One Man for the People: The Unrelenting Windle Turley

In 1972, a young Windle Turley, fresh out of law school, found himself arguing before the nation’s highest court to correct Texas’s flawed child support laws. To the joy of the “kid from Cheyenne, Oklahoma,” the decision was for the children. Driven by his lifelong sense of urgency to fix that which is broken, Turley went on to found his Dallas-based Turley Law Firm a year later with a singular calling: to bring justice to victims, or those left to carry on their memory, silenced in the immense shadows of companies and institutions who injure and kill.  

In this memoir of real-life Davids and Goliaths, Turley tells stories of taking on titans from the airlines and firearms industry to the very institutions of the Catholic Church and the U.S. government. Here he charts a legacy of legal victories that would draw widespread attention to dangerous public oversights and empower citizens to fight for justice on their own behalf.

Interwoven with vivid memories of a hardscrabble adolescence, crises of identity, and death-defying adventures, A Sense of Urgency is by turns lyrical and unflinching, revealing tale by tale how the instinct to stand up for others—and the guts to take risks others won’t—often takes root long before the real battles ever begin.

Pub Date: Mar 31, 2026

9781612547527, 1612547524

Hardcover

$27.95 USD

216 pages

6 in W | 9 in H

Windle Turley is a Dallas trial attorney whose precedent-setting cases helped build what would become one of the largest personal injury firms in the country. He is a perennial on Best Lawyers lists such as Super Lawyers, and he has been honored as a Texas Trial Legend by the Dallas Bar Association, the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association, and the Higginbotham American Inn of Court, where he has served as a Master. Turley has also served as an advocate in the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) and has held various leadership offices, including President of the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association. He is also a Distinguished Alumnus of Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law as well as Oklahoma City University.

Raised by a single mother in Cheyenne, Oklahoma, Turley worked his way out of his small town to become an early champion for children’s and women’s rights. Following his undergraduate degree from Oklahoma City University in 1962, he attended Southern Methodist University School of Law before opening the Turley Law Firm in 1973. The Turley Law Firm would become widely known for developing innovative settlement and trial techniques, including the use of video and demonstrative evidence in the courtroom, and was also the first to use settlement documentary video presentations. 

Turley opened the floodgates in child sex abuse cases with the first jury verdict against the Catholic Church, a case that raised awareness and inspired action across the country. He also garnered national attention with his “Firearms Project,” which sought to impose strict product liability against manufacturers and sellers of unreasonably dangerous firearms. In addition to thousands of individual wrongdoers, Turley’s legal battles have been against a wide-ranging set of organizations and institutions from General Motors and the NRA to the United States government. 

Windle Turley actively practices law, is a guest lecturer, and operates a working ranch near his old hometown of Cheyenne, Oklahoma, with his wife, Shirley.