D. Cory Bilton

Attorney

There are a lot of unhappy lawyers in the DC area.  I am not one of them.  I wasn’t born to be a lawyer.  My parents weren’t lawyers.  I grew up hating lawyers.  I became a lawyer, and continue to evolve as one, and I love it.

The reason I love being a lawyer is because I get to help real people.  I’ve told hundreds of people now, I want to meet you so I can see you are a real person and you can see I am a real person.  We are all struggling with our day-to-day lives—get the kids off to school, get to work on time, stop at the grocery store for dinner, send off that birthday card to a loved one.  We are all keeping it together as best we can, each and every day.  For some unlucky individuals, an accident happens and life’s delicate balance is disrupted.  Most of us go decades or more without an injury of any kind, after maturing past grade school and college.  People who find themselves suddenly injured in an accident are left wondering, “What do I do now?”  These are the people we help.

We can’t help everyone.  A lot of times, the law does not provide a remedy for someone who is injured.  Sometimes having a lawyer tell you that provides peace of mind.

For those unlucky people injured in an accident where there is a legal solution, we are one of the best law firms in the area.  The reason why—and feel free to ask other lawyers in the area who might know—is that we continue to fight for you, even if that means going to trial for you.

I love taking cases to trial.  I would spend every day in the courtroom if I could.  I am most at home, there.  Not every case requires a trial.  In fact, most don’t.  But when it is impossible to get the other side to see you as a real person, and to understand the impact your injury had on your life, trial is the only way. We go to trial to win, and fortunately that happens a lot.  But despite all of our efforts, sometimes we lose.

I’m a real person, too. Before becoming a lawyer, I worked for many years as a tugboat deckhand, a restaurant cook, a factory-worker at a lumber mill, and a day-laborer for a drywall company—all after graduating college.  I’m not a silver-spoon type.  I started my own law firm so that I could choose the people I wanted to help and would get to work with every client on every case.

I am a member of the bar in all three local jurisdictions: Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland. This means that I can help people injured anywhere in the entire DC metropolitan area.

Practicing law takes a lot of time, but I also spend a lot of time being a father. Talk with me for long enough and I’ll probably show you pictures of Luella and I on some adventure. If I don’t show you, ask me to.

I am bad at a lot of things, too.  I have tried on many occasions, desperately but unsuccessfully, to start a fire with two sticks. I am not a sports fan, though I was raised to believe guys are sports fans. I enjoy watching the fans more than the players.  I’m just old enough to never have gotten the “hang” of social media and therefore don’t use it as way to connect.  I was never a cool kid; not back in high school, not now.

For the lawyers reading this, I’ll provide the compulsory pedigree. I graduated from George Washington University Law School, with honors. Although I went to law school part-time, I was a member of the George Washington Law Review and was an Articles Editor in my final year. I was the only part-time student on the editorial staff at the time. In addition to my legal studies and extracurricular work, I worked full time for a small personal injury firm in Dupont Circle. I started Bilton Law Firm in January 2015.