Matthew L. Bretz

Matthew L. Bretz is the founder of Bretz Injury Law and a Kansas trial attorney whose path to the courtroom was anything but conventional. Raised by a single mother alongside three sisters and shaped by close-knit grandparents, he was a relentlessly curious kid who landed his first job at eleven, made Eagle Scout by thirteen, and finished college and began teaching classical and quantum physics at Kansas State University by the age of twenty. Yet even as physics and teaching captivated him, he couldn't shake a boyhood admiration for a retired local lawyer he once did yard work for — a pull toward the law that eventually won out.

That instinct carried him to Pepperdine University School of Law in California on a scholarship, a world away from small-town Kansas and an experience he credits with expanding his sense of what was possible. While still in school, he caught on with the prominent Los Angeles firm Engstrom Lipscomb & Lack, where he cut his teeth litigating aviation and catastrophic-injury cases drawn from around the world. If Pepperdine taught him the law, he often says, it was that firm that taught him how to actually be a trial lawyer.

The defining moment of his life, though, came on Valentine's Day in 1992, when his sixteen-year-old sister, Marlee, and two of her friends were killed instantly when a train struck their car as they delivered flowers. Living through that loss gave Matt a firsthand understanding of the devastation that follows a sudden, senseless tragedy — and it reshaped his purpose. His family's advocacy in the aftermath contributed to federal safety reforms, and Matt has since devoted both his career and his personal life to standing up for the seriously injured and the bereaved while working to make his community safer. He serves on the National Board of Directors of MADD and volunteers with organizations including the United Way, the Red Cross, Interfaith Housing, ABATE, and the Training and Evaluation Center of Hutchinson.

Licensed since 1991, Matt concentrates his practice on motor vehicle collisions, premises liability, dangerous and defective products, nursing home claims, and wrongful death, and he is admitted in Kansas, California, and federal courts across numerous districts and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. A lifelong teacher at heart, he trains fellow trial lawyers nationwide through the Keenan Trial Institute and has earned recognition from outlets and rating organizations such as CNN, Martindale-Hubbell, and AVVO. He'll tell you, however, that the honor he treasures most is a handwritten note from a client: "You treat me like your only client." Matt and his wife of thirty years, Amy, have two daughters, Lauren and Hannah, both pursuing careers in law.