Trial Lawyer View Podcast
Kellam T. Parks
Kellam T. Parks | Co-Founder and Managing Member | Parks Zeigler, PLLC
Kellam comes from a long line of Tidewater natives. His paternal grandfather’s family grew up on the Eastern Shore and Kellam’s grandfather, after whom he is named, moved to Norfolk as a young adult. Kellam’s paternal grandmother grew up in Norfolk. Both his parents grew up on the Southside and Kellam was raised in Virginia Beach.
Education
After graduating from the first full class at Salem High School in Virginia Beach in 1992, Kellam attended a small liberal arts college, St. Andrews University in North Carolina, where he fell in love with learning. Kellam graduated summa cum laude with a philosophy degree with honors in 1996, and a triple minor of politics, psychology, and law.
After working three jobs the summer after college to save up money, Kellam began law school at William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia. Kellam chose W&M due to its strong academic history and his desire to settle back in Tidewater once he graduated in 1999.
The Start of Kellam T. Parks’ Career as a Virginia Beach Lawyer
Kellam began his legal career with a mid-sized firm doing primarily insurance defense work and moved through a number of local firms seeking the right fit of practice areas, camaraderie, and compensation. After a little over six years at his last firm he did just that – founded the Law Office of Kellam T. Parks, PLLC in January 2012.
What Makes Parks Zeigler, PLLC Different
One of the motivating factors of forming his own firm was to integrate modern technologies into his practice, which was hard to do in a larger firm environment. Kellam created the law firm to be paperless with cloud-based systems to enable immediate and remote access for himself and his clients. This has served the firm well as it transitioned over time to Parks Zeigler, PLLC.
The attorneys and staff are able to utilize digital technologies for all aspects of the practice of law, from legal research to trial presentation. The law firm was an early adopter of Generative AI for additional efficiencies, allowing increased productivity to better serve its clients. Kellam’s focus on technology keeps him up to date on the latest issues involving cybersecurity and data privacy, allowing him to better serve clients in this area of his practice.
Kellam’s Commitment to Building a Modern Firm
Kellam has always been very active in legal-related organizations. He taught at Tidewater Community College for a number of years early in his career. He is active in local Bar Associations, such as the Virginia Beach Bar Association and the Norfolk & Portsmouth Bar Association, where he served as President from 2023-2024 and participates as a mentor in its mentorship program. Kellam is also a member of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, sitting on the Board for the Family Law Section.
He is very active with the Virginia State Bar, formerly serving as the chair of the Special Committee on Technology and the Future Practice of Law. Kellam has authored numerous articles in various legal publications and teaches legal education courses to lawyers and the public across Virginia, regionally, and nationally on his various practice areas, the use of technology in the practice of law, and law firm ownership.
Kellam earned the Marketer of the Year Award from Great Legal Marketing. It was a proud achievement for Kellam and the firm, as the award recognizes the innovative and creative strategies employed to attract new clients. Attorneys from all over the country (and even abroad) recognized the innovative and creative things that Parks Zeigler is doing to ensure its message is heard through their vote.
Taking his experience as an owner of a law firm, participation in numerous coaching groups, and relationships with other law firm owners, Kellam founded The MOTIVATEd Lawyer, LLC in 2024; a coaching business for lawyers and law firm owners on the business of running a law firm.
More About Kellam T. Parks
Away from the office, Kellam spends as much time with his family as he can. He met his beautiful wife Kelly in August of 2002 and they were married a little less than two years later, celebrating their 20th anniversary in July 2024. Kellam and Kelly raised their daughter Avery, who has been a dedicated ballet and contemporary dancer since age three, and Avery continued that passion as a dance major at Old Dominion University. Avery graduated early in December 2019 to launch a local dance studio, Studio 17 Dance.
Kellam (obviously) enjoys exploring and tinkering with various forms of technology. He also enjoys working out, reading, and listening to almost all genres of music (however often laments his almost total lack of musical ability). He is a Star Wars superfan and enjoys all things SW-related. Having had the good fortune to travel during college (spending a month abroad studying in Switzerland and getting a whirlwind tour of Europe including Italy, Albania, France, Amsterdam, Germany, and Luxembourg) and law school (taking summer classes in Madrid, Spain at the Colegio Mayor Universitario San Pablo), Kellam looks forward to traveling abroad again and sharing the experience with his wife and daughter in the coming years.
