You succeeded Virginia Fry as managing partner of the Springfield office, but she stayed on staff. Why the change?
Virginia is on the executive committee, which governs our firm. It’s fair to say she has succeeded to a role of firmwide governance. It made sense to transition the office managing role to someone else.
What’s your focus area?
I’m involved mostly in business and employment disputes. I also do First Amendment work. I worked for KY3 and the News-Leader on occasion. The trend for defamation claims is definitely downward. It is a difficult claim to bring. Fortunately, for media types, when those claims are brought, it’s difficult to prevail. I think the malice element has a lot to do with that. I generally think the media does a good job of trying to be fair and objective.
In the role just over a year now, have you made any changes?
The firm as a whole has an industry focus now. We are now organized into six industry groups: energy and natural resources, financial services, food and agribusiness, health care, real estate and technology, manufacturing, transportation. Within those groups, we have people with particular specialties.
There may be a contracts lawyer and a litigator and a labor and employment lawyer within the real estate group or those same specialties within the health care group.
Husch Blackwell is the second-largest firm in southwest Missouri, according to Springfield Business Journal research. Not being locally owned, what did it take to get to this point?
The original members of this office come from local roots. All of us at first were interested in this platform because we had the opportunity to draw talented people with expertise to our local office. There are many bright people from southwest Missouri who go on to do well wherever they go to law school. They have opportunities to go to Chicago or Dallas or some bigger market and be paid a higher wage. With the Husch Blackwell platform, sometimes we are able to draw them back home. We have a broader base and with that leverage, we are able to pay a little more for that talent. The flip side of that is they are able to work on larger, more complex transactions than if they worked in a firm without that platform.
Husch Blackwell lost 10 partners to the local office of Spencer Fane LLP in the last year. How do you come back from that?
We’ve moved on from that process. We have 18 lawyers here, and two retirees who still have offices, so really 20 lawyers in this office. We have hired two new associates that start in the fall, taking us to 22 lawyers. We also have three summer associates, law students who are interested in working here in the future. We think we are on a really bright, positive path here.
Are you still trying to grow the staff?
We want to bring in the best and brightest people we can find. We don’t care if they are male, female, blue – we like bright energetic people. Thankfully, clients have given us the opportunity to allow some of the younger lawyers to work with them, and they’ve found that they are bright and good lawyers. In some ways, there are always opportunities after things happen. These lawyers are stepping in, stepping up and doing well.
I don’t think we are looking to grow just for growth’s sake. We are always looking for opportunities to grow – and I hate to use a cliche phrase – but to grow strategically. If an opportunity presents itself that makes sense for an industry group or client, we will definitely try to seize on that.
