As a law student, Ms. Ward embarked on a grueling schedule, compressing the usual three-year program into 18 months. Despite her extremely busy class schedule, she still somehow found time to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and participate in the Women’s Law Alliance and the Student Bar Association, serving as interim vice-president.
After she got her J.D., cum laude, in 2005, Ms. Ward returned to the Myrtle Beach area and joined the Coastal Law Firm, where she remained for three years working in the civil litigation and family law areas before deciding the time had come to create her own law firm.
After starting small, Ms. Ward has grown the firm and compiled a strong record of success. Much of her work focuses on personal injury plaintiff’s cases, where she has achieved numerous six-figure and even seven-figure settlements on behalf of her clients.
In one case, she negotiated a $100,000 settlement plus $375,000 judgment — for a total of $475,000 — for a client who was injured after slipping and falling as the result of a defective sidewalk in an apartment complex. In another case, her client accepted a settlement of $100,000 from an insurance company that had denied liability and offered no money. In 2016, Ms. Ward recorded a $1 million settlement in a case involving a plumbing company truck that ran a red light and struck her client’s vehicle, leading to the wrongful death of an elderly passenger.
In addition to the personal injury cases, however, Ms. Ward also handles criminal matters and family law cases as well.
No matter what the case, Ms. Ward believes that her job is to make sure that all of her clients’ rights are protected and that they receive everything they are entitled to. “I genuinely care what happens to my clients,” she says. “I always say I beat up my first bully in the fourth grade and I’ve been beating up bullies ever since. But now they happen to be the insurance company, or the state trying to prosecute my clients, or an abusive spouse.”
Ms. Ward strives to seek at least some degree of leverage in her cases, oftentimes relying on case-evaluation services to better guide negotiations with insurance companies.
“But we’re not afraid to file a lawsuit,” she says. “We do the best we can to get what the value of the case should be on a settlement basis, and if that doesn’t come to fruition, we file lawsuits.”
In addition to her busy practice, Ms. Ward provides legal service in other capacities. She is a certified family court mediator and guardian ad litem. She also serves on an arbitration panel that evaluates property damage in auto cases.
Her non-legal community involvement includes serving on the boards of the Coastal Carolina University Alumni Association and on Your Sister’s Closet, an organization that provides interview and work clothing for women who are returning to the workforce.
Her primary outside interest is attending live music of all sorts, but her abiding passion remains her work. “It really brings a lot of satisfaction for me,” she says. “I love being the protector and saying, ‘I am your shield and sword. Get behind me.’ I love my job. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
When Regina Bechtler Ward launched the Ward Law Firm in 2008, its initial trappings weren’t exactly fancy.
