As Mark Bramble restarts his career as a lawyer, he doesn't plan to go back to working on cases involving insurance companies.
Instead, now that the state Supreme Court has said he can have his law license back, Bramble wants to represent people who have been charged with a crime.
It's something he can relate to.
In 2013, police charged Bramble with attempted murder and wanton endangerment. They said he fired almost 50 rounds from several guns inside and out the windows of his South Hills home.
A year later, a judge dismissed those charges, but Bramble believes he is a better lawyer after seeing the other side of the criminal justice system.
"It taught me patience," Bramble said of the legal process. "I understood it was going to be a long ongoing process and there's nothing I can do to speed it up."
Earlier this year, the West Virginia Supreme Court agreed to reinstate Bramble's license to practice law. Last week, he was only short a few continuing legal education credits of getting his license back.
Bramble said he still doesn't remember the shooting incident at his house. He only remembers waking up in a hospital bed and then being transported to South Central Regional Jail.
A year later, in 2014, Circuit Judge Carrie Webster dismissed the charges against Bramble. She found that he wasn't criminally responsible, citing reports from three forensic psychiatrists which found he was in a "drug induced delirium" after taking the over-the-counter sleep aid Unisom.
He had been under a lot of stress leading up to the incident, recalled Trent Redman, one of Bramble's attorneys.
Last week, Bramble sat around a conference table with attorneys Redman and Michael Payne, who both represented him against the criminal charges.
The three are good friends and Bramble has worked as a paralegal at the firm since having the charges dismissed.
"He can stay here as long as he wants," Redman said of Bramble.
Payne pointed out that Bramble will be able to relate to clients on a level most other attorneys can't.
"You'll be able to speak to them from experience," Payne said.
Bramble already knows what kind of lawyer he doesn't want to be. His time in jail helped him realize that.
"When I was incarcerated, in general population, there were 15 other inmates in there and none of them met with their lawyers, except me," Bramble recalled. "I wasn't trained that way. I found it offensive."
When he begins working as a lawyer again, Bramble will be on a two-year probation period, according to the Supreme Court's order regarding his law license. He must be supervised by an attorney during that time and he must continue to meet with a counselor.
Bramble has also agreed not to represent any juvenile defendants, according to the order reinstating his law license.
That was a decision Bramble made on his own, he said. It has to do with the death of his son.
In January 2000, Bramble's 2-year-old son was killed. His ex-wife's then-boyfriend, James Robert Montgomery Jr., was suspected in the death, but was never charged with the toddler's killing.
Bramble was admonished by the state Lawyer Disciplinary Board for posing as a defense attorney for Montgomery in an attempt to gain custody of his then 4-year-old daughter. At the time, prosecutors said Bramble's stunt may have compromised their investigation into the young boy's death. Montgomery was later convicted on unrelated charges in Georgia.
Days before the shooting incident, Bramble had turned in a letter of resignation to the state Attorney General's office. Before that, he had worked from 1996 until 2011 with the firm Kesner, Kesner and Bramble.
Representing criminal defendants will allow him to get back in a courtroom, which is something he said he's missed. "When I practiced insurance defense, it was very paper intensive. I loved being a trial lawyer and being in a courtroom, and all [insurance law] involved was moving papers around," he recalled.
He has worked on one criminal case, which he was appointed to years ago by Kanawha Circuit Judge Tod Kaufman.
"Judge Kaufman decided insurance lawyers needed to practice real law and appointed pretty much every lawyer in town who did private corporate law or insurance law to a case," Bramble said.
In that case, the charges against his client were dismissed.
"So I guess I'm 1-0," Bramble said.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.