My wife, Mary Ellis LaGarde, and I are the two shareholders of LaGarde Law Firm.  We have four children and three grandchildren.  We were both raised in middle-class neighborhoods in small towns.  I grew up in Raceland, Lousiana.  Mary grew up in Cumberland, Maryland.  My father was a carpenter and my mother was a homemaker.  I worked through high school bagging groceries at the local grocery store and doing carpentry work with my father and uncles.  In college, I worked summers on offshore oil platforms to raise money for tuition and during the school year I was a tour guide and assistant sergeant at arms at the Louisiana State Capitol.  I attended law school at Louisiana State University and served on the board of editors of the Louisiana Law Review.  After law school, I was a law clerk for the Honorable Justice James Dennis on the Louisiana Supreme Court.  I worked as an associate at Vinson & Elkins in Houston where I represented many large corporate clients including Underwriters at Lloyds, U.S. Steel, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, and the largest ship building company in the world, IHI.  Later, I joined Fisher, Gallagher, Perin & Lewis where I tried numerous jury trials for injured individuals and small business owners.  In 1992 I formed my own law firm.  Since then I have been representing injured individuals and business owners in both Texas and Louisiana.  In my spare time, I am the editor of and I assist my wife in her art projects ().