make that call, what you’ll hear on the other end is a reassurance: You don’t have to worry.
It’s his job to worry about your case, a job from which he will never clock out early or take a day off. “People are putting their lives in your hands,”he says.“You have to respect that.”
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