Grit as a Lifestyle, with Costa Ivone Injury Lawyers Co-Founder Anthony Ivone

The unofficial motto of the Detroit Lions football team is “grit.”

It’s also the unofficial motto of Detroit-raised personal injury and workers’ compensation attorney Anthony Ivone.

“That's how we live. We will outlast the opposition,” Ivone says of the phrase. “That's what we do every day here.”

By “here,” Ivone means his firm, Costa Ivone Injury Lawyers, which he co-founded with partner Julio Costa in 2015. The Chicago-based firm started as Ivone and Costa taking a risk to strike out on their own in just their first few years as lawyers. Now, Costa Ivone is celebrating 10 years with a team of 11 attorneys (and counting) that have recovered more than $200M for injured clients and their families.

In one case, Ivone and his team recovered $1.5M for a client who was working on an elevator that malfunctioned, causing him to blow out his knee and requiring a total knee replacement. Ivone and team worked tirelessly to connect the dots that the elevator company had a history of work orders with the same problem that caused their client’s injury. In another case, he sued a ride share company and a driver who struck a cyclist in a bike lane, who ended up having four surgeries to have her rotator cuff and labrum repaired. The ride share company fought back by claiming that the driver was not an employee – a hot-button legal issue across venues. But after extensive litigation, Ivone and team resolved the matter for $2.75M for their injured client.

Ivone’s grit shines through in those difficult cases, but it is the core of all areas of his life. In November, he completed the Arizona Ironman triathlon race, swimming, biking and running a total of 140.6 miles. “You have to make a decision that you’re not going to quit,” says Ivone of the race. “That works so well in all these other areas of my life. You lose a motion and it’s not going your way. You must have the resilience to bounce back. I’m always looking for ways to keep myself sharp and strong, because it’s more important now than ever.”

Lawdragon: What drew you to personal injury and workers' compensation law?

Anthony Ivone: I happened to get a clerkship with a personal injury law firm, and that was when I realized, "Okay, I like this work." I'm interested in it; I'm helping people. Then, after law school, I had an opportunity to join a workers' compensation firm. I spent almost two years at that firm, then my current business partner and I decided to leave and start our own firm.

LD: Did you always have an idea that you would want to start your own firm?

AI: Once I was clerking in the first personal injury firm, I had the feeling that I would like to do this on my own.

LD: Why is that?

AI: I really like the business side of things. But, of course, I had no real idea what that looked like. I mean, at that point, I was in my second year at law school. But when I was at the work comp firm, our boss said that if we wanted to make extra money, we had to bring in cases to the firm for a fee split. So, my current business partner and I were like, "All right, we'll go get cases." We’re very friendly people, outgoing, and we spent the better part of six months to a year making relationships with professionals all over the city of Chicago. And we got a lot of cases. So, at some point we decided, you know what? We're going to just do this thing on our own.

LD: That's fantastic. And what do you enjoy about working with your partner?

AI: We're close friends, which I think is very important. Sometimes you have disagreements, and you get heated. If you can't just come back in a day and be like, "All right, let's go get dinner or grab a drink," that can be tough. But we're very different in a lot of ways. He loves work comp and he's very much a technician. I've kind of wanted to move away from work comp and focus more on the personal injury side. Not from a business standpoint; from a personal standpoint. Which is why I head up the personal injury department at our firm.

LD: What drew you more to personal injury?

AI: One, I find it more interesting. And two, somebody had to do it. We were getting these good cases and somebody had to handle them. I find that it is not efficient or effective to handle a mixed work comp/PI caseload because of how different the cases are. Personal injury, you want to be thinking, "Okay, how am I going to construct this argument? What's my strategy here?" Work comp, on the other hand, is very much a fast-paced, higher-volume practice, and clients are calling you all the time. So if you're dealing with a caseload where clients are calling you all day every day, it's very hard to sit and strategize and prepare a PI case the way you're supposed to, at least during business hours. Which is why we, along with a lot of firms, segregate our attorneys. You're either a comp attorney or a PI attorney.

LD: Speaking of your team, when you're bringing on new people, what do you look for?

AI: Three years ago, we sat down and endeavored to find out what are the characteristics we embody that have allowed us to succeed. What I mean is, what makes Costa Ivone unique. So, we made a list of core values of the firm that we have literally painted all over our office. And that’s how we hire – by our core values. We're looking for people who believe in what we believe in. My personal favorite core value is the 1% rule. We strive to be 1% better every single day.

My personal favorite core value is the 1% rule. We strive to be 1% better every single day.

LD: And you’ve hired new team members recently. What does your path for growth look like now?

AI: We're very much growing. My focus right now is building out a robust litigation department. The reason for that is we're just seeing a trend of pre-lit cases being treated harsher than they should be. We're not always getting fair negotiations. Big insurance is now daring law firms to litigate cases. They offer short money because many firms simply don’t have the will or the resources to take their cases through litigation and to trial. We aren’t going to back down. We will invest whatever resources are necessary, so our attorneys not only are on an even playing field with Big Insurance, but actually have a competitive advantage. If they want us to litigate every case to get what our client’s deserve then so be it. It takes what it takes – another one of our core values. 

LD: As you go through these changes, how does the firm look now compared to what you expected it might look like 10 years down the line when you started?

