Attorney Q&A

Get To Know The Founding Partners Of Crandall & Pera Law, LLC

If you or a loved one has suffered from medical malpractice, the attorney you choose to represent you matters. We invite you to get to know our lead attorneys, Steve Crandall and Marc Pera, and to discover whether we are the right team for you. Below, Steve answers questions about his and Marc's professional and personal lives.

If you have any questions about our legal team, our case approach or whether we can help you with a claim, please call us at 855-444-6651 or contact us online. We have our primary office locations in Cleveland and Cincinnati, with multiple office locations throughout Ohio and into Kentucky.

Why did you choose to represent medical malpractice victims?

What drew Marc and me to this area of the law was how interesting and diverse the world of medicine is. Each medical negligence case is different and grounded in more than just the law; knowing medicine is critically important to represent our clients' rights.

Most important, patients who are injured (or their families if they died) face a very steep uphill battle in obtaining justice for any negligence that occurred. Most of the time, medical care providers do not explain what happened or why, sometimes purposely to avoid liability or sometimes just because they are poor at communicating. As a result, people are simply at a loss to understand why this tragic result has even happened. We can give them those answers.

After that, if litigation is warranted, clients who sue doctors face an even steeper uphill battle to win their case because the hospital and doctors are well-financed and are able to obtain expert witnesses who will defend them regardless of the truth. Marc and I find great satisfaction in representing people literally against all odds as we face such a well-financed and well-backed industry.

Another factor prospective clients need to consider is whether their medical records were altered in any way by the care providers who are trying to avoid liability. As former defense lawyers, Marc and I are particularly adept at detecting potential medical record alterations and obtaining handwriting or computer experts to bring these nefarious alterations to light. If a medical care provider does alter your chart, be aware that Marc and I will catch them, and such alteration can lead to punitive damages. These are damages designed to punish the wrongdoer and can greatly increase the compensation you receive.

What do you hope clients will take away from working with you?

We hope that we redefine what a lawyer means to our clients. Lawyers have a bad reputation – some of it earned, while some of it is not fair. Regardless, it is not a good one.

We want clients to work with us and come away knowing we cared, that we worked hard, that we were always there for them when they needed us and that we fought for them as they deserved.

We want our clients to smile when they think of us because we developed a personal relationship, not just a professional relationship, and because we treated them like they deserved to be treated, especially after suffering the incident that brought them to us.

What should potential clients know about working with Crandall & Pera Law, LLC?

In our industry, we have worked very hard to cultivate the type of reputation in the legal community, and with our adversaries, that our clients would want us to have. When we show up on a case, the other side knows we have done our research, we know what the issues are and we have the resources and talents to bring justice for our clients.

We are hardworking but professional and fair to those we go against. Our goals are to be proactive and aggressive in what our client is seeking to achieve. As a result, our opposition takes us seriously and knows we mean business in the case.

We will represent our clients not only with power but also with class and integrity.

What makes Crandall & Pera Law, LLC stand out?

Three things make us stand out; first, Marc and I both started on the defense side and know the strategies and ways the defense seeks to beat you. In many cases, we have tried the exact case we are representing our clients in at Crandall & Pera Law, but for the other side. That experience is valuable and very rare in our industry.

Second, when you hire us, you will have access to a well-educated and trained staff, but you also work with Marc or me individually more than anyone else at the firm. While people frequently speak to computer-generated phone services these days, at our firm, when you hire us, you work with us whenever the need arises. We both call, email or text our clients regularly to keep them informed or to answer whatever they need. When our clients need Marc or me, they can reach us directly, whether that is during the work week or on the weekends.

Lastly, both of us are highly ranked and highly respected lawyers as reflected in many objective attorney rating systems. It is very rare to have both name partners this highly rated and this accessible at all times.

What is the most fulfilling part of being a medical malpractice attorney?

