Steve Magas is Ohio's 'Bike Lawyer'
And a fellow cycopath
Steve Magas reached out to me two years ago. Back when my brains were souped up on opiates after being hit by an SUV while riding my bike. OK, he side-swiped me. Still, the impact sent me flying into a ditch with such force my shoe came off. My phone’s screen shattered. And my shoulder came out of its socket and my T-11 vertebrae smashed into itself. It hurt.
But the physical pain almost wasn’t as pointed as the fact that the person who hit me decided to keep on driving that day, leaving me at the side of the road and launching us both into a two-year odyssey of civil and criminal law.
PROFILE
Steve Magas
Age: 66
Occupation: lawyer
Family: Ex-wife; adopted son, older son. New wife; step children, three grandkids.
Pets: Golden mini doodle, puppy.
Miscellaneous facts: Graduated from Mansfield’s Malabar High School in 1975. Favorite author = John Grisham. (“Some lawyers don’t like his stuff. I don’t know why.”) Plays trumpet in a band. Loves to listen to jazz. But also soul and rock and other stuff.
What I didn’t know back when he reached out was that Steve Magas is known as the Bike Lawyer. It’s practically all he does. And he’s been doing it since the 80s.
“My fist bike case was in the 80s,” he told me over the phone earlier this week. He was fresh out of Ohio State’s law school and a brand new lawyer at a big firm. One day he read a blurb in a newsletter posted by an area bike club.
“It said ‘we need a lawyer.’ So I answered the ad,” he said.
The club, a nonprofit, hadn’t filed its statement of continuing existence — one of the only straightforward requirements of the government for nonprofits.
“Well, they hadn’t done that for, like, 20 years,” he said. He looked into the process and found out, during his research, that the Cincinnati Motorcycle Club had been developed in that time. So he had to get that club’s permission to use a similar name before filing the statement of continuing existence. He met someone at a biker bar and got a guy to sign a form.
“And they got the name back,” he said, referring to the Cincinnati Cycle Club.
Around that time, Magas — a cyclist in his own rite — began writing about bike laws. No one else was doing it. (“It was niche before niche was a thing,” he said.) He collaborated with the League of American Wheelmen — which is now the League of American Bicyclists.
The more he wrote, the more attention he got from cyclists. And then he got a case. It involved a fatality and it went to trial. He got a good result for his client. He became known around the region as the Bike Lawyer, right around the time when computers started getting more popular in the 90s. His registered an email address: bikelawyer@aol.com.
“The name stuck. I put it on cards and stuff like that,” he said.
In 2008, Magas founded a solo practice and launched two websites: one for his practice and another for his Bike Lawyer stuff. The solo practice stopped doing anything worthwhile and the bike stuff “really took off,” he said.
“So I let (the solo practice) die. I’m doing the bike stuff now. It’s like 80-90 percent bike stuff,” he said.
Half of being a lawyer, he tells me, is learning how to get the phone to ring. There are big firms that spend lots of money to get their names on billboards in big metros. We’ve all seen them. “$1 million earned for clients last year” or “So-and-so cares about your injury.” He didn’t have that kind of capital — but that was the competition. His strategy was a bit more … niche. A bit more grassroots. He started contributing to publications like Bike Ohio, Bike Midwest, Bike USA and Adventure Cycling. And, of course, his own blog.
“It was great,” he said. “Good exposure. I got a few more cases. And then I was asked to help on a couple book projects. And then I was asked to be a co-author. It was a really good book. It’s the best book on bike law out there … it was written for the layman and the lawyer.”
The book: Bicycling and the Law. (2007.) Lance Armstrong wrote the book’s foreword. (Steve said he’s since reached out to Bob Mionske, the author, to republish a second edition, given Armstrong’s fall from grace.)
I imagine being a lawyer is much like being a journalist. You don’t get into the profession without having an insatiable sense of adventure, a natural curiosity, a drive to be of service to people in dire need. An appetite for the romance of starvation, of wantonness.
When I asked Steve what keeps him coming back to the office, day after long day, he gave a familiar answer. An answer similar to the one I’d give if someone asked why I stay in the thankless profession of journalism.
“The clients are the best,” he said. He described cyclists — the majority of his clients — as “just tremendous people.”
“Most of my clients are experienced riders. They know what they’re doing. The know the rules, generally, and they follow them — and then something happens to them,” he said.
Being a journalist is similar. I like meeting all sorts of people. People in pain. People in their highest of highs. Talking to these people is interesting. Relating their stories into tales others resonate with is, sometimes, a challenge. And it definitely doesn’t pay nearly enough. But it’s worth it.
He’s now handled more than 400 cases related to cycling injuries and fatalities. He also does advocacy work. He’s testified on laws in Columbus and in Washington, D.C., serves on the board of trustees for the Ohio Bicycle Federation and even works pro bono with local clubs and local governments on legal issues.
“Being a bike lawyer is the best mix of my fun side and law side I’ve ever found in 40 years,” he said.
Steve still rides his bike. But, like the rest of us, “not as much as I’d like.” His goal, someday, is to complete the Ohio to Erie Trail with his grandson. He hopes to do that once he recovers from a rotator cuff surgery. He owns an Independent Fabrication racer steel frame. He also owns a Bike Friday, which is a fold-up bike that you can travel with easily. That orange bike is the one you can find on his business card and in his email signature nowadays.
Thanks for reading today, cycopaths. I hope the weather is favorable for a ride today. If it isn’t, I hope you have the right gear to have a cold or wet ride. :)