Dean I. Weitzman, Esq.

Advocacy shaped by a lifetime of experiences

Advocacy has been one of Dean’s personal goals since he was a teenager, when several incidents helped shape the direction of what would become his legal career.

When he was about 13 years old, Dean was in a doctor’s office, waiting for an appointment in a very crowded waiting room.

“I had gotten to the appointment a little bit late and the waiting room was busy,” he said. “I sat down and soon the doctor came in. He pointed to me and said quite loudly, ‘that people like you who are on medical assistance shouldn’t come in late for an appointment. My family had a rough time financially but that wasn’t something that I wanted to share with the entire waiting room.”

“Obviously, it made me feel horrible terrible,” he said. “I was embarrassed. I felt like I was worth nothing. I later decided that when I grew up that I wanted to give a voice to those who didn’t have a voice, to help others avoid feeling like I felt that day in the doctor’s waiting room. That life experience made me feel like I needed never to be in a situation where someone could treat me like that or denigrate me like that. I realized I wanted to stick up for other people who were in a similar situation and be their advocate. I didn’t feel like I had an advocate in that situation.”

Often you hear from people that their lawyers don’t talk to them about their cases or keep them up to date on what’s happening. Not here. The client is our most important asset, and that’s the person who we have to make sure is doing OK throughout the whole legal process. We make sure that they know what’s going on with their case.

A few years later, a testy legal situation involving his parents propelled Dean even deeper into his growing passion to advocate for others.

“Another one of those life-changing experiences was that my parents owned a beauty shop and they weren’t savvy business people,” he said. “They had a lease that was month-to-month and one day, the landlord – a large property management company – called and told them they had 30 days to move out. It was really tough.”

His parents were essentially blind-sided after being in that location for many years. The family was forced to move the beauty shop into the basement of their home.

One thing Dean remembers most about the incident is that his parents had no one to help them or fight for them in a difficult situation. He started thinking about becoming an attorney. His parents had some friends who were attorneys and Dean admired their work.

“They were guys who represented their clients, proved their points and made sure that they advocated on behalf of them and that that person’s point of view or needs were heard and were addressed.”

That’s someone who I wanted to be. I wanted to be the kind of person who didn’t let other people get away with things at someone else’s expense, like that doctor got away with the day I was in his office. That doctor went home to his family, had dinner and went to sleep and didn’t feel anything. I was left feeling badly and hurt.

“I wanted to make sure that people didn’t do that to others,” Dean said. “I became a trial lawyer because of that kind of behavior.”

Every day, that’s what Dean and his team of lawyers, legal assistants and other staff members do here at MyPhillyLawyer – they work tirelessly on behalf of their clients to ensure that they are well-represented and heard.