Beating the other side, despite the fact that almost every law, legal rule or court decision unfairly benefits them. The states we practice in are traditionally very conservative in favor of the defense as well, making it very difficult to win a case for a patient in litigation. Despite these unfair burdens, Marc and I take great pride in obtaining some the states' largest verdicts and settlements.

What has surprised you the most about being a medical malpractice lawyer?

How much medicine you can learn by just reading and speaking with experts. Medicine, like a lot of specialties, such as the law or flying an airplane, has its own language. However, once you learn the language, you realize you can learn medicine just like you do anything else.

After nearly 30 years “speaking this language,” Marc and I know enough medicine to be able to tell just about any new client whether they have a case before we even consult with medical expert witnesses.

What have you learned from your clients?

To never quit in life, no matter what. The most important lesson I have learned in this job is that the problems, injuries and issues our clients face due to the negligence of others make their lives so difficult, that they would trade their situation with you in exchange for any of the day-to-day “problems” we face.

There is nothing more important than health. When your health has been destroyed due to another's negligence, living life can be terribly difficult. I often marvel at how well clients cope with a situation I might not handle with as much class and grace that they do.

What should your clients know about you?

Marc and I are both very devoted family guys. We work very hard and work long hours, but being at home with our families or at our kid’s games and school events is also very important.

Consequently, your family and the relationships that have been damaged by negligence are things we stress to the people and organizations that caused it.

What type of cases are you most passionate about working on?

Personally, it is the cases involving children. There is nothing worse than a child who never gets the chance to live their life normally or a parent who has to bury their child.

As any parent knows, we would take any injury that our child suffers onto ourselves if we could keep it from happening to our child.

How do you choose which cases to accept?

We are very conservative and very strict with our case selection for a number of reasons.

First, we have respect and ethical obligations to the other side to ensure that we only advance cases that have true merit.

Second, pursuing a case takes an emotional toll on the client. There is no reason to ask them to expend additional time and energy on a case unless it has merit and the damages are there to justify putting them through that.

Consequently, we only choose cases where negligence is very clear, and damages are significant.

What do you see as your main responsibility when you represent a client?

To educate them on what happened, what options they have under the law and what their true chances are to win or lose in litigation. Then, if we decide to work together, to represent them like I am working for my own family.

What do you like about taking cases to trial?

There are more shows and movies about trials than about any other industry out there. The reasons for that are similar to the reasons I like being a trial lawyer: it takes intelligence, skill, energy, strategy and stamina to be successful at trial work.

Trial work is hard work, but anything you accomplish that really means anything to you includes hard work.

What are you passionate about outside of work?

Marc loves to golf with his family and friends, and we both love to watch sports.

We are both former Division III basketball players, so we enjoy basketball at any level. It has made us both very competitive and driven to succeed for our clients.

Marc and I enjoy being at home or traveling with our wives and kids – seeing our kids grow and experience things in life we were perhaps not as lucky as they are to see and experience.

We both feel our roles as fathers are incredibly important: to raise kids that grow into the type of adults who positively add to the world.

Marc may have been a pastor, like his dad. My family was in the sales force for various industries. I likely would have followed in their footsteps. Both of us feel we found our true calling as not only lawyers, but trial lawyers. It is a special group of lawyers, and we are fiercely proud to be among them.

Both of us feel very lucky to have pursued law. It has allowed us to meet so many interesting and diverse people – clients, judges, other lawyers and expert witnesses.

We both feel we have learned so many positive things from the people we work with and for, as well as those we go against.

What can you usually be found doing on a day off from work?

Marc would be on the golf course with one of his three kids, with friends or at his kid’s baseball or basketball games with his wife, Jenny. I am usually at one of my five kids’ games, one of their concerts or visiting them at college for dad’s weekend. If we are not doing that, we are at home with our families, enjoying their company and likely watching a sports game on television.

We both like to travel with our wives or the entire family to see our great country together and enjoy some rest from the rigors of trial work.