Incoming DTCI president wants to encourage collegiality across disciplines

Norris Cunningham, the incoming president of the Defense Trial Counsel of Indiana, plans to put an emphasis on community as he leads the organization.

A member of DTCI since the late 1990s and Stoll Keenon Ogden’s Indianapolis office since 2022, Cunningham said he knows firsthand how crucial a conglomerate of encouraging peers is to the success of an attorney.

He wants to bring that support to lawyers and community members alike.

A particular source of pride in his time with DTCI and his firm so far, and a reflection of the community he strives to champion, is the development of the Classrooms to Courtrooms initiative, which provides funding, education, and support to high school students to encourage them to pursue careers in the legal profession.

The initiative has been collaborating with leaders at Arsenal Tech High School since 2021, and as the years go by, Cunningham sees an increasingly positive response to the program. Through the initiative, the firm and DTCI have been able to support students’ interest in the law and their efforts to compete in mock trials.

“We try and make sure that cost is not a barrier [for students] and the organization has really stepped up in a major way since we started this program to help underwrite the costs,” he said. “I think it’s created a new energy in the organization. But it’s also contributing in a way that I think is really helpful, long term, to our profession. We’re making new lawyers.”

Within the legal profession, Cunningham said the country is at a point in time where lawyers in particular must be the ones to promote the rule of law. He said he wants to encourage a strong sense of community not only within the defense bar, but across the profession, in order to uphold the oath lawyers take when they begin the practice.

“I’m going to be very focused on working with the plaintiffs bar and other associations and consistently standing up, no matter the issue, standing up ultimately, for the rule of law,” he said. “We’re going to dialog around with other association leadership around the best way that we all can collectively promote that very important aspect of what we are charged to do as lawyers.”

Here’s what else Cunningham had to say about his experience with DTCI.

How and when did you become involved with DTCI?

I’ve been a member of DTCI since I began to practice [law]. So, since the late 1990s. I joined the DTCI Board of Directors in 2018. I was a member of the board from 2018 to 2022 and then [in] 2023 I became an officer, and I served as president-elect this year.

Why is it important to be part of an organization like DTCI?

Some of the best mentoring that I received over the course of my career, particularly as a young lawyer, wasn’t mainly coming from my supervising attorney or even the attorneys at my law firm. It was coming from other, more senior lawyers who were working in and practicing in this health care litigation space [and] medical practice defense space.

It’s been an incredible growth opportunity for me. It’s been an opportunity not just to learn the context of the work that we do, but to really get a very good sense of how to work with lawyers on the other side, but getting some real good information that can be really helpful on particular venues and things like that. So, it’s really important, I think, for young people to have these kinds of relationships that are outside of those that are just tied to your firm. Those additional perspectives, that diversity of perspective, becomes really, really key to some growth and maturation.

It’s certainly a reciprocal relationship. I think we get an awful lot out of the organization, and a lot of that is really dependent on how much we’re able to put in as well, and [what] others are able to put into it. I have found it to be really important for my growth professionally as a lawyer, but really just understanding how to operate among this bar, how to operate with respect to the opposition, and certainly how to grow and build relationships among the bench.

I like the fact that we continue to bring in young lawyers who are interested in continuing that outreach and the growth that we get from expanding our numbers.•