Day in the Life with Virginia Fry

Wow. The view from Virginia Fry’s corner office on the 19th floor of Hammons Tower is breathtaking.

This is the life of a managing partner at Blackwell Sanders LLP.

One wall of windows highlights St. Louis Street to the south, the Missouri State University carillon tower and St. John’s Hospital. A second wall of windows looks east to John Q. Hammons Parkway, with Hammons Field and Evangel University clearly in sight.

But Fry isn’t distracted by the view. She’s been at the office since 7 a.m., and she’s intently focused on preparing for a case that’s scheduled to go to trial in two weeks.

“I’m not sure that I truly appreciate my view,” Fry says, as if noticing it for the first time. “I see it, but I don’t see it. Maybe I need to daydream more.”

Daydreaming, however, is not what got her to this level.

Fry, whose practice areas include education, business and commercial litigation, and labor and employment, began her career as a partner with Woolsey, Fisher, Whiteaker & McDonald in 1980. Fifteen years later, she became a partner at Price, Fry & Robb PC, and in 1998, she joined Blackwell Sanders as a partner. She was named managing partner of the Springfield office in 2002.

She’s been a Missouri Super Lawyer for two years running and was listed in “The Best Lawyers in America” for commercial litigation in 2006 and 2007. Her major representative clients include College of the Ozarks, CoxHealth, Guaranty Bank and SRC Holdings Inc.

On this Tuesday morning, Fry normally would attend Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce’s governmental affairs meeting, as she regularly does to “know what’s going on in Jefferson City.” Today, she instead decided to go to the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Foundation’s monthly board meeting.

Those plans changed last night, when she learned of a sudden development in her current case.

“As often happens in this business, something came up,” she says, without the slightest hint of inconvenience. “If I’m trying a case for someone, they don’t want me worrying about someone else’s problem when I’m supposed to be focused on theirs.”

While she can’t disclose details of the case she’s currently working on, it’s obvious that today, it has her full attention. She spends very little time at her desk, where e-mails, administrative duties and phone messages await her. Instead, she sits comfortably at a round table across the room, sorting through case-related paperwork that she marks with various colored highlighters and a red pen.

“It’s kind of a luxury for me to be getting ready for trial – I block off and get focused,” she says.

In the meantime, Fry juggles managing-partner duties. Lately, she’s been meeting about next year’s budget and leading discussions about whether to renew the firm’s Hammons Tower lease, which is up in two years.

Around midmorning, Fry breaks from her casework to respond to some e-mails – she receives about 100 a day – and clarify with legal assistant Becki Thomas on some documents she needs for an argument in the case in two days.

At 11:20 a.m., Fry heads out – running back in to grab her Blackberry – for an 11:30 a.m. meeting at the Busch Municipal Building. Springfield City Council and the Board of Public Utilities, of which Fry is chairwoman, are holding a special luncheon to discuss CU’s 2008 operating budget.

She arrives right on time, only to find out the meeting has been rescheduled for noon. When City Clerk Brenda Cirtin apologizes for the miscommunication, Fry laughs and replies, “I savor quiet time, so this is fine.”

In the empty conference room, Fry takes a few minutes to check e-mail on her Blackberry, and then calls Blackwell Sanders’ Kansas City headquarters to discuss a personnel issue.

City officials begin to trickle in, including Councilman Ralph Manley, who greets Fry with a kiss on her hand, and Mayor Tom Carlson, who calls out, “Nice to see you, Ginny.”

In a discussion about the CU budget, General Manager John Twitty addresses a comment about predicting the area’s energy needs and usage habits.

“Council should have some assurance, given the track record at City Utilities, that if we go out 50 years, there will have been prudent use of the assets that we have,” Fry interjects. “Fifty years out, I don’t know if we’ll still be using the power at James River (Power Station), but I think it’s fair to say that the utility will have taken care of what we’ve got.”

Upon returning to the office in the afternoon, Fry is swept away into a handful of meetings. Two are internal firm meetings about her current case, and another is with a client.

She wraps up the day at 6:45 p.m. and heads home to husband John. After dinner, she spends another hour and a half working on a filing for the pending trial, which is unusual for someone who prefers to leave work at the office.

“I try not to take work home, because I’d rather stay here and get it done, shut it off and go home and rest,” she says. “There’s always stuff to do at home.”

