Stephen Hasner spent part of his early legal career on the side of the table most injured clients never see: representing insurance companies and employers in workers’ compensation claims, the same kinds of cases he now brings against them. That switch, made permanent in 2008, is part of how Hasner Law, PC ended up built the way it is today.
A Law Degree and a Change in Direction
Hasner earned his J.D. in 1997 and is a member of the Georgia Bar Association, licensed to practice throughout the state. He began his legal career on the defense side of workers’ compensation law specifically, representing insurance companies and employers rather than the workers filing claims against them. That early defense experience gave him a working knowledge of how insurance adjusters evaluate a claim internally, set reserves, and decide what a case is worth long before a client ever sees an offer, knowledge that doesn’t disappear once an attorney switches to the other side of the table.
Founding the Firm in 2008
Hasner established his own practice in 2008, redirecting what he’d learned on the defense side toward representing injured workers and accident victims instead. The firm started as a single Atlanta office and has since grown into four locations across Georgia: the Atlanta headquarters, a Downtown Atlanta office, Savannah, and Kennesaw. As the firm expanded, it built its practice around a specific promise to clients: limited caseloads, so that clients speak directly with the lawyer actually handling their case rather than being routed to a paralegal or case manager for most of the process. That model runs counter to how a lot of high-volume personal injury advertising works, where a firm’s name recognition outpaces the number of attorneys actually available to handle the calls that name recognition generates, and it’s a tradeoff between caseload volume and direct attorney access that a growing firm has to keep making deliberately rather than by default.
Building a Practice Around Car Accidents and Workplace Injuries
Hasner Law handles car accident, truck accident, and motorcycle accident cases across metro Atlanta, along with workers’ compensation and construction-related claims. The firm’s car accident work spans the kinds of collisions that show up constantly on Atlanta’s most congested corridors: rear-end collisions on the I-75/I-85 Downtown Connector and I-285, T-bone crashes at intersections along Buford Highway and Memorial Drive, left-turn collisions on Peachtree Road and Roswell Road, and multi-vehicle pileups on I-75 through Clayton County and I-20, along with rideshare accidents involving Uber and Lyft. The firm has recovered more than $1 billion in aggregate settlements and verdicts, including an $11 million auto accident recovery. Attorney Advertising: past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case.
Why Early Insurance Contact Matters
The firm’s stated approach is to take over communication with the insurance company immediately after being hired and build out an evidence file within the first week, gathering police reports, surveillance footage, medical records, and identifying every applicable insurance policy before an adjuster has a chance to lock in a low early offer. That timing matters more than it might seem. Insurance adjusters are trained to make an early settlement offer before an injured person fully understands the extent of their injuries or has spoken with a specialist, and to use claim delays as a way of pressuring someone who’s missing work and facing mounting bills into accepting less than a case is actually worth. An attorney with a defense-side background, as both Hasner and several of the firm’s senior attorneys have, knows specifically which of those tactics an adjuster is likely to use and how to counter them before they take hold.
What Georgia’s Workers’ Compensation System Actually Requires
Workers’ compensation cases run on a different legal framework than a car accident claim. Rather than proving another party was negligent, an injured worker generally only needs to show the injury happened in the course of employment, but the tradeoff is that workers’ comp benefits are capped by statute and don’t include compensation for pain and suffering the way a personal injury claim can. Disputes tend to center on whether an injury actually happened at work, whether a pre-existing condition disqualifies a claim, or whether an employer’s insurer is trying to return an injured worker to a job before they’ve actually recovered enough to safely do it. Construction site injuries in particular can raise both kinds of claims at once, a workers’ compensation claim against an employer alongside a separate premises liability or third-party negligence claim against a general contractor or property owner, which is part of why the firm handles construction-related cases as their own category rather than folding them entirely into either workers’ comp or general premises liability work.
A Career Built Around Advocating for Injured Workers
Beyond his personal injury caseload, Hasner has spent much of his career in workers’ compensation advocacy specifically. He co-founded and serves on the executive committee of Georgia Injured Workers’ Advocates, an organization that pushes back against efforts to weaken the state’s workers’ compensation system on behalf of the injured employees who depend on it. He chairs the Workplace Injury Network Political Action Committee, which funds and supports legislative candidates favorable to injured workers’ interests, sits on the board of Workers’ Compensation Claimant Lawyers within the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, and co-chairs the Workers’ Compensation Law Institute, a continuing legal education program for attorneys practicing in the field. That combination of roles puts him in a position most personal injury attorneys aren’t: not just litigating individual workers’ comp claims, but working on the policy and legislative side of how Georgia’s workers’ compensation system operates for injured employees statewide.
A Team With Deep Workers’ Comp Bench Strength
Hasner isn’t the only attorney at the firm with defense-side origins. Senior Attorney Judy Blackwell, a University of Georgia law graduate who began practicing in Albany, Georgia before establishing an Atlanta practice in 1986 focused on workers’ compensation defense, later served as an Administrative Law Judge on Georgia’s Workers’ Compensation Board, presiding over more than 500 cases, before becoming a partner leading a workers’ compensation practice group at a prominent Atlanta firm and serving as Assistant General Counsel for Atlanta Public Schools. She’s a Fellow of the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, an invitation-only honor limited to attorneys with a sustained record of excellence in the field. Senior Attorneys Thomas Gore and Pearce W.J. Taylor round out a team the firm describes as carrying more than 100 years of combined legal experience, a bench that gives Hasner Law more workers’ compensation-specific depth than a typical personal injury practice of its size.
Recognition Built Over a Career
Hasner was named to Expertise.com’s Best Car Accident Lawyers list for Atlanta and Sandy Springs and its Best Workers’ Comp Attorneys list for Atlanta in 2024, received a 2024 Elite Lawyer award, and was recognized by the National Association of Distinguished Counsel as part of its Top One Percent. He’s a member of the American Association of Justice. Recognition within the firm extends beyond Hasner himself: Blackwell’s College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers fellowship, awarded starting with her 2023 class, reflects the kind of peer-reviewed standing that takes decades of practice in a specific field to accumulate rather than a single strong case or a paid award submission.
A Ministry in Nicaragua
Outside the firm, Hasner co-founded a ministry in Nicaragua, Rayo de Sol, that provides education, food, and support to children and families in the country. It’s a different kind of commitment than the bar association and legislative advocacy work that otherwise defines his career, one that Hasner and his family stay actively involved in alongside his law practice, and one the firm has pointed to as reflecting the same underlying instinct that drew him away from insurance defense work in the first place.