AI: When we first started, we set some goals. We hit our 10-year goal in year eight. And it was the kind of goal you don't expect to reach. We were just nose to the grindstone. And so, we have new goals now. I still don't entirely know how we're going to get to those new goals. I have some ideas, but you've just got to start working towards them. That’s the thing about really big goals. They’re hard to reach. However, I have overwhelming confidence in our team that we will get there.

LD: That’s a great outlook. What advice would you give to younger lawyers who may be interested in starting their own practice early on, like you did?

AI: We used to get people saying all the time, "You’re so brave. How'd you guys do that?” And I was like, "Actually, you’ve got it all wrong." When we started the law firm, I was 26, 27, maybe. I was making no money in my current job. We had no risk whatsoever. The people I respect the most that go and do this are people where they’ve got a family, two kids, a mortgage. That's a risky, scary situation. You cannot afford to fail. But also, maybe that’s the best situation because that motivation is huge. But for young lawyers, I say, hey, go give it a shot. If you give it your absolute best effort and it does not work out, then do something else. But there's absolutely nothing that should be holding you back.

LD: Over the last 10 years, are there any cases that stand out to you as particularly memorable?

AI: There was one in our first full year as a firm. It was a work comp case. So, in work comp, there are caps on attorney's fees. So as an attorney, once you get the settlement to that cap, you have no incentive to go above and beyond. "Why should I fight this case for another six months? I can't make any more money." And that is a very real thing that some attorneys think about, particularly in the work comp space.

He came into our office, and we looked at the settlement. I believe it was around $196,000, which is where his cap hit. But we were like, "Look, your case is worth way more money than this. This is crazy." I suspect that the attorney didn’t want to keep fighting because there was nothing in it for him. So, we're like, "Look, let us take the case. Just agree to waive the cap, because we won't be able to get any attorney's fees on the work that was previously done." So, we're like, "Look, waive the cap, hire us. We will net you more money.” He did, and 90 days later we settled the case I think for $380,000. So, the client ended up getting six figures more in his pocket. I vividly remember how happy and grateful he was.

That case was really important for us because we were very cash-poor at the time, starting a business. We had all these cases coming in, but we had no income because we weren't settling cases at that point; it takes time. I remember, the insurance company sent the check to the wrong address. And I said, "We need this check. Badly." I called them. I was like, "I will drive to your office right now. Cancel the check, write a new one." And they knew our situation too, right? Because workman’s comp is a small world, and when we left our old job, the talk around was that we were going to be blackballed, because our former boss was big in the work comp scene.

LD: Really?

AI: Yes. This was really important. So, the insurance adjuster overnighted it to us; we got the check. We paid the other attorney his full fee. But that was the swing case. That case gave us the runway to be able to fight these other cases. And we take that attitude still to this day. We're not settling cases because there's a cap on what we can get. We're getting what the case is worth. Period.

We're not settling cases because there's a cap on what we can get. We're getting what the case is worth. Period.

LD: What have you found most fulfilling about your work over the years?

AI: Every now and again, you get a client that is just over the moon, happy and grateful. At the end of 2023, we had a trial, and I ended up getting a verdict over policy limits. Our client was so happy. And not about the money. She didn't really care about that. She was just happy that she got her day in court and that we were willing to go to war for her. She would come to the office, and she wanted pictures with everybody. It’s just a really good feeling.

LD: And how would you describe your style as a lawyer?

AI: I'm very obstinate. And bullish. When I have conviction in something I’m going full speed. I’m not easily derailed from my course. It can be very good and bad at the same time. I'd say more good than bad; at least thus far in my career, it's served me very well.

LD: You mentioned you're from Detroit, and you’ve said you bring your Detroit roots into your work. How does that manifest?

AI: I'm a huge Detroit sports fan. And Detroit is a working-class city. All my family's working class. I'm working class. I'm a lawyer; whatever. I'm working class. And the Detroit Lions motto is "grit." That's how we live. We are not going to be bullied and intimidated. We're going to outwork the opposition. That's how you beat a multi-billion dollar insurance company, because even though they have all this money, they don't hire enough lawyers. They give them too large of a caseload. And our motto is, well, how do we beat them? Well, we're willing to get in the trenches and do the work and provide our attorneys with more resources than you're giving your attorneys, even though you have billions of dollars. And we're going to beat you. That's the Detroit motto: We're going to get it done. That's how the Lions play football. That's how we operate.

LD: That’s great. And can you tell me a bit about being a part of the community in Chicago now?

AI: We do a lot in the community, and we always have. It's really important to us. Even when we didn't have money, when we were struggling early on, we gave back. We just said, you know what? If we go bankrupt, we're not going to regret the money we gave to charity. Or what we gave back to the community.

LD: Absolutely.

AI: That's how I look at it. When you look back, if things go sideways, what decisions do you regret? You never regret helping somebody. So, we give hundreds of backpacks with school supplies to kids every year. Hopefully that number gets to be thousands. We gave a thousand turkeys over Thanksgiving. We set up community events in the Hispanic community. We sponsor local Hispanic soccer teams. Then, there's a really cool charity out of Northwestern called Jackson Chance Foundation. If your child is in the NICU, they say outcomes are scientifically proven to be better if the parents are there every day. Well, guess what? It costs $36 to park in Northwestern. So, this charity was started by people whose kids were in the NICU. So, we donate to that every year, and the money goes to pay for parking for parents. We're looking for more opportunities to be in the community. This is our community. We want to do whatever we can.