Danette Eatherton

If you call Marks Law Group after an accident, there is a good chance Danette Eatherton is the first person you speak with. And if your case runs its full course — through treatment, through the settlement demand, and into litigation if it goes there — she is likely to be the person you speak with most.

Danette is the firm’s Senior Paralegal and Office Manager. She has worked alongside Aaron Marks since 2017, and she brought more than 30 years of personal injury experience with her when she arrived.

Decades Spent on Personal Injury Cases

All of that career has been in personal injury, and most of it in metro Atlanta — the same courthouses, the same insurance carriers, the same records departments at the same hospitals and imaging centers. That kind of familiarity is invisible from the outside, and it is the difference between a records request that comes back complete and one that sits in a queue for two months. Danette knows which provider needs a phone call, which one needs a particular form, and which one will not move until someone follows up in person.

She learned the work from the ground up and has handled cases through every change in how personal injury litigation gets run. What has not changed is what a case actually needs: complete records, accurate billing, and deadlines that get met.

“Aaron needed someone who was already familiar with every step of the litigation process,” Danette says. “I had decades of experience as a paralegal, and I knew how to take on new clients, organize all the relevant documents, and tie up loose ends.”

What Danette Does on Your Case

Danette handles new-client intake and then stays with the file through to its conclusion. She takes the initial details of your case and prepares the letters of representation that formally notify the insurance carriers and other parties that you have counsel. From that point on she is your direct line to the firm, by phone, text or email, for as long as your case is open. Questions that call for legal judgment go to Aaron.

Much of her work sits where a personal injury case is genuinely decided: the medical record. Danette orders records and billing from every provider you treat with, follows up when they are slow to produce, and reviews the full treatment history to build the medical summary that supports your settlement demand. What those records show is, in most cases, what the case is worth. Whether they arrive complete and on time is what determines how quickly you get an answer.

“I have an eye for how to move cases forward,” she says, “from the time a new client walks through the door until it’s time to settle or go to trial.”

When a case does not resolve before suit, Danette prepares the litigation documents, manages the filing, and confirms that service is perfected on every defendant. She then carries the ongoing litigation matters through to resolution.

This is the stage where small procedural errors get expensive — a defect in service alone can cost months — and it is handled by someone who has done it for a very long time.

Outside the Office

Danette is a mother of five, and she is candid that the two roles inform each other: after all these years in the legal business, she is a mother first, and it taught her how to look after people and help them more effectively.

That comes through in how clients describe working with her. Danette is named, warmly and often, in our firm’s client reviews.

At the end of the day, it’s my job to make sure no one is just a file number. By being present through every step of the legal process, I can ensure every person’s story matters. I’m with them each step of the way. — Danette Eatherton