Name: Chuck Cady

Title: President

Company: Cady Reporting Services, Inc.

NNRC Territory that your company serves:   Cleveland and Northern Ohio

What do you like to tell prospective clients about what your firm does best?

We’re here to make your life easier. We understand that litigation creates a high-stress environment and that that stress rolls downhill onto the legal assistants and staff. We like to convey to them the concept that we are an extension of their office and that they can hand assignments off to us, which in turn lifts stress off of them and makes them more efficient. It’s what we do. We let our clients know that we have resources at our fingertips that allow them to focus on what they need to do and leave the peripherals to Cady, i.e, setting up videoconference sites anywhere, arranging for subpoena service wherever they need it and obtaining coverage in out-of-the-way places.   And to me attitude is king: Do it happily and be willing to go the extra mile.

What is an example of how you’ve collaborated with an NNRC partner to help out a client?

There have been many helpful collaborations on behalf of our clients, but if I just go with what popped into my head first: One Sunday afternoon a very good client calls my cell phone from the boarding gate as he’s heading to Boston to take a few days of video deposition. He had just realized that his office had not set up a reporter and videographer. I called our partner in Boston, Kenny Zais, owner of O’Brien & Levine, and by the time our client landed in Boston about an hour later, he had received a call that everything was set up and ready to go. Our client was relieved and I had peace of mind knowing that it would be handled well.

Beyond those types of standout situations, week after week we appreciate knowing our clients are well taken care of when we call our NNRC partners anywhere they have a deposition.

What do you like best about your job?

The first aspect is that we’re able to work together as a family. I have great difficulty imagining my daughters and their husbands and now our granddaughter across the country and only seeing each other maybe a couple times a year, especially as we love watching our three-year-old granddaughter, Isla, blossom. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, to have all of us involved in various aspects of the business collaborating together is a real blessing.

Secondly, we know there are many challenges to what we do. I often tell people that we truly work in one of the most demanding fields: litigation.   Timelines need to constantly be met, quality needs to be primo, and punctuality of reporters and videographers is of utmost importance. We don’t all do everything perfectly all the time. We’re human and we have humans working for us. At times we need to be fixers. In the past I worked at a firm where let’s just say I had to watch client matters that needed urgent, proactive handling go unaddressed or not well handled.   On the relatively few occasions we do have a misfire or an issue to resolve, I love being the one to work as a fixer to actively address a matter. On my worst day with a particular problem or issue, I’m always glad that I’m the one in the saddle, that I can wrap my arms around a situation, tackle it and address it and work for a positive outcome. I never lose my appreciation for the ability to be hands-on and provide directed energy to get a matter taken care of.

What is a recent milestone for you or your family?

That would be the arrival of our little Isla Sephora. It’s an amazing experience to watch her grow and fall more in love with her. Just typing it and thinking about it gets me a little verklempt. Her personality is just exploding; she’s such a little joyful character. Whenever she leaves the house, I tell her, “See you later alligator!” and she keeps getting closer to saying it. The morphs are funny. Last night as she was being put in her car seat it was “Bye gator!”

What kind of work did you do in your first job?

Outside of working from a very young age with my family in the trades, my first job was working at a local drug store in Lakewood, Lodolyn Rexall Drug. This was big because that’s when I got my license so I could drive their Mercury Bobcat.   I remember my buddy coming up to me in the hall in Lakewood High letting me know about the opening but that I’d need my license so I could drive prescriptions to a senior center. I still feel the excitement of driving on my own in “the company car.” I got paid $2.30 per hour. When I learned to run the register, I got a huge raise to $2.35 per hour. The job nobody wanted was cleaning out their popcorn machine.   Working in drug store was a good life experience for a teen. People come in for real-life problems, health and otherwise. I can still see the man who came in like clockwork every 48 hours for his cough syrup walking towards the back of the store to the prescription counter in his winter coat. That was my introduction to people’s addictions. It’s a good place to learn about people and their needs.