Mr. Patrick R. Norris was born in Gadsden, Alabama and raised in Mountain Brook, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, where he attended Mountain Brook High School and was a Varsity letterman in baseball.
Following his high school graduation in 1984, he began his college education on a Presidential Scholarship at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. He subsequently transferred to Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama where he was a member of the Economics National Honor Society of Omicron Delta Epsilon and earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1990 majoring in Economics with a minor in Political Science. He is a third generation Auburn graduate in his family. Mr. Norris went on to receive his Juris Doctorate from Samford University's Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama in 1993. While in law school, he was a member of the Moot Court Board as well as the 1992 regional champion Cumberland National Mock Trial Team. He was admitted to the Alabama Bar and licensed to practice in Alabama in 1993.
Directly out of law school, Mr. Norris worked for the prestigious firm of McDaniel, Hall, Conerly & Lusk, P.C., in Birmingham before leaving that firm in 1997 with two other lawyers to form McDaniel, Bains & Norris, P.C. (“MBN”). MBN then merged in 2011 with the Birmingham office of the southeast regional law firm of Allen & Newman, PLLC based in Hilton Head, SC. In March of 2019, Mr. Norris left the firm of Allen & Newman to open the solo practice of The Norris Law Group, LLC based in Birmingham, Alabama.
Mr. Norris' practice over his thirty year career has specialized in insurance defense, including the handling and trial of both standard and complex litigation. Such litigation includes but is not limited to: insurance coverage and bad faith; liability; professional and medical malpractice; casualty; automobile liability; commercial trucking liability; premises liability; products liability; construction defect; contract litigation; fraud; employment law and discrimination; and other related cases. He devotes a great deal of his practice to private auto and commercial trucking litigation. In addition to the work he performs as a trial attorney, Mr. Norris is also certified and on the State Rosters of mediators and arbitrators. He is a member of the American Bar Association, Alabama State Bar Association, Birmingham Bar Association, Alabama Defense Lawyers Association, and the Defense Research Institute. He is admitted to practice before all Alabama State courts, as well as the Federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and all inferior federal district courts in Alabama.
On a more personal note, Mr. Norris has one older brother who is a neurologist residing in Houston, Texas. Mr. Norris met his beautiful wife, Heather Ann Hollis, the summer after he graduated from college while he was still living in Auburn and working as the City League Women's Softball Supervisor for the softball league in which she played. They got married in 1991 and raised their family in Vestavia Hills, another suburb of Birmingham. Their oldest child, a son, played baseball at Vestavia Hills High School from which he graduated in 2012. He graduated in Accounting from Auburn University in 2016 which he attended on a full academic scholarship. Their middle child, a daughter, graduated from Vestavia Hills High School in 2016 where she played volleyball and ran track. She is now a senior in Nursing School at Auburn University. She likewise received a full academic scholarship. Mr. Norris’ children represent the fourth generation of the family to attend Auburn University, the fact of which makes Mr. Norris extremely proud. Mr. Norris’ youngest child, a son, is currently a sophomore attending Vestavia Hills High School where he is a starter on the tennis team which won an Alabama state championship his freshman year. Mr. Norris and his wife, Heather, coached their sons in baseball for years and baseball is one of their family's favorite activities. Heather's father was a baseball scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Heather, during her studies for her Masters, actually explored the effects of proper pitching mechanics on pitch velocity. Before she passed in January of 2019, Heather owned and operated her family’s pizza restaurant, Davenport's Pizza Palace, located in Mountain Brook and which opened in 1964. Mr. Norris’ oldest son has taken over the restaurant along with his cousin but Mr. Norris has been going to Davenport's since he was four years old and it is the place where he met Heather's parents to ask their permission to marry her. And Davenport's is by far the number one dinner request of his clients when they come to town!
Mr. Norris enjoys running and biking and has completed countless races in both sports. He also enjoys hiking, camping, hunting and fishing with his family all across the beautiful state of Alabama. His other interests include tennis, golf, photography, music, and of course Auburn Tigers football.