Education
• St. Andrews University
• William & Mary School of Law
Honors and Recognition
• Avvo 10.0
• Best Lawyers
• Lead Counsel Verified
• Legal Elite by Virginia Business Magazine
• Martindale-Hubbell AV
• Super Lawyers by Superlawyers.com, part of Thomson Reuters
• Top Lawyers by Coastal Virginia Magazine
• 2019 Great Legal Marketing Marketer of the Year
• Faculty member & author for Virginia CLE
• Author for Lawline CLE
• Go To Attorney for Cybersecurity – Virginia Lawyers Weekly
Memberships
• Norfolk Portsmouth Bar Association
• Virginia Beach Bar Association
• Virginia Trial Lawyers Association
• Virginia State Bar
Practice Areas
• Cybersecurity/Data Privacy
• Family Law
• Business & Civil Litigation
Kellam Parks on why AI magnifies whatever system you already have
Winning cases and building a strong firm are two different achievements. Behind every good outcome sits an operating system, and Kellam Parks argues that the system, not the courtroom, is where technology is now reshaping trial practice.
The question has moved past whether firms will adopt these tools. What matters is how deliberately they do it.
The problem is discipline rather than technology
Firm leaders are prone to buying whatever they last heard about. A peer mentions a case management platform, a vendor demonstrates an AI demand tool, a conference showcases intake automation, and the purchase happens quickly while the implementation never really does.
Without structured evaluation, input from the people who will use it and proper training, good software turns into friction. Productivity drops, staff get frustrated and leadership loses credibility. Kellam has seen the financial cost reach six figures before a firm reverses course.
Software needs evaluating systematically, with users involved early, training treated as part of the cost, and adoption measured afterwards. Skip those and you are building chaos rather than leverage.
Where it is already working
Set the hype aside and the practical uses are clear enough: legal research, medical record review, chronology building, internal document analysis, marketing and administrative work, and call routing at intake.
Medical record review is the obvious one for personal injury, since a bottleneck that used to take days can now be summarised and organised in minutes. Legal research that once began with hours of exploratory searching can start from a much narrower position, which saves associate time and reduces what the client is charged for.
The ethical questions are real and they are manageable
Hallucinations, confidentiality and professional responsibility all come up, and Kellam treats the concerns as legitimate rather than obstacles. His answer is governance: write an internal usage policy, define which tools are approved, train staff on where the confidentiality boundaries sit, supervise every output before it goes anywhere, and be straight with clients about it.
No lawyer files a brief drafted by a first-year associate without reading it. The same supervision applies here. These tools are capable assistants and they are not counsel.
Efficiency changes the business model
This is where the conversation gets strategic. If the work takes half the time it used to, the pricing structure has to be looked at again.
Firms holding rigidly to hourly billing may find revenue compressing. Firms willing to rethink the structure, through staged fees, value-based pricing or tighter margin discipline, can improve profitability while giving clients better value. Efficiency ought to strengthen a firm rather than penalise it, and getting there needs leadership clarity about how the business actually works.
Smaller firms are better placed than they think
Small and mid-sized firms are nimble, they can run experiments and they can back out of a bad decision quickly. Large firms struggle with change management, which gives a smaller practice room to build this into how it operates before the market adjusts.
The danger is not adopting imperfect technology. It is standing still while competitors compound small efficiency gains quarter after quarter.
The system decides the result
Kellam’s central point is that AI magnifies whatever is already there. Disciplined processes get faster. Chaotic ones get more chaotic, sooner.
So the useful questions are about the firm rather than the software: how does this reshape our workflows, where can we automate before we hire, how does this change what the client experiences, and how does it protect margin. The future of trial firms will be settled partly in the courtroom and largely in how carefully leaders design the systems sitting behind the verdict.
We get into all of this on the episode. Watch it on YouTube, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
