Jewish Latino Attorney Has Heart for Community

Attorney Dax López believes in second chances. During his 11 years as a judge in DeKalb County, he always felt that everyone has the potential to turn around if given the chance. Today, as a personal injury attorney, López strives to give his clients, many from marginalized circumstances, the fairest outcomes he can obtain.

Despite more than a decade on the bench, becoming a judge wasn’t exactly on López’s career radar after earning both his undergraduate and law school degrees at Vanderbilt University. The idea started percolating when his friend and mentor, Tony DelCampo, reached out to López to see if he would be interested in succeeding him at the state court in DeKalb if he was selected for a federal position.

López, who was then a corporate lawyer and serving as president of the Georgia Hispanic Bar Association, recalls that he was surprised at the request, but decided to go for it. DelCampo ended up not leaving the court then, but it wasn’t long before another vacancy revived the opportunity. In 2010, at age 35, López became one of the youngest judges, and only the second Latino, after DelCampo, to serve in a Georgia court.

During his interview, when Gov. Sonny Perdue asked López, who was then a Republican, how he thought he would get elected in heavily Democratic DeKalb County when his appointed term ended, López said: “Well, governor, I’m a Puerto Rican Jew. Most people think I’m a Democrat.”

For his part, DelCampo encouraged López because, he said, “I found him to be an inquisitive and thoughtful young attorney with an excellent educational pedigree.  When I was being considered for a position on the Federal Bench, I believed we needed to continue to have diversity on the trial bench.”  He added, “I knew he had the personal and intellectual qualities to be an excellent jurist.”

“I loved it,” said López. “I thought I brought a different perspective to the court.” But being in a position to potentially change the trajectory of people’s lives was what motivated his work.

He explained: “I ran the Spanish-speaking [DUI] court that I inherited from Tony … I had several programs that help youth. I felt like I had a lot of freedom to … help people because in the misdemeanor world, sometimes called ‘the court of stupid mistakes,’ you have options. We don’t have to send you to jail. We can send you to treatment, or we can send you to do other things that aren’t jail-oriented.”

López’s journey to Judaism was also unconventional. Born into a Catholic family in Puerto Rico, López’s parents were already exploring other religious paths when his family moved to Augusta, Ga., in 1981 and Dax was 6 years old. Through a new Jewish friend, his mom and dad became interested in Judaism, although they couldn’t understand why the man never tried to bring them to his synagogue or convert them.

López tells the hilarious story about his family’s first attempt at a Passover seder when he was 12 and his brother was just 8. Long before YouTube, they used a VHS tape playing on a TV near their table, following everything the recorded family was doing, including the four cups of wine, not realizing that the children on the video were probably drinking grape juice. So, it was at the hands of his parents and in the name of Judaism that Dax and his brother first got drunk, López quipped.

When his father’s work as an engineer took them to Birmingham, Ala., the family had been studying and adopting Jewish practices for many years. But it took not three, but four, requests before his parents could convince the Birmingham Conservative rabbi they were quite serious about undertaking conversion.

By the time Dax got to college, he had already long identified as Jewish, but it was his fraternity brothers who took him to a synagogue for the first time. López made his formal conversion at the end of his college sophomore year.

López left the DeKalb court in 2021 and joined DelCampo in his law firm, now called DelCampo Grayson López. Because their practice accepts only catastrophic cases, they work on cases involving severe injuries or death. Many of their clients are Spanish-speaking and some are undocumented, which has made it increasingly difficult to get justice because they are more afraid than ever of putting their name on a legal document.

López and his partners have obtained some remarkably high awards for clients, including a medical malpractice verdict that, at $77.5 million, was the largest in Georgia history. Another trial resulted in a $31 million verdict in a case involving the death of an undocumented father of three who was shot and killed in his mobile home complex while trying to stop his car from being stolen.

“The benefit we have here of being a low-volume shop is that I know all my clients. I know about their families. I know I can work their cases out. I can spend real time strategizing and getting ready for their trials,” said López.

The work is very emotional, he added. Unlike court work, “Now you’re advocating for the family of someone who lost a family member. Or how many parents we’ve sat with who lost a child and are crying. But you have to be emotionally involved with your clients to some degree to make it work. You’ve got to care, otherwise it’s not worth doing.”

According to DelCampo, not only does López possess the legal acumen and what he calls “cultural competence” to well represent their clients, but Dax “has a heart for his community,” citing López’s service on the State Bar of Georgia’s Board of Governors and the hearing panel of the Judicial Qualifications Commission. López is also on the regional boards of Jewish organizations like American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League.

López, who is an avid soccer fan eagerly awaiting the World Cup games next year, is married to Zulma López, an immigration lawyer who served as a state representative from 2021–23. The couple, who now live in Dunwoody, have two adult children and two school-age children, and are members of The Temple.