While most Phoenix-area injury firms still organize their practice around car, truck, and motorcycle cases, Warnock MacKinlay has spent the past two years publicly expanding a dedicated Uber, Lyft, and food-delivery accident practice across a rotating list of Valley cities.
AN AWESOME ATTORNEYS EDITORIAL PROFILE Independently researched from public records, court filings, news coverage, peer-review directories, and firm-published materials.
ATTORNEY ADVERTISING / IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER. This profile is informational and may constitute attorney advertising. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney–client relationship. Case results, recovery figures, ratings, and awards described below are reported by the firm or by third-party rating organizations and are attributed accordingly; they describe past matters and do not guarantee, warrant, or predict the outcome of any future case. Every case is unique and involves risk, including the risk of loss. Prospective clients should consult directly with a licensed attorney about their specific circumstances.
At a Glance
| FIRM | Warnock MacKinlay Law, PLLC |
| LEADERSHIP | Nathaniel B. “Nate” Preston, Managing Partner · Jay MacKinlay, Attorney (civil litigation) · Eric Robinson · Richard Lundin · Quinton Riches |
| OFFICES | 7135 E. Camelback Road, Suite F-240, Scottsdale, AZ 85251 |
| PRACTICE FOCUS | Personal injury: car, truck, motorcycle, pedestrian, bicycle, and rideshare (Uber/Lyft) and food-delivery accidents; slip and fall; wrongful death |
| SIGNATURE EDGE | A named, actively marketed practice area for rideshare and food-delivery-app accident cases — a modern case type most firms in this series don’t list separately |
| LEADERSHIP CREDENTIALS | Nate Preston: J.D., Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, Pedrick Scholar Honor Student; Jay MacKinlay: practicing in Arizona since 1997 |
| TRACK RECORD | Firm reports Nate Preston has “resolved numerous cases for injured victims in excess of $1,000,000.00 each” and Jay MacKinlay has handled “multi-million dollar resolutions” (per the firm) |
| RECOGNITION | “$500 Million Dollar Club” award from the American Academy of Attorneys, attributed to Nate Preston (per the firm) |
| CONTACT | 602-600-6427 · warnocklaw.com |
Rideshare litigation is still a relatively new corner of Arizona personal injury law — Uber and Lyft did not exist when most of the firms profiled elsewhere in this series were founded. Warnock MacKinlay Law has built a visible, recurring piece of its public identity around exactly that gap, announcing expanded rideshare- and delivery-accident representation across Valley cities in a steady cadence of releases through 2025 and 2026. This profile examines the firm behind that positioning, its leadership, and what a prospective client should know before relying on the rideshare-specific claims in its marketing.
Origin and Leadership: A Managing Partner Who Started as a Clerk
Nathaniel B. Preston, who goes by Nate and serves as the firm’s managing partner and owner per its Better Business Bureau listing, played varsity football at Brigham Young University, where he also earned his bachelor’s degree, according to the firm’s own attorney biography. He later earned a Master of Real Estate Development, graduating summa cum laude, from Arizona State University, and went on to earn his Juris Doctor from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, where he was a Pedrick Scholar Honor Student and received the CALI Excellence for the Top Student Award, per the firm. As a law student, Preston worked at ASU’s Civil Justice Clinic, and he clerked for Baker & McKenzie, an international law firm, before joining Warnock MacKinlay. He is fluent in Spanish, per the firm, and has by his own account traveled to more than 40 countries.
In an interview with Attorney at Law Magazine, Preston credited several mentors for his rise to managing partner, singling out his father-in-law as “the most significant influence” in his legal career, alongside the firm’s other lawyers and his wife Brittany, without the magazine naming that father-in-law directly; Awesome Attorneys did not independently confirm whether that relationship connects to any other named partner at the firm and is not asserting one here. Jay MacKinlay, an attorney in the firm’s civil litigation department, has practiced law in Arizona since 1997 — nearly three decades — and has, per the firm, “participated in hundreds of court proceedings” including multi-million-dollar resolutions. Eric Robinson has represented injured victims exclusively since becoming licensed in Arizona in 2012 and has focused much of his practice on litigation, per the firm, including significant work within the Hispanic community. Richard Lundin represents auto-accident and personal injury clients in both state and federal court, and Quinton Riches, per the firm, has already recovered millions of dollars for clients during a comparatively short tenure at the firm.
The Differentiator: Naming the Rideshare Case Before Most Firms Do
Between January and June 2026 alone, Warnock MacKinlay issued a series of press releases through GlobeNewswire announcing an “expanded focus” on rideshare, delivery, and commercial-vehicle accident representation in Mesa, Glendale, Chandler, Peoria, Tempe, Scottsdale, and Yuma, among other Valley cities. The firm’s Better Business Bureau listing separately names Uber/Lyft Accidents and Food Delivery Accidents as distinct categories of its practice, alongside more conventional categories like Car Accidents, Bicycle Accidents, and Construction Accidents. That naming choice — treating app-based rideshare and delivery collisions as their own practice line rather than folding them into general auto-accident work — is not something this series has documented at any other Phoenix-area firm to date.
What Warnock MacKinlay Handles
- Car, truck, and semi-truck accidents (per the firm)
- Rideshare (Uber/Lyft) and food-delivery-app accidents — a named, separately marketed practice area (per the firm)
- Motorcycle, pedestrian, and bicycle accidents (per the firm)
- Slip and fall, swimming-pool, and construction accidents (per the firm)
- Dog bites and wrongful death claims (per the firm)
Track Record
The firm’s own materials describe Nate Preston as having “successfully resolved numerous cases for injured victims in excess of $1,000,000.00 each,” and separately state the firm has been honored with a “$500 Million Dollar Club” award from the American Academy of Attorneys. Jay MacKinlay is described as having more than 23 years of experience “including multi-million dollar resolutions.” The firm’s current site has since raised that headline figure considerably: pages dated as recently as December 2025 state the firm has “recovered $1 billion for Arizona accident victims, with record verdicts and settlements” — double the $500 million figure behind its own cited industry award, suggesting the award recognition may simply be older than the firm’s current total, though this profile could not confirm that explanation directly.
