Bruce Hoof

For over 40 years, Bruce Hoof’s practice of law has concentrated in civil litigation. Today he is recognized as a highly skilled, creative, and successful civil litigator whose practice is focused on two principal areas, insurance defense and the representation of personal injury claimants. The high regard in which Bruce is held within the legal profession is reflected by the fact that his peer attorneys have for over 40 consecutive years annually voted him the highest possible rating [“AV”] awarded by Martindale-Hubbell, the pre-eminent nationally recognized peer-rated attorney directory of the American legal profession.

Bruce acts as Of Counsel to the Law Offices of Stephen R. Paul where he assists in both complex civil litigation matters and serious personal injury claims. Bruce received his undergraduate degree from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and in the top 5% of his class. He selected Vanderbilt’s Law School after he was awarded its prestigious Patrick Wilson Scholarship, and he graduated just outside the top 10% of his class.

Bruce’s experience and legal acumen have made him a highly skilled, creative, and successful practitioner in the multifaceted, multilayered field of civil litigation. Bruce’s extensive practice in civil litigation has covered the widest variety of civil matters. His skills as a civil practitioner have enabled him to reliably obtain optimal results for his clients in both the defense of claims against insurance companies and their insureds and in recovering compensation for personal injury claimants.

Bruce’s experience as an insurance defense attorney has actually enhanced his ability to represent personal injury plaintiffs. This is because his representation of liability insurance companies has frequently involved Bruce in those insurers’ evaluations of personal injury claims they hired him to defend, thereby making him become familiar with how those insurance companies’ claims departments evaluate personal injury claims. That understanding allows Bruce to accurately project how insurance companies will respond to his clients’ personal injury claims and has thereby equipped him to more effectively advocate those claims. Additionally, Bruce’s defense of personal injury claims often requires significant study of medical literature and medical records and frequently includes his consultation with, and deposing of, medical experts. By that experience Bruce has acquired an unusually sophisticated level of medical knowledge with regard to physical conditions frequently presented with personal injuries. He has been able to utilize that medical understanding to maximize recoveries he has made for his personal injury clients.

Bruce has experienced consistent and significant success assisting claimants in the recovery of financial compensation for personal injuries. In one such case, Bruce contended that an automobile accident caused his client – a young girl – to suffer a closed head brain injury which had left her permanently disabled. The two-week trial of that case involved the testimony of several highly specialized medical experts who disagreed over whether his client had suffered that closed-head permanent injury. At the end of the trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Bruce’s client in an amount close to two million dollars which was at that time the largest amount ever awarded by a jury in that county.