Triumph Over Struggle: The Story of James Helm and TopDog Law

There are very few stories that start with addiction and then end in professional success, particularly addiction that strikes hard enough to last throughout a person’s late teens and early twenties. However, when the story ends as well as this one, it isn’t just a story about addiction. It becomes a story about overcoming one’s self, choosing to transform, and achieving a better life. James Helm’s story is defined by the choice to found his own law firm, TopDog Law, and the tenacity it took to become one of the nation’s most successful young personal injury lawyers.

The story does have its beginning, however, in a high school wrestling injury, a prescription for Percocet to help with pain, and a battle with addiction that lasted from the age of 17 to 25. James says that some of his family had written him off as a lifelong addict, even as he was fighting his addiction and somehow managing to excel in college and law school in the midst of it. After a twelve-step program broke his addiction, James took a look at his achievements, the inner strength his battle had left him with, and a six-figure job offer waiting for him at a Philadelphia firm. He made the sudden decision to take personal control.

TopDog Law began without clients and without capital, but James was driven to define himself and rebuild his life from scratch. James remembers burning through money for months, even as he stubbornly held that the firm should take no up-front payments or retainer fees from clients. He wanted a top-notch, reputable firm that got results, so he refused to earn a dime until he’d won cases for his clients. According to James, he was almost two hundred thousand dollars in the hole before the firm earned its first dollar.

These early trials eventually paid off. When TopDog Law began to win cases for its clients, it won big and more than earned its way back into the green. James also won his reputation as a skilled, dependable expert who settles for nothing less than the best outcome, a real contender for the best personal injury attorney. It was stubborn tenacity that created this reputation, a confident determination that James had to build his own way forward.

James has built such a powerful foundation at TopDog Law that it’s beginning to make a real difference not just for the people of Philadelphia but also on a nationwide scale. It’s a natural outcome of doing so well as a personal injury lawyer. James works with clients who need help to stand up for themselves. They need to borrow not just his legal skills and knowledge but also his strength to self-advocate, transform, and win.James is committed to this work, even as he feels the call to philanthropic pursuits. He says he wants to do the best he can for his clients and TopDog Law for another decade at least and then spend his forties and fifties focused on things like criminal justice reform and helping young people in the inner city. This desire comes from his own triumph over his hard youth. James knows the world is full of people struggling, and he wants to help people overcome their struggles as he once overcame his own.