Burks & Ogle

2025 Top Attorneys in Administrative Law, Criminal Defense, DUI Defense, Juvenile Defense

When you step foot in a courtroom, it’s often one of the worst days of your life – second, perhaps, only to the day that brought you here. A man or woman you’ve never met sits at the other table, ready to tear through your life and bare your secrets to a jury of strangers to decide your fate. It can be terrifying. But with the right attorney by your side, you won’t just survive it; it might give you the opportunity you need to change your life for the better.

According to Jacob Feuer, Burks & Ogle’s newest partner, it starts from the very first intake meeting: “We take significant time to understand who it is we’re meeting with and what they’re dealing with.” The firm takes time to not only get to know a client’s legal situation, but also the other things going on in their life that could ultimately affect their decision-making. 

“After doing this for well over 40 years, my passion has always been how we affect and handle our clients, their livelihoods, and their freedom,” says Chuck Burks, the firm’s founding partner. “And in order to do that, you’ve got to know a lot about your client and what their needs are.”

“We want our clients to feel like they have someone in their corner that cares about them and wants to make sure they get the best results possible,” adds fellow founding partner Nate Ogle. “Part of that is, from the very beginning, developing a relationship with our clients and making sure that the entire focus of our practice and our work on their cases is centered on the their goals and working with them to obtain a reasonable conclusion.”

The right conclusion for a case might be more than just a legal win. Burks says learning of a serious legal issue can be a terrible shock, but it’s actually a good thing that it was noticed because then you can go about treating the problem. “Our goal is, first and foremost, to protect them against the system, but secondly it is to try to use the system to improve their situation and really change their life for the better,” says Burks. 

Ogle recalls a recent case where he was able to reach a mutually beneficial solution with the prosecutor and help the victim and his client reconcile. The only reason that was possible, the victim told him, was because the prosecutor said her husband had “one of the most honest and trustworthy” attorneys working the case. He saw tangible proof of her husband’s progress because of Ogle’s diligent work.

Someone on the firm’s staff is on-call 24/7. And that’s not just something  they say on their website. “When you’re facing a [jury trial], you know you have a lot of worries and questions. Mr. Ogle always made himself available for me, and that meant a lot to me,” says one client. “If you want someone with compassion, with understanding, that will fight for you, Mr. Ogle is the guy.” And there are many more clients with similar stories to tell. 

“Each of us has a lot of cases over our career, but our client only has one case, and to that client, that’s the most important case,” says Burks. “So we look at his or her case as the most important case that we deal with, because we know that to them, it is.”

Burks & Ogle
865-522-4964
800 S. Gay Street, Suite 1900
Knoxville, TN 37929

knoxlegalteam.com