Most personal injury attorneys will tell you they got into the work to help people. Lawrence Kajy can point to the exact place that idea took root, and it wasn’t a courtroom. It was a pharmacy counter in Detroit with a check-cashing window built into it.
A Pharmacy Counter in Detroit
Before he was an attorney, Kajy spent time working at a Detroit pharmacy that doubled as a check-cashing business. People who had just settled a car accident claim would come in to cash their check, and Kajy noticed the same thing over and over. They didn’t look relieved. They looked deflated. If he had to sum up the feeling in one word, he’s said, it would be hopelessness. They’d been hurt, they’d waited months for a number that was supposed to make things right, and by the time the check cleared, it didn’t change much of anything. They walked out about as discouraged as they walked in.
That memory is the reason Kajy Law Firm, which does business as Kajy Cares, is built around a simple idea: more work should mean better results for the client, not just a faster payout for the firm. Kajy has said he watched other attorneys let cases sit, skip calls back to clients, and take the first offer an insurance company put on the table just to close the file. He built his own firm to do the opposite, and he’s tried to keep it that way as it’s grown.
More Work, Not Less
That philosophy shows up in specific, almost stubborn ways. Kajy prepares every case as though it’s headed to trial, even though most of them settle, because he says you never know at the outset which ones won’t. Insurance companies know which firms will actually go the distance and which ones will fold for a quick number. Kajy has watched competitors settle cases for a fraction of what his own firm recovered on nearly identical facts, simply because the other side knew that firm wouldn’t push back.
He also fronts the cost of building a case, things like expert witnesses, accident reconstruction, and depositions, without charging interest, so a client never pays anything out of pocket unless and until the firm wins. That can add up to a few thousand dollars per case that Kajy covers himself and only recovers once there’s a settlement. He still sits in on intakes, too. When a family is deciding whether to sign with a firm, it’s often Kajy on the call or in the room himself, not just a staff member reading from a script, and he says that still surprises people who assume a firm his size has moved past that.
The Insurance Folder He Hands Out
One habit says as much about Kajy as anything on his resume. He hands new clients, and honestly anyone who walks into his office, a thick red folder meant to hold their registration and insurance card, so it’s easy to find after a crash. On the back, he’s written out his own recommendations for what kind of coverage to carry, starting with unlimited medical benefits if a driver can afford them, plus at least $500,000 in bodily injury coverage in case they ever hurt someone else. In his experience, that limit covers close to 99 percent of accidents. It’s a small thing, a folder and a few sentences of advice, but it’s the kind of thing that shows up more in how someone runs a law firm than in any tagline.
What Michigan’s 2019 No-Fault Overhaul Actually Changed
Kajy’s interest in Michigan’s insurance laws goes back further than most people realize. While still in law school, around 2013, he wrote a paper predicting what would happen if state lawmakers followed through on years of insurance industry pressure to overhaul Michigan’s no-fault system. When the reform finally passed in 2019, giving drivers the option to choose lower medical coverage limits instead of the unlimited coverage Michigan had required for decades, much of what he’d written turned out to be accurate.
The tradeoff is one Kajy sees play out with clients on a regular basis. Someone chooses a lower coverage tier to save a little on their monthly premium, often without fully realizing what they’re giving up, and then ends up with a six-figure hospital bill and a policy that only covers a fraction of it. If they don’t have private insurance or a family member who can provide long-term care, they’re often left with nowhere to turn for the ongoing treatment they need. The reform was sold to Michigan drivers as a way to bring insurance costs down statewide. Kajy has said flatly that in his experience, it hasn’t done that.
What Insurance Adjusters Don’t Want You to Know
Kajy is candid about the tactics insurance adjusters use in the days right after a crash, before most people have hired a lawyer. An adjuster will often call and ask something as simple as how someone is doing today. Even a person in real pain will usually say they’re fine out of pure habit, and Kajy has seen that offhand answer end up typed into a claim file as proof the person wasn’t hurt. If pain shows up the next day instead of right away, which happens constantly with soft tissue and joint injuries, the claim can get flagged and delayed simply because it doesn’t match what someone said in an unguarded moment on a recorded line.