The day

5 a.m. Awakes. “I grew up on a farm, where the day starts early and goes late,” Fry says.

7 a.m. Arrives in office. She spends the morning dealing with a last-minute issue with her current case and preparing for its upcoming trial.

10:40 a.m. Fry’s legal assistant Becki Thomas knocks on the door with papers for the upcoming trial.

10:50 a.m. Answers e-mail.

11:10 a.m. Becki returns to clarify document information.

11:20 a.m. Leaves for budget luncheon with Springfield City Council and the City Utilities board.

11:30 a.m. Arrives for meeting to find out it has been rescheduled for noon. Fry sits in the empty conference room and checks e-mail on her Blackberry.

12:10 p.m. Meeting begins.

2 p.m. Returns to the office and makes phone calls.

2:30 p.m. Holds internal meeting dealing with a current case.

3 p.m. Meets with a client.

4 p.m. Another internal meeting dealing with her current case.

6:45 p.m. Leaves office.

7 p.m. Sits down to dinner with husband John.

8 p.m. Spends about an hour and a half working on a filing for the upcoming trial.

The Q&A

What is your morning routine?

“Hit the ground running. Literally, once I wake up, I’m up. If it’s at 4 a.m., I’m up. I always try to get a load of laundry going. There’s something about folding laundry – I do a lot of good thinking during tasks like that. (Morning) is my quiet time at home to deal with some domestic things, feed the animals and get out the door.

“I always stop for coffee. They know me on a first-name basis at Panera (at National and Elm). I have my special mix: about half decaf, a fourth of skim milk and top it off with hazelnut coffee.”

What does it take to be a good lawyer?

“In law school, they use the Socratic Method, which is supposed to make you analyze a situation from all different perspectives. The thing that tells me a lawyer is progressing is when they start thinking past what might be the obvious solution, because often that’s not the solution. You have to think beyond that, and sometimes beyond that. It’s always being a step ahead. That is a skill ... you develop as you practice.”

How would you describe a lawsuit?

“A lawsuit is a living, breathing creature, and unfortunately, you can only control about half of it. The real world is not ‘Boston Legal.’ There is a path that all lawsuits tend to follow, but there will be nuances to each one.”

Do you recall any especially major accomplishments or setbacks in your career, and how did you learn from them?

“This is a career where, as a young lawyer, particularly a litigator, you think that a victory is going to the courtroom and winning. With the benefit of a little age, at some point you begin to realize that most of the time, you’re trying to solve a problem, and often winning or losing is immaterial. It’s solving a problem for a client.”

Was becoming a managing partner a goal for you in the beginning of your career?

“That was not something I aspired to. The one thing that the management side of this has let me do is use a little bit of my education, which was in finance; I got an MBA. I’m able to look at things from the business side. At the end of a day, running a law office is running a business.”

How often do you take a vacation?

“We always try to go some place with our kids over spring break. We may go some place at Christmas. We try to go some place as a family in the summer. Last summer, we did the Middle Fork … at the Salmon River in Idaho, which was just an incredible experience, seven days on the river. If you don’t somehow back off for a little while and rest your brain, you can get bogged down. So, I do try to take time off and get recharged.”

When you’re on vacation, do you check e-mail or voice mail?

“I try not to. When we were on the river, obviously, cell phones didn’t even work. Maybe that’s what made it such a good vacation. I didn’t worry about the office at all.

“I find e-mail to be annoying. I tell clients, if it’s really important, call me, because I’m not going to sit there and wait for an e-mail to pop up on the screen and immediately respond. It’s a distraction.”

What dynamics do you see in your workplace?

“There’s a real difference in the culture between people joining the work force and those of us who have been in it for a while. For the kids entering the work force, there is not this philosophy of, ‘I’m going to go to a company and give my heart and soul.’ It’s more of ‘What about me?’ as opposed to ‘What about the job I’m supposed to do?’’ I don’t know that it’s good or bad, but it’s interesting.”

Have you been able to strike a balance between work and family?

“The one thing I’ve figured out is that it’s never equally balanced. It is always a juggling act. I think it’s made me a better lawyer and probably a better mother, because I’ve had both. Plus, I’ve had a great husband who’s helped out tremendously.”