Drey Alan Cooley

In searching for an attorney in St. Louis, I called and emailed several attorneys. Drey personally called me back, the same day, within hours of my inquiry. Drey is level-headed and put me at ease during our initial conversation. He has been a steady advocate and counsel throughout the time that he... has worked with me. I highly recommend Drey for any litigation matter you are dealing with.

A civil suit was brought against me / my business by a government body seeking to collect very significant back taxes for a taxing statute that I was very convinced did not apply to our business. For this reason (at my own significant expense) I set about fighting their claim/suit. I chose a lawyer a...nd after almost 3 years and over $30K, this other attorney (with a trial looming in about a month), continued to pressure me / try to convince me to “just settle”. This was never part of my plan as I would have never spent that money fighting for 3 years if I was not so convinced this tax statute did not apply to our business. I was already “all in” and committed to seeing this through. I knew that with this attorney and his mind set, we would never win this case in the courts. I very quickly took the opportunity to research changing counsel. Lucky for me I found Drey Cooley. We talked briefly after he had a chance to review the case up to that point. I felt like Drey had a better understanding of the case after a few minutes than my current counsel had after 3 years. Drey picked up on things, that had been missed for 3 years within 5 minutes! I immediately hired Drey and terminated my other attorney with now only 2 weeks to depositions and 4 weeks to trial. To say that Drey is astute is a huge understatement. He was able to pick up on things / concepts / ideas / even mistakes / oversights by previous counsel in a few minutes. He would work late into the evenings and weekends to insure we were completely prepared for depos and then again for trial. (I know this because he stayed in constant communication with me, often emailing or calling me well past “work” hours and even on weekends). Drey worked tirelessly to insure the proper outcome. To say Drey is an over achiever would be a huge understatement! In depositions Drey was superb! Not only was he able to ask the proper questions to ascertain the information we needed, what was most impressive was the manner in which he went about . For me as a person with no experience with these matters, watching Drey during the depo of the plaintiff’s witnesses was like being in an advanced legal class on how to properly depose your opposition. I would use the words “surgical precision” to describe his approach. He consistently was able to get little bits and pieces of information and then quickly (on the fly) create follow-up questions to get “all / more in depth” information. Sitting there watching, it was easy to see how Drey’s complete and thorough preparation was so far advanced and beyond what opposing counsel had done in their depo of me. At this point I knew for certain I had found the right attorney! Our trial came quickly after depos and once again Drey’s thorough, exacting, and precise preparation and strategy was evident. The trail lasted 1.5 days. After which Drey created his trail brief and prepared “findings of fact” for the judge. Knowing Drey had presented our case expertly and with precision and had created no doubt that the opposition’s case had no merit was uplifting to say the lease. Waiting with anticipation for a few weeks for the judge to return the verdict was difficult, yet I was very comfortable knowing Drey had presented the case in a manner that left beyond a shadow of a doubt the fact that this statute did not apply to us. The judge returned the verdict and we had won on all 3 counts. It was an incredible feeling of vindication having spent 3 years waiting for this day. I have no doubt that without Drey the verdict could have been different. I could never say enough great things about Drey. A consummate hard working, super intelligent and savvy lawyer! Drey proved to me time and time again, he was willing to go the extra mile to insure we presented our case in a manner that left no doubt as to the verdict. I am not one to give praise easily, yet I would highly recommend Drey Cooley to anyone seeking the highest quality legal representation!

I came to Drey with modest expectations. I feel like he really did his homework and thoroughly understood my situation before I even got there. He made me feel very at ease, even though I was pretty frazzled with my newborn in tow, and felt rather out of place in his fancy pants office. He made sure... to mitigate my expectations and not over promise. But in the end I got everything I wanted and more!! A similar domain name to to my business had been auctioned out from under me by someone clearly looking to steal my customers. I went in thinking we would send a threatening letter and that would be it. But the UDRP process was more affordable than I thought and it was totally worth it. Drey cited several previous cases similar to mine and made an airtight case. We won and the domain is mine now!! I would highly recommend Drey to anyone.