The Chopin Law Firm LLC

Focus and practice areas

The Chopin Law Firm is a personal injury practice based in New Orleans. Most of its work involves people who have been hurt and the claims that follow an injury. The client is usually the injured person or a family member acting on their behalf. The firm handles car accident and truck accident cases. It also takes slip and fall claims and workers' compensation matters.

The list runs wider than road and workplace injuries. The firm names medical malpractice, wrongful death, and toxic exposure among its practice areas. It also handles property damage and insurance claims, business and commercial litigation, and business disruption claims. In my opinion that mix shows a firm that keeps a general civil litigation base alongside its injury work.

Maritime injury has its own place on the firm's list. This covers Jones Act claims for injured seamen and cases under the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act. Both are federal frameworks with their own rules about who qualifies and what an injured worker can recover. A New Orleans firm that names this work is reading its market, since the port and offshore industry drive a steady share of injury claims along the Gulf Coast.

How injury and maritime claims tend to move

The stages behind these practice areas help explain what the firm does day to day. A car or truck accident claim usually starts with medical treatment and an insurance notice, then moves through investigation, demand, and negotiation. Louisiana uses comparative fault, so the share of blame assigned to the injured person can reduce a recovery. Truck cases often bring in extra parties, such as a trucking company and its insurer, which raises the stakes and the paperwork. Federal safety rules for commercial trucking can also come into play, and records like driver logs and maintenance files often matter to the outcome.

Slip and fall claims turn on premises liability. The injured person generally has to show that a property owner knew, or should have known, about a hazard and failed to fix it. Workers' compensation runs on a separate track. It pays defined benefits for a workplace injury without a finding of fault, and it limits what a worker can claim from an employer, which is why some cases involve both a comp claim and a separate suit against a third party.

Federal maritime frameworks

Maritime injury work splits along worker status. The Jones Act covers seamen who spend enough time in service of a vessel and lets them sue an employer for negligence. The Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act covers many dock and harbor workers who fall outside seaman status, and it operates more like a federal compensation system. Sorting which law applies is often the first fight in a Gulf Coast injury case, and it can decide the value of a claim before any evidence is weighed.

How the team is built

The firm is owned and managed by a father and son attorney team. That structure puts family names at the top of a practice that lists eleven attorneys in total. The lawyers named are Justin M. Chopin, Richard A. Chopin, Frankie Cannone, Jacques DeGruy, Michael D. Letourneau, Philip D. Lorio IV, Lindsay Louapre, Leah Rhodes, Adam P. Sanderson, Patrick Weilbaecher, and John Wegmann.

The firm states that its attorneys hold more than 100 years of combined experience. A combined figure covers the whole roster, so it works as a measure of collective tenure across the team. A father and son at the head is a common pattern in long-running local firms, where a senior lawyer builds the practice and a second generation joins it. Eleven attorneys is a mid-sized bench for a personal injury firm. It is large enough to staff several matters at once and small enough that clients tend to work with named lawyers.

The site publishes a full biography for one attorney, Richard A. Chopin, and lists the rest by name and title. As a reviewer I read that as a firm that leads with its senior trial lawyer while keeping the wider roster in view. Readers who want detail on a specific attorney would need to contact the firm directly.

What the trial record shows

Richard A. Chopin carries the credential the firm puts forward most plainly. He is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates, a national association of trial lawyers whose membership comes through invitation based on courtroom experience. The firm states that he has tried more than 125 cases to verdict.

A verdict count matters in personal injury work because most claims settle before trial. A lawyer with more than 125 trials to verdict has taken a large number of cases the full distance, in front of a judge or a jury. Insurance carriers track which firms are willing to try a case, and that willingness can shape how a claim is valued in negotiation. In my opinion this is the most useful single credential the firm publishes.

The firm also states that it holds an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell. That rating comes from peer review of a lawyer's legal ability and ethical standards, and it is the highest mark on the Martindale scale. Other lawyers and judges award it through a structured review, which gives it more weight than a self-declared label. The AV mark applies to individual lawyers, so a reader should check which attorneys at the firm hold it.

Serious claims and how they proceed

Medical malpractice, wrongful death, and toxic exposure are among the harder files a personal injury firm can take. Each one carries its own procedure, and knowing that procedure explains why these cases run longer than a routine collision claim.

In Louisiana, most medical malpractice claims first go before a medical review panel of physicians, which gives an opinion on whether the care met the standard before the case reaches court. That step adds time and expense to a claim. Wrongful death actions in Louisiana can be brought by a defined set of family members, in an order the statute sets out, and they seek the survivors' own losses after a death caused by another party's fault. Toxic exposure cases often turn on causation and timing, since the link between a substance and an illness can take years to appear and calls for medical and scientific proof.

These are general outlines of how such matters proceed, not a claim about any single result at the firm. They do show why a practice that lists them alongside car and truck work keeps a broad set of skills on hand.

Where the firm practices and takes referrals

The Chopin Law Firm works across three states. It handles cases throughout Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, and states that it is licensed to practice in all three. Cross-border coverage helps in the Gulf region, where an accident, a job, and a home address can each fall in a different jurisdiction. A firm licensed in all three can keep a single case in one set of hands as it crosses a state line, and anyone can confirm a lawyer's standing through each state's bar association.

The firm is based in downtown New Orleans and accepts referrals from other attorneys. Referral work is common among firms that take on trial-heavy or unusual matters a general practice would rather hand off. It usually means the firm sees cases another lawyer has already screened, and it points to a standing among peers for handling the harder files.

The firm keeps profiles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. Those channels give a prospective client a second place to check the firm's name and current activity beyond its own website. For legal claims, public records and state bar directories carry more weight than social posts, and a reader can confirm the firm's Martindale rating on that service directly. The site does not list a founding year, so the firm's exact age stays open, though its public record shows a New Orleans injury practice led by a trial lawyer and staffed by eleven attorneys.