Erik M. Tadda

About Erik

Erik Tadda did not arrive at personal injury law by way of a career plan. He arrived at it at fifteen, the summer he got his driver’s license, when a family friend who practiced personal injury law asked whether he wanted to work in the office.

What that meant in practice was driving. The attorney would prepare for a deposition in the passenger seat while Erik drove him to it, then ask whether he wanted to come in, and Erik would carry the briefcase and sit through observing the whole process. He delivered pleadings to file with the court, collected cheques from carriers, and brought paperwork to clients who were unable to make it into the office. By the time he was in college he was working hands on with files as a legal assistant.

So when he went to law school he was not going to find out what kind of lawyer he wanted to be. He already knew, and he has said he went for the license. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business from Louisiana State University in 1987 and his Juris Doctor from the LSU Law Center in 1991 graduating 26th in the class of over 200 students, and was admitted in Louisiana that year. He was admitted in the Eastern District of Louisiana the same year, before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 1993, and in the Middle District of Louisiana in 1994.

He practiced with a partner for several years before going out on his own in 2001, and organized The Tadda Law Firm as a Louisiana limited liability company in December 2006. He has grown it without debt and without lines of credit, which he acknowledges has probably slowed it down, and which has also meant the firm has never had to take a case for the wrong reason.

He lives in Prairieville and holds LSU football and baseball season tickets.

How Erik works

Erik does the parts of a case that firms of a certain size normally delegate. He reads the medical records himself rather than working from a summary prepared by someone else, and he is the one who speaks to the insurance adjuster, because he regards negotiation as a conversation and believes you can hear things on a phone call that never survive into an email.

He is also the person who notices when a claim is not worth bringing. Where an at-fault driver has no insurance and no assets, a judgment can be uncollectable, and pursuing it costs a client money to arrive nowhere. He would rather say that at the first meeting than two years later.

On settlement he makes a recommendation and explains the reasoning, then leaves the decision where it belongs. In his own words, the clients make the decision.

Most of the firm’s work is car accident claims and workers’ compensation, handled from one office in Baton Rouge for clients across the surrounding parishes. The full list of practice areas and the story of the firm are a click away.