“Please Tell Me you Didn’t. . . How to Keep Client’s Out of the Jailhouse, Poorhouse and Lawyers Out of the Nuthouse” -Blog
If you ever feel you can’t summon the strength to climb that next hill, it might help you to think, “if fellow lawyer, Dr. Stan Churchwell can do it,” you can too.
I had known Charles Stanley “Stan” Churchwell, JD, DPM for some time, as a referring transactional lawyer. I knew he had dual legal and podiatric medical doctorates and served as the past president of both the Texas Podiatric Medical Association and the Dallas County Podiatric Medical Society. And I knew he has a thriving legal practice, usually representing other doctors throughout the state in transactional matters. But that’s all I knew.
We decided to meet over lunch at the Capital Grille to discuss a non-compete litigation case he had referred to me. He walked in, sat down and I soon noticed he was making adjustments under the table. He looked up, as if he had just dropped a napkin, and said, “Sorry, I can’t tell where my feet are.” He then explained and later gave me permission to write about it here.
Stan began his career as a podiatric surgeon in 1984, after graduating from Jesuit High in Dallas and earning a BS in Engineering from Tulane.
Then, one night just before Thanksgiving in 1986, Stan was struck from behind by a young drunk driver on I-10 in San Antonio. He awoke in the hospital with fractures to the C-5, C-6 and C-7 and damage to the spinal cord, which rendered him a quadriplegic in what is called a “miracle” spinal contusion. While in the hospital, Stan suffered deep vein thrombosis and a pulmonary aneurysm.
Understand, any one of these might have killed a normal person. But not Stan. Instead, he picked himself up, clawed himself back and after years of grueling rehab, was able to walk and function well enough to become board certified in foot surgery in 1991. But he wasn’t done yet.
Stan then decided to go to law school to add a JD to his engineering degree and DPM. He was licensed to practice law in Texas in 1993. Then, this Energizer Bunny force of nature just kept going and going. He earned an LLM in Estate Planning in 2013, another LLM in Technology and Intellectual Property Law, from the University of Liverpool, 2016.
He has served on the Texas State Board of Podiatric Medical Examiners, Governor Appointment 1996-2002 and seems to have been elected or appointed to a leadership role of every organization he has ever joined.
If you read his c.v., however, you will find no mention of the accident or of the super-human struggles he overcame. In fact, he doesn’t even have a website. Never needed one to keep busy. I now understand why.