Bouldering Prepares Dan Shaivitz for High Stakes Personal Injury Litigation

BDBF attorney Dan Shaivitz is high on a wall in a climbing gym with no harness and no rope.  He is squeezed onto a razor-sharp handhold with the balance of his weight on his opposite foot.  He hooks his heel over a box-shaped volume to his left.  Taking a deep breath, he raises his right hand and then bumps it up to the next hold.  He swings his left foot in and rocks his weight forward onto his foot.  He takes another deep breath.  He frees his left hand and grabs the finishing hold to complete the route.

In bouldering, every move is in perfect sequence and any wrong move burns energy and risks failing the climb.  The holds and features on the wall are the same, yet the climb is different for everyone who tries it.  That sums up what Dan loves about bouldering and why bouldering is the perfect metaphor for what he does in court.

Bouldering is a discipline of sport climbing that involves conquering relatively short and complex climbing problems.  Most bouldering routes can be set up on a climbing gym wall under 20 feet tall.  There is no harness and no rope to catch you. If you fall, you land on a thick pad (hopefully feet first).  The routes vary in difficulty from V0 (the easiest) to V16 (the hardest) with -/+ variables, so anyone can climb at their respective experience and skill level.

While an undergraduate student at Rutgers, when not at practice as the goalie on the Scarlet Knights lacrosse team, Dan frequented the modest climbing wall behind the College Avenue gym.  He never bothered to learn any technique or skill.  But he did learn to love rock climbing.

20 years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dan discovered bouldering.  It requires focus, discipline, patience, and technique.  It allowed him to take his mind off the daily stresses of life during a global pandemic.

Dan, who heads Bulman Dunie’s personal injury practice group, finds that handling a personal injury case, like bouldering, requires focus, discipline, patience, and technique:

Submit a settlement demand too soon, you risk losing the claim.  Wait too long to file suit, and you lose the claim.  Apply the right pressure at the right moment, and the insurance company may offer its policy limits despite facts that could be helpful to a trial defense.

While the walls of a courtroom may not resemble the walls of a climbing gym, the attributes that Dan loves about bouldering provide him great professional satisfaction and deliver great results for Bulman Dunie personal injury clients.