Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
Louis C. Cairo practices personal injury law, and his experience includes representing clients who suffered brain damages due to traumatic brain injuries, multiple fractures, paralysis, or wrongful death of a family member or loved one. He has successfully tried cases involving construction negligence, product liability, trucking accident fatalities, the Federal Employer Liability Act, automobile accidents, slip and falls and other types of catastrophic injuries.
Cairo’s reputation is that of a trial lawyer’s lawyer.
As Lou likes to tell the story, he was a fast-talking glib boy. He recalls that his mouth probably got him into more trouble than it got him out of trouble. “My mother and father always said, ‘Perhaps you should use your biggest asset in life and become a lawyer,'” he recalls.
Catholic school educated at Santa Maria Del Popolo Grade School in Mundelein and Carmel High School for Boys, he was later influenced by the Jesuits, attending Marquette University where he received his B.S. in business in 1980, and then Loyola University School of Law where he graduated with honors in 1983.
Cairo chose plaintiff’s personal-injury law because he’d rather represent the “little guy” than the large corporation or insurance company. “My career has been spent being the champion for the little guy, the underdog, the David vs. Goliath, so to speak,” he says. “You are going up against some of the biggest construction companies, the biggest insurance companies, the best defense attorneys. It is us against them, and them is usually a pretty big company. You’re challenging somebody at a completely different level. I would rather represent the underdog. Countless times when my cases have been resolved, my clients will look at me with tears in their eyes and say, ‘Thank you for giving my family the financial security we lost in this accident.’ That is very rewarding.”
Lou began at the firm that now bears his name on Sept. 16, 1981, while in his second year of law school at Loyola. He clerked at the firm doing a myriad of duties, from delivery boy, filing, law clerk, paralegal and researcher, until he graduated and became an associate. In 1989, he became a partner and his name was added to the firm’s name. Goldberg, Weisman, and Cairo Ltd. has since grown from five attorneys and seven employees in total, to 32 attorneys and over 90 employees. Interestingly, he got the job as a law clerk initially because he had experience working as a carpenter for his father’s union construction company throughout high school and during college breaks. Back then, the law firm concentrated its practice on representing union construction workers so his connection and experience to construction was a natural benefit to his work at G, W and C. Since becoming an attorney, he has tried multiple cases in several states and jurisdictions, primarily related to catastrophic injuries and deaths involving workers involved in construction related accidents and vehicular collisions.
John G. Locallo, first vice president-elect of the Illinois State Bar Association says, “It is because of the leadership and support of Justinians such as my friend Louis Cairo and others that I will be the seventh elected Italian-American president of this 32,000 member lawyer organization in the past 25 years.”
His father, Louis F. Cairo, immigrated from Calabria, Italy, in 1948 when he was 18 years old. He came to this country with nothing more than the shirt on his back, his mother, brother and two sisters. They were very poor and settled on Peoria Street in Chicago, where his family had relatives. They lived, like many Italian immigrants, with several families in one household, everyone working, contributing and trying to live the American dream.
Lou is married to the lovely Gloria and they have three adult children, Deanna Marie, Louis Anthony and Kristina Marie.
Another example of the best our community has to offer.
