Chad Franks is at the top of his field—a young and successful general counsel who leads a team of attorneys at Irvine-based staffing company Decton Group of Cos.
He doesn’t hesitate to attribute his success to a list of mentors and colleagues, though.
Franks detailed the list when he won the Business Journal’s General Counsel Award in the private-company category. The awards dinner was held Nov. 19 at Hotel Irvine (see related stories, pages 1, 5, 6 and 8).
He said he owes much to the help of others throughout his unlikely path to success. He grew up in a small and impoverished town in northern Colorado where his father owned a construction business. Franks recalls a day when he got a new pair of jeans, and the kids at school teased him for being a “rich kid.”
‘Escape’
Following his father into the construction business seemed like his only option.
“The town was literally like those you see in the movies, a really rundown and broke farm town in the middle of nowhere with tumbleweeds blowing through town,” he said after the awards ceremony. “As a teenager, I just couldn’t wait to escape that setting.”
A series of hardships forced his father to relocate to San Juan Capistrano for a construction job when Franks was 14. It was the escape he had been hoping for.
The move to Southern California put him in the right spot, and the parents of his best friend, Dr. Samuel Roth and his wife, Kate, made sure Franks made use of his newfound opportunities.
“My parents were great, but they weren’t educated past high school, so I needed the mentorship if I was going to go further than that,” Franks said. “The Roths knew the path I wanted to go down, and they provided crucial guidance. They motivated us to think beyond college, about what it really takes to make a living.”
The guidance came in the form of lasting friendship—Franks and his family spent Thanksgiving at the Roths’ house this year—tutoring, and support. Franks lived in their home for four years while he worked as a file clerk and then attended law school at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
Franks focused on making connections in law school—more names to add to the list he spoke of in his award acceptance speech. He met Chris Campbell, who would later become his partner at Campbell & Franks LLP after law school.
He also met attorney Kathy Freeberg, who approached Franks after he had been practicing on his own for about two years and asked if he would help her with a few “clergy cases.” Franks was eager to help and to learn from Freeberg but didn’t expect the struggles and successes the next seven years would bring.
“We handled several hundred abuse cases against the Archdioceses of Orange County, San Diego and Los Angeles,” he said. “From about 2001 to 2005, I didn’t sleep much because I was so horrified about what I learned.”
The disturbing cases—the majority of which were settled by 2008—unexpectedly prepared him for his current role as a general counsel.
“[The clergy cases] really came down to employment issues—negligent hiring and negligent supervision,” he said. “Now I’m just looking at it from the other side and figuring out how to prevent that kind of lawsuit.”
Decton hired Franks about eight years ago. It was a much smaller company then, with about $20 million in revenue and a few thousand employees. Today it takes in over $100 million in revenue and employs 10,000 in California, Arizona and Nevada.
“I’m just a very small piece of the puzzle at Decton,” Franks said. “Our other four VPs and everyone on our team is very good at what they do. The [General Counsel Award] is really just symbolic of the people that make Decton successful—the team at the company and amazing outside counsel.”
JD, MBA
Franks is loyal to the company and said he has no plans to leave anytime soon. He said an MBA is on his horizon so that he can hopefully play a more formal role in company operations and strategy.
“People ask, ‘What can you do with a JD?’, but really what can’t you do with a JD? It can really take you places and creates what I think is the best kind of team member.”