He brings up his own brother to make the point. After a car accident over a recent weekend, his brother barely felt anything the day it happened. By the next morning, he could hardly move. Kajy has represented enough clients to know that pattern is common, not suspicious, but he also knows an insurance company will use exactly that kind of delay against a claim if given the chance.
The Accidents That Don’t Fit the Textbook
Not every crash Kajy’s firm handles looks like a standard two-car accident, and each type comes with its own wrinkle. A passenger hurt in an Uber or Lyft generally relies on their own coverage first, similar to riding in a friend’s car, unless the rideshare driver is at fault, in which case a claim can also be brought against the rideshare company’s policy. Commercial trucking cases carry a different kind of complexity: Michigan allows some of the heaviest trucks in the country, and Kajy has found that a lot of the serious wrecks his firm handles trace back to maintenance that got skipped because a company was racing to its next delivery rather than to any single dramatic factor. Motorcycle cases have their own quirk built into Michigan law. A rider hurt by a car is generally limited to whatever medical coverage that car’s driver happens to carry, even though motorcycle injuries tend to be more severe than the average car accident. Kajy has pushed back on that setup publicly, since it puts an injured rider’s recovery in the hands of a policy they never chose.
A Case Testing the Limits of Government Immunity
One case currently on Kajy’s desk involves an accident with Detroit’s QLine streetcar, an issue attorneys and local media have flagged as a legal gray area as ridership grows. His firm represents a client who was injured in a QLine collision at a time when the line was owned by a group of private investors. After the crash, ownership was transferred to the Regional Transit Authority, a government entity, which is now asserting government immunity, a defense that generally shields public entities from lawsuits except in specific carved-out situations, such as accidents involving a motor vehicle. The wrinkle is that Michigan courts haven’t classified the QLine itself as a motor vehicle, so that exception doesn’t clearly apply. Kajy argues that a vehicle that runs on city streets and can rear-end a car the way his client’s was hit shouldn’t be treated any differently than an ordinary motor vehicle for liability purposes, and he expects the question to eventually land in front of an appeals court.
Why These Cases Take Time
Clients sometimes ask why a case can take two years or more to resolve in Michigan, longer than in many other states. Part of the answer is that Michigan doesn’t have a bad faith law the way some states do, meaning there’s no real financial penalty hanging over an insurance company that drags its feet. Without that pressure, Kajy says, some insurers will simply wait out a claim rather than pay a fair number early, which is exactly why he treats every case as trial-ready from the start. Once an adjuster understands a firm will actually go to court rather than accept a lowball number just to move on, the tone of the negotiation tends to change.
Roots in the Community He Represents
Kajy’s ties to metro Detroit run deeper than his caseload. During law school he served as director of academic affairs for the Arab and Chaldean law student association, and he remains active with the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce today, communities that make up a meaningful share of the clients who walk through his door. He’s also shown up in person for clients when it mattered, meeting people at the hospital or at their home instead of routing everything through a staff member, something he says still happens more often than people expect from a firm his size.
Where the Firm Goes From Here
Kajy Law Firm has represented more than 5,000 clients and recovered over $100 million on their behalf. Attorney Advertising: past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Looking ahead, Kajy wants to see the QLine immunity gap closed, whether that comes from an appeals court or from the state legislature, and he plans to keep pushing that case as far as it needs to go. Closer to home, he wants Kajy Cares, the firm’s community involvement arm, to keep growing alongside the caseload, so the firm’s presence in Detroit ends up measured by more than just the cases it takes on.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading this content does not create an attorney-client relationship. Past results, including case outcomes and dollar amounts recovered, do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Laws vary by jurisdiction and may change over time. Readers should consult a qualified attorney for advice on their specific situation. The author and publisher disclaim any liability for decisions made based on this information. This may constitute attorney advertising in some jurisdictions.
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