Drake Hood

Drake Hood spent 30 years defending the kinds of cases that now define his plaintiff practice: hospitals, corporations, and insurance companies facing serious personal injury, malpractice, and wrongful death claims. He served on the board of the Oregon Association of Defense Counsel for years and as its President in 2010. He is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and an executive member of its Oregon chapter, and he co-chairs the Professional Liability section of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association. He has tried cases through every condition the profession can throw at an attorney, including through a pandemic.

The decision to switch sides came at the end of a trial in 2023. Drake spent weeks defending a billion-dollar multinational corporation on an $8 million case, won a defense verdict, and then watched his firm’s fees get significantly reduced by his client’s own insurance company. The message was clear: insurance companies put their own interests before those of their clients, their attorneys, and anyone else. He joined Vames Wang Sosa Hood shortly after.

Drake is the attorney you want on medically complex cases. Birth injuries. Wrongful death. Industrial accidents. Medical malpractice. Cases where the defense has expert witnesses, institutional resources, and years of experience managing exactly this type of claim. Drake has been that defense. He knows how those teams are built and where the seams are.

He is also a U.S. Army veteran and serves as a Circuit Court Judge Pro Tempore for the State of Oregon. He has sat in every position the legal system offers. What he wants most for his clients is straightforward: that they feel heard, and that they leave knowing the firm has both the experience and the ability to help them.

“We won them a defense verdict, and their own insurance company cut our fees anyway. That told me exactly whose interests they put first.”