Mr. Wells, a founding member of the firm and a graduate of the University of Kentucky (B.A., J.D.), has a diverse professional background including an extended tenure as the Senior Staff Attorney for a leading Justice on the Kentucky Supreme Court in addition to positions in the private and public sector. Mr. Wells now focuses upon litigation and appellate practice and consultation in civil and criminal cases in Kentucky state and federal courts. Mr. Wells has first-chaired approximately fifty jury trials. He has also had the privilege of briefing and orally arguing multiple cases before the Kentucky appellate courts, which have often resulted in published opinions on questions of statewide importance and positive results for his clients, including a published opinion from the Kentucky Supreme Court reversing a highly publicized capital murder conviction from Louisville. Mr. Wells has taught Legal Research and Writing as an adjunct professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law and has presented Continuing Legal Education seminars addressing the intersection of new technologies and professional ethics.
Mr. Wells has spent most of the last three decades honing his skills at argumentation and persuasive oral and written communication. A lifelong Lexington resident, Mr. Wells won the Kentucky High School Speech League state debate championship four consecutive years in middle and high school. Later, as an undergraduate, he represented the University of Kentucky as a scholarship member of its highly-ranked intercollegiate debate team, reached the late rounds of various prestigious national invitational tournaments, qualified four consecutive times for the National Debate Tournament, and his senior year in college ranked among the top ten and reached the Sweet Sixteen round of the national tournament. While he attended the University of Kentucky College of Law and in his early years of legal practice, Mr. Wells remained active with the Kentucky debate program as a volunteer assistant focusing on argument selection and development and helped coach the team to the final round of the National Debate Tournament. Mr. Wells, drawing upon his more than two decades of experience in formulating and developing persuasive arguments, consults with other attorneys in drafting appellate briefs and helping to prepare them to give persuasive and successful oral-argument presentations. Whether he finds himself addressing a contract-interpretation question, a question of trial procedure, or the application of substantive legal principles to a novel set of facts, Mr. Wells tries to make the most of the opportunities that the law presents for his intellectual engagement with argumentative analysis and always keeps his eyes open for new challenges.
Consistent with the firm's commitment to serve its clients by using the most sophisticated legal technology available, Mr. Wells keeps up to date with the latest trial-presentation and case-management hardware and software to maximize his ability to persuasively present his clients' cases to juries and judges.
