Small firm lawyers sometimes handle big-time cases

Mike Rathsack avoids a lot of problems that his friends face in large law firms.

He doesn't attend partner meetings.

He doesn't skip certain cases because of client conflicts.

He doesn't really need approval — for anything.

Rathsack, a solo practitioner with one law clerk, learned his lesson when he started as an associate at Hackbert, Rooks, Pitts, Fullagar & Poust in 1972.

"In the very first case I brought into that defense firm, there was a conflict, and I couldn't do it," he said. "The person we were going to sue was a firm client and that happens all the time with large firms."

After two years, Rathsack joined Dom Rizzi, a plaintiff personal-injury lawyer who later became a state appellate judge. Rizzi taught him how to handle appeals, so when he left to start his own firm in 1977, Rathsack built his reputation as an appellate lawyer.

"There are not that many (solos) that do appeals on the plaintiff side," Rathsack said. "People hired me when I was young. Somebody's got to give you a break and people did that for me."

He handles as many as 50 appeals at one time, often for lawyers he met in the early days of his career. Trial lawyers continue to bring him their clients, since they feel more comfortable working with someone they know and someone who brings knowledge to their cases.

"Large law firms have a different way of doing the case," Rathsack said. "They have a team of people looking at it. Here, the lawyers who hire me know it's just me. They know they can call one person and they know that person is responsible for everything in the case."

Several solo practitioners and small firm lawyers like Rathsack step up in the Chicago legal community, attracting attention with their role in significant, high-profile matters and leadership in large professional organizations.

They say they navigated the early years of their career by forming personal relationships with a diverse group of lawyers, striving to stay organized and efficient and seeking creative ways to develop clients and cases.

Tom Leahy started his career with plaintiff personal-injury firm Philip H. Corboy & Associates, but after three years, he decided to go out on his own in 1980.

He credits several factors, including an early desire to run his own shop. He also read an interview with Henry Miller, the author of "Tropic of Cancer," that especially motivated him, he said.

"I still remember it," Leahy said. "They said to him, 'What was really responsible for your inspiration in life?'

And he said, 'When I realized that I was no longer working for anybody else other than myself.' "

Leahy, now a partner at Leahy & Hoste, which operates with three full-time lawyers and one part-time lawyer, received early business as a result of winning several cases while with Corboy. His law school classmates also referred cases to him, while another attorney gave him work in exchange for free rent.

"There is a lot of pressure, but I did it at a time when I could survive on beer and hamburgers," he said. "It was cheap to live and work and devote all of your resources to your cases."

Leahy simplified his practice by using two bank accounts: a blue account for business and a yellow account for case expenses. He also stopped doing the paperwork required by large firms, he said.

"Corboy's office had these darn pink sheets and you had to fill out at least two to three dozen of them a day," he said. "One of the first things I did, which made me really feel like I was my own boss, was say, 'I'm no longer filling out a single pink sheet for the rest of my life.' "

Leahy once received 95 percent of his cases from referring attorneys, but now, about half come from attorneys and the rest come from clients, he said. Since most of those cases involve medical malpractice, he calls on the help of other attorneys in his firm.

"These days, you can't try a medical malpractice case alone," he said. "You have to have two attorneys, because of the paperwork, motions, witnesses, changing law. And you have to have another attorney back here in order to try a case and keep things going on in the office."

Leahy said he also benefits from discussing ideas with Jerry Latherow, another plaintiff personal-injury lawyer who shares office space on his floor.

Latherow worked at Corboy & Demetrio until he opened his own firm in 1985. He said it helps to rely on other solo practitioners and small firm lawyers for business and support.

"People go out on their own, and they look to hook up with other people who have a different kind of practice, and they can use that for getting business," Latherow said. "Whereas with (Tom and I), we don't work on each other's cases, but we always have each other to bounce things off (of)."

As a solo practitioner, Latherow sets his own hours and chooses his own cases, but he also works longer hours and feels more impact if he loses those cases, he said.

