FRANK AZAR LOVES TWO THINGS IN THIS WORLD: LAWYERING AND WINNING.
These two things feed off each other, as every motion, jury selection, and verdict is an opportunity for victory. But according to Azar, 65, one metric of success stands above the rest: “My brother said, ‘What’s the test of who’s the best lawyer of them all?’” Azar says. “You know, like, Mirror, mirror, on the wall, right? And he said, ‘Well, it’s the richest of them all.’ And then I go, ‘That’s right.’”
“Are you the richest of them all?” I ask.
“No, I wish,” Azar responds, rolling an unlit cigar between his thumb and fingers.
“Pretty close, though?”
“In Colorado? Probably. But, see, they all think I’m just this schlock guy. But I do a lot of other stuff.”
“Schlock, like…?”
“You know. Car wreck guy. We do a lot more stuff than that. I don’t advertise it,” he says.
The admission is perhaps a little surprising. After all, this is the same man who made his name flooding airwaves and plastering roadsides with commercials and billboards. That name? “The Strong Arm.” “Before I was ever interested in doing plaintiffs’ work, I thought of Frank Azar as a Colorado institution, similar to Jake Jabs, similar to Dealin’ Doug, similar to the guy hawking jewelry at Shane Co.,” says Joshua Hotchkiss, an attorney at Franklin D. Azar & Associates (FDA). “If you grew up in Colorado, if you hear those voices or those names, it feels like a Sunday morning at your house, because that’s where you always heard them.”
Azar idolizes larger-than-life characters: Portraits of John Wayne and the Rat Pack hang on his walls. The door to his office—a massive wooden entryway lined with brown-buttoned leather and featuring a gold nameplate that announces an impending audience with “Franklin D. Azar”—was made to resemble the one MI6 boss M uses in the early James Bond films. But even Azar has grown tired of the Strong Arm persona. “I wish I’d never thought of that,” he says, leaning back in his desk chair. Wearing a white polo shirt open nearly to his sternum, his close-cropped hair grayer than it looks in his ads, Azar appears more prepared for a golf course than for the courtroom, and for good reason: He’s got a tee time later this afternoon.
Even if Azar is one of the richest attorneys of them all, the infamy his alter ego has engendered is a
