ABOUT KAPLAN MORRELL ATTORNEY AT LAW

Where We Started

In the summer of 1997, Britton Morrell opened a one-person workers’ compensation practice out of a small basement office in Greeley. The rent was $200 a month. The furniture was card tables and folding chairs. The only real splurge was a computer and a phone system – because in that business, those are not luxuries. They are the job.

That lean beginning was, in retrospect, the right foundation. It established a principle the firm has never abandoned: keep the financial house in order so the focus can stay where it belongs — on the client.

From that basement, the practice grew steadily and deliberately. We were early adopters of paperless systems, going fully digital in 2002 when most firms hadn’t considered it. We taught ourselves to OCR medical records and build searchable databases, not as a tech exercise, but because being able to prove that a doctor had documented a client’s complaint – in their own handwriting, months earlier – can be the difference between winning and losing. Technology, here, was always in the service of advocacy.

The Case That Changed Everything

In 2003, a local beef processing plant changed ownership. The new operators released a number of workers who had been injured under prior management but were performing light-duty assignments. What followed became one of the defining chapters in the firm’s history.

We took on twenty-six injured workers in a disability discrimination case against the plant – a 900-pound gorilla of a lawsuit layered on top of a full regular workers’ compensation caseload. The team at the time: one attorney and two paralegals. What that case required was the ability to take hundreds of thousands of pages of employment data and build a precise, searchable record — matching our clients against open positions the company claimed didn’t exist, tracking seniority, and documenting that workers without injuries were placed in those jobs instead.

We proved it. The case resolved with the workers being compensated for their lost time and returning to work. But more than the outcome, that case permanently shaped how this firm operates: lean in to emerging technology, build the systems that larger firms don’t bother with or can’t understand, and take on the cases that matter even when the opponent is much bigger than you are.

How Kaplan Morrell Was Born

In 2008, the practice joined forces with a major Denver, Colorado firm where Michael Kaplan was a partner. That three-year relationship forged what has become a twenty-plus-year professional friendship between Michael and Britton — a partnership built on complementary strengths. When that arrangement ran its course, Michael came with us. That’s how Kaplan Morrell was formed.

Michael brought deep relationships, an instinct for developing the name, and a belief that serious legal talent should be paired with genuine care for the people it serves. His relationships and advocacy across Colorado’s legal community have been foundational to the firm’s reputation.. Britton brought operational discipline, technology infrastructure, and process-building that let a focused firm punch well above its weight class. Together, they built something that neither would have built alone.

One measure of that success: Brandy, who joined as an 18-year-old file clerk in 2000, is today the firm’s senior paralegal and Chief Operating Officer. That kind of continuity doesn’t happen by accident.

The Attorneys We’ve Built Around

Kaplan Morrell now fields six attorneys dedicated exclusively to representing injured workers; more than any other workers’ compensation firm in Colorado. Three spent 10 to 20 years representing insurance companies before making the deliberate choice to switch sides. They brought that institutional knowledge with them, and it shows in how they prepare and how they fight.

Another is a seasoned practitioner who has represented both carriers and injured workers, and whose old-school dedication to clients is visible in the reviews she earns.
You will not find a Kaplan Morrell billboard. You will not see our ads on buses or hear them on the radio. Every client who walks through our door comes because of our reputation and the results we have obtained for people like them. We have always believed that it is the only advertisement worth having.

How We Operate

Kaplan Morrell is completely debt-free. We have never carried a line of credit. During the pandemic, we did not seek PPP loans. This is not an accident or an oversight; it is a founding principle. A firm with its financial house in order can concentrate entirely on its clients rather than on its own balance sheet. That discipline has been present since the card-table days in 1997, and it has never wavered.