"I had a verdict several years ago for $4.2 million and the appellate court threw it out," he said. "It was still good to show people that we can get those kinds of verdicts, so you have to dust yourself off, get back up and look ahead."

As a young lawyer, Laurel Bellows met Joel Bellows, her now-husband who hired her to practice as a litigator. She said he believed she could build a stronger, more immediate relationship with a jury as a woman.

In 2009, Bellows, who became a securities and commodities trial lawyer, opened her own firm, Bellows Law Group, to focus on negotiating employment contracts and severance agreements for senior executives. Her four associates work on other employment and executive compensation matters.

Bellows found new clients after meeting women securities brokers who asked her to represent them as they transitioned between firms. Many of them moved as a result of poor support and they relied on her to negotiate their new deals as well as their way out of those deals, she said.

"The brokerage industry was a boys' network," she said. "The women felt comfortable coming to me, and women would refer me to their male counterparts. Their male counterparts would be investing the money for executives, who in turn would be in transition."

In recent years, Bellows' practice grew significantly, she said. She receives referrals from previous executive clients, executive search firms and general counsel who want to see former employees obtain fair representation.

"Being a woman-owned firm provides me the opportunity to seek work from corporations who want to diversify their preferred provider list, but need attorneys with strong reputations so that their choice of firm is not questioned by executives in their company who might prefer the choice of a larger firm," she said.

Mike Ettinger worked in the Cook County state's attorney's office for a few years before he found his own niche in handling federal criminal cases in the suburbs.

After Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan lost his race in 1972, Ettinger and several attorneys from the office opened their own firm downtown.

Since Ettinger worked in the 5th Municipal District, he received cases from the area's lawyers, he said.

He opened a satellite office in Oak Lawn and started practicing in federal court in 1974. He handled federal cases in Illinois, but also worked on federal cases in nine other states.

"I represented some people charged with drug dealing, and they'd tell their friends about me, and they'd start hiring me," Ettinger said. "I started representing some Colombian groups who would get arrested around the country, mainly in Florida.

"We ended up buying a little townhouse in North Miami, because we got so much business in Fort Lauderdale and Miami."

Ettinger decided to stay in the southwest suburbs when his firm split up in the 1980s. By that time, most of the municipal districts opened suburban courts and sent them their own felony calls, he said.

He now practices with Mark Besbekos and Cheryl Schroeder, two former assistant state's attorneys who also worked in the suburbs. The trio handles 30 to 40 complex federal and state criminal and civil cases.

Ettinger said working in a small firm at this point in his career gives him more freedom to tailor his practice.

"In the first 10 to 15 years, I'd be handling three or four cases a day," he said. "As you advance in age and in experience, you get the larger cases, and you can't run around like you did before. You either don't take the smaller cases or hire attorneys in your firm so they can do them."

Rathsack said appellate lawyers lose 85 percent of the time, since appellate judges tend to sustain trial court decisions.

While he can't pinpoint all of his victories, he said a client once told him he hired him for his high percentage of wins.

Mike Rathsack began handling appeals as a solo practitioner in 1977. Rathsack and other solo and small firm lawyers stand out in the Chicago legal community, working on high-profile cases and building significant practices.

Photo by Lisa Predko.

"We're way better than statistics, otherwise I wouldn't have any business," Rathsack said. "If I was only winning 15 percent, they'd hire someone else."

When lawyers ask Rathsack how to build their appellate practice, he tells them that when he was young, he met a lot of lawyers and got involved in a number of cases. As a result, most of his clients come from lawyers who have appeals or summary judgments at the trial court level, he said.

Rathsack often opposes large firms, since many of his appeals involve clients who fight major institutions over significant issues.

In Moore v. Green, he questioned whether absolute immunity provided by the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act should control over the limited immunity provided by the Illinois Domestic Violence Act. In the case, the plaintiff claimed the city of Chicago and two of its police officers failed to help a victim of domestic violence.

He took the case to the Illinois Supreme Court and won in April 2006. He makes it to the