Kevin W. Betz - Indianapolis, IN

Overview

Kevin W. Betz has tried more than 20 jury trials, bench trials or arbitrations in his more than 25 years of trial work. Kevin has won jury verdicts in individual rights cases of more than $300,000 in Marion County and $600,000 in Shelby County as well as a $3.1 million verdict in the federal district court for the Southern District of Indiana. These were each considered ground-breaking verdicts in unique cases with novel claims. Besides other successful federal court trials, Kevin has also tried cases to juries in Delaware, Hamilton, Hendricks and Johnson counties in Indiana.

In 2010 Kevin earned certification from the National Board of Trial Advocacy and is now recognized as a Board Certified Trial Attorney based on his skills and experience. In addition, in May of 2012 he also earned certification from the National Board of Trial Advocacy in Civil Pretrial Practice. He has been a master lawyer in the Sagamore American Inns of Court since 1998 (now emeritus); member of the National Employment Lawyers Association; and a founding board member of the Indiana Hemophilia & Thrombosis Center, one of the largest such centers in the country providing more than $1.5 million in free medical services to Hoosiers every year; and is an appointed member of the Indiana Supreme Court's Committee on Character and Fitness to practice law in Indiana since 1998. As well, the International Network of Boutique Law Firms (INBLF) selected his firm as its Indiana individual rights representative.

To begin his career, Kevin served for two years as a law clerk for the Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, Randall T. Shepard, and then practiced for five years in the litigation department at Krieg DeVault. As an appointment by the governor, he next served as the Chief Counsel for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management during the Evan Bayh and the Frank O'Bannon administrations, overseeing more than 20 attorneys and the litigation and enforcement divisions for an entire state agency. Betz + Blevins now has five attorneys and two paralegals and since 1997 has had a successful trial and litigation practice primarily on behalf of individuals and small businesses. He has also been selected on multiple occasions as a Super Lawyer in Indiana.

In 1993, Kevin created and was President of The Lawyers Bar Review, a biannual six-week preparatory course for bar candidates seeking to pass the Indiana Bar Exam. A national bar review purchased The Lawyers Bar Review in 1998. Besides serving as editor of the materials covering 26 areas of Indiana and federal law, Kevin lectured in the areas of contracts and techniques and tactics for bar exam testing. He is also regularly selected as a lecturer for Indiana and national continuing legal education programs, including a conference regarding discrimination and bullying at Yale University in 2012.

Mr. Betz was also the creator and lead author from 1990-2002 of a law review article that analyzes the Indiana Supreme Court's docket, dispositions, and voting. It is published annually in the Indiana Law Review, see, e.g., An Examination of the Indiana Supreme Court Docket, Dispositions, and Voting, 35 Indiana Law Review 1117 (2002).

Mr. Betz's undergraduate degrees are from Indiana University in journalism and political science in 1982. He also earned a master's degree from Northwestern University in 1984. During law school, he was a law clerk from 1986 to 1988 for The Honorable Marc R. Kellams, a state trial court judge in Monroe County, Indiana.