Prosecutor Turned Plaintiff's Lawyer: How Dave Abels Built a Chicago Firm Around One Idea

Rush hour on Lake Shore Drive doesn't leave much room for error, and neither does a rideshare pickup gone wrong on a busy Chicago corner. When one of those moments turns into a crash, the person left dealing with medical bills and a totaled car is usually going up against an insurance company that negotiates claims for a living, with adjusters and lawyers on staff whose entire job is to pay out as little as the law allows. Dave Abels has spent almost three decades on the other side of that fight, and the path he took to get there says a lot about how he approaches a case today.

A Prosecutor's Instincts, Pointed the Other Direction

Abels grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and captained the hockey team at Evanston Township High School before heading to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he played junior varsity hockey and earned his bachelor's degree in 1991. He went on to law school at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, graduating in 1994 and getting admitted to the Illinois Bar the same year. He's also a member of the Arizona State Bar.

His first legal job wasn't representing injured people at all. Abels started as a prosecutor with the Henry County State's Attorney's Office in Cambridge, Illinois, trying traffic cases, misdemeanors, and felonies. Over that stretch he tried more than 20 jury trials, the kind of courtroom repetition that a lot of lawyers never get, even over a full career. Trying that many cases in front of a jury teaches a lawyer things that reading about trial work never will: how jurors actually respond to evidence, how a case falls apart under cross-examination, and how to read a room in real time when the outcome is in someone else's hands.

From the Prosecution Table to the Defense Table

After his time as a prosecutor, Abels moved into criminal defense, handling felony cases out of the courthouse at 26th and California in Cook County. That courthouse processes one of the largest criminal dockets in the country, and spending time there as a defense attorney meant learning how to build a case from the opposite chair, questioning the state's evidence instead of presenting it.

That combination, arguing both sides of a criminal courtroom before ever taking a personal injury case, isn't a common résumé in the personal injury world. Most injury attorneys come up through civil litigation or insurance defense work, not criminal courts. It's part of what shaped how Abels eventually built his own firm.

Shifting the Fight to Injury Victims

In 1997, Abels moved into personal injury work, representing people hurt in accidents instead of prosecuting or defending criminal cases. In 2008, he co-founded Abels & Annes, P.C. with Gary Annes, a Chicago firm that has stayed focused on one thing since: representing people hurt in car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle and bicycle crashes, pedestrian accidents, slip and falls, and cases involving sexual abuse.

As his firm's bio puts it: "Dave's goal from the outset of every case is to serve the best interests of the clients." It's a line that shows up in how the firm operates day to day, not just in its marketing, and it's the kind of statement that only means something if the firm's actual casework backs it up.

What the Firm Actually Handles Day to Day

Car accidents remain the largest share of the firm's caseload, which tracks with where most of its clients come from: Chicago traffic is dense, intersections are complicated, and a rear-end collision or a left-turn crash can leave someone with medical bills that outlast the at-fault driver's insurance coverage. Truck accidents bring their own complexity, since a crash involving a commercial vehicle often means dealing with a trucking company's insurer and, sometimes, federal trucking regulations that don't come into play in an ordinary car accident case. Motorcycle accidents carry a different kind of challenge entirely: motorcyclists tend to sustain more serious injuries relative to the size of the collision, and insurance adjusters sometimes lean on bias against riders to try to shift blame in a claim.

Bicycle and pedestrian accidents round out the firm's core vehicle-related work, cases that often turn on Chicago's specific traffic infrastructure and right-of-way laws. Slip and fall cases, by contrast, usually come down to premises liability: whether a property owner knew or should have known about a hazard and failed to fix it or warn visitors. And the firm's sexual abuse cases, which it lists as their own category rather than folding into general personal injury work, involve a different set of legal standards and a different level of sensitivity than a typical accident claim.

Rideshare Accidents: A Newer, More Complicated Category

Car accident law hasn't stayed still since Abels & Annes opened its doors in 2008. Rideshare apps have added a category of case that didn't used to exist: a passenger hurt in an Uber or Lyft, a driver hit by one, or a rideshare driver injured on the job. Abels & Annes treats rideshare accidents as their own category of case rather than folding them into standard auto claims, and the reason comes down to insurance.

Illinois, like most states, recognizes different insurance coverage periods depending on what a rideshare driver's app was doing at the moment of a crash. If the driver was logged out of the app entirely, their personal auto policy typically applies, the same as any other driver. If the driver was logged in and waiting for a ride request, a limited layer of contingent coverage from the rideshare company kicks in. And if the driver had already accepted a ride, whether they were en route to pick up a passenger or actively transporting one, a much larger commercial policy from the rideshare company itself usually applies. Figuring out which of those three situations applies to a specific crash, and getting the right insurer to acknowledge it, is often the first real fight in a rideshare accident case, before the injury claim itself even gets negotiated.

Working on Contingency: No Fee Unless They Win

Abels & Annes takes cases on contingency, meaning clients don't pay legal fees unless the firm wins their case. In practice, that means the firm covers the upfront costs of investigating a claim, gathering medical records, and, if necessary, taking a case to trial, and only recovers its fee as a percentage of whatever the client ultimately receives. Free consultations are available around the clock.

That arrangement matters most to the people who need it. Someone recovering from a crash, missing work, and facing a stack of medical bills is rarely in a position to pay a lawyer by the hour while the case plays out over months or longer. A contingency fee model shifts that financial risk onto the firm instead of the client, which is part of why it's become the standard way personal injury cases get handled rather than the exception.

Two Offices, One Philosophy

The firm operates out of two Chicago-area offices: its main location at 100 N LaSalle St in downtown Chicago, and a second office in Evanston, the same suburb where Abels grew up. Having an office in Evanston isn't just a convenience for clients north of the city. It puts the firm in the community Abels came from, the same one where he played high school hockey decades before he ever argued a case in front of a jury.

Recognition That Comes From Peers, Not Just Marketing

Since 2014, Abels has been named to Super Lawyers, an honor determined through a peer-nomination and evaluation process rather than something a firm can purchase, and made Thomson Reuters' Top 100 Lawyers list every year from 2016 through 2023. He carries an AVVO rating of 10.0, the platform's highest possible score, which factors in experience, disciplinary history, and peer endorsements. He also holds lifetime membership in both the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum, invitation-only groups limited to attorneys who have secured verdicts or settlements of at least $1 million or $2 million, respectively, for a client.

None of those are things a firm can buy outright. They come from case results and peer recognition built up over years, which is part of why Abels & Annes has kept its focus narrow, personal injury and closely related practice areas, rather than expanding into other areas of law the way some firms do once they reach a certain size.

Still Fighting the Same Fight

More than 30 years after his first trial as a prosecutor, Abels is still doing a version of the same job: standing across the table from the side with more resources and more practice negotiating claims, and trying to even things out for the person who got hurt. "Let Us Fight for You" isn't just the firm's slogan. It's a fairly literal description of what a personal injury lawyer's job actually is, whether the case involves a car accident on Lake Shore Drive, a rideshare crash with three possible insurance policies in play, or a slip and fall that a property owner never bothered to fix.