One detailed client account, published on the firm’s site, illustrates the kind of case behind those aggregate figures: a client suffered multiple rib fractures, a fractured cervical vertebra, a punctured lung, and organ bruising in an accident, accumulating close to a quarter-million dollars in medical bills from what the client describes as “at least 20 creditors.” Per the client’s own account, the firm instructed her not to worry about the incoming bills, negotiated the total down “substantially,” and handled all insurance-party communication directly. No itemized, case-by-case dollar-results table beyond this narrative and the aggregate figures above was found in the sources reviewed for this profile.
Past-Results Disclaimer. Every case is different, and results depend on each matter’s specific facts and circumstances. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any other matter. Figures above are reported by the firm on its own published materials and have not been independently audited by Awesome Attorneys.
In Their Clients’ Words
The firm’s own site publishes numerous client testimonials naming specific staff. “Nate was truly amazing!” one client wrote of Nate Preston. “He made me feel comfortable during a very stressful time by clearly outlining the process and maintaining the perfect level of communication.” Another wrote: “I would definitely refer Nate to friends or family if they are ever injured in an accident… He and his staff kept me up to date and answered all my questions.” A third client credited a staff member identified as Michelle as “incredible — consistent, honest, kind, and always communicative,” who “handled my case from start to finish.” None of these testimonials were accompanied by a full last name in the versions reviewed. The firm’s Birdeye review page separately reports a 5-star rating across 634 reviews as of this research date.
Recognition
- Nate Preston: “$500 Million Dollar Club” award, American Academy of Attorneys (per the firm)
- Nate Preston: Pedrick Scholar Honor Student and CALI Excellence for the Top Student Award, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law (per the firm)
- Jay MacKinlay: nearly three decades of Arizona litigation experience (per the firm)
The Arizona Legal Backdrop
What follows is general legal information about Arizona law, not legal advice. Arizona’s statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death claims is generally two years (A.R.S. § 12-542), and Arizona is a pure comparative negligence state (A.R.S. § 12-2505), meaning a partly-at-fault claimant’s damages are reduced, not eliminated.
Rideshare cases carry a wrinkle the standard two-party car-accident framework does not: Uber and Lyft drivers are classified as independent contractors of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) rather than employees, and Arizona and federal regulatory frameworks around TNCs affect how liability and insurance coverage attach depending on whether the driver was logged into the app, en route to a passenger, or actively carrying one at the time of a crash. Layered insurance coverage — the driver’s personal policy, the TNC’s contingent coverage, and the TNC’s higher-limit policy during an active trip — means a rideshare claim often involves identifying which policy applies to a given phase of the trip before a claim can even be properly directed, a complexity ordinary auto-accident claims don’t share.
This section is general legal information about Arizona law, not legal advice, and may not reflect changes after July 2026. Anyone injured in a rideshare or delivery-app accident should consult a licensed Arizona attorney promptly, since which insurance policy applies can depend on the driver’s exact status at the moment of the crash.
The Awesome Attorneys Assessment
Warnock MacKinlay’s rideshare and delivery-accident positioning is genuinely distinctive within this series — no other firm profiled so far names that case type as its own marketed practice line, and the firm has backed the claim with a sustained cadence of city-by-city expansion announcements rather than a single press release. Its Birdeye page’s volume (634 reviews at a 5-star average) is also among the largest review counts documented in this series. The trade-off is that the firm’s own headline recovery figure is internally inconsistent — a $500 million industry-award figure alongside a current $1 billion site claim, with no explanation offered for the jump — and one striking biographical detail, Nate Preston’s tribute to his father-in-law’s influence, could not be traced to a specific named relationship within the firm. For a reader specifically injured in an Uber, Lyft, or delivery-driver collision in the Phoenix area, Warnock MacKinlay is one of the few firms in this series to treat that fact pattern as a distinct specialty rather than an afterthought; a reader focused on headline dollar figures specifically should ask the firm to reconcile its own numbers.
Methodology & Sourcing
This profile was researched from Warnock MacKinlay Law’s own website (warnocklaw.com and youraccidentlawyer.com), its Better Business Bureau listing, GlobeNewswire press releases issued between January and June 2026, an Attorney at Law Magazine feature on Nate Preston, and a LinkedIn profile. Facts are attributed to the firm or the cited third party throughout and were not independently re-verified against bar or court records beyond the public listings cited. Readers should confirm current attorney roster and recognition claims directly with the firm before relying on them.
Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice
This profile is an independent editorial article published by Awesome Attorneys. Awesome Attorneys does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any lawyer or law firm profiled on this site, and inclusion in this series is not paid placement. “Awesome Attorneys” is a brand name only; it is not a rating, ranking, or claim that any profiled firm is superior in any legal category.
Awesome Attorneys maintains a separate attorney directory. Only listings there marked “Sponsored” or “Ad” reflect a paid or sponsored relationship with Awesome Attorneys; this editorial profile is not such a listing.
Facts, figures, and claims in this profile were independently researched from public sources as described in the Methodology & Sourcing section and are current only as of the research date; they are subject to change without notice, and readers should confirm any detail directly with the firm before relying on it. This notice supplements, and does not replace, the Attorney Advertising notice at the top of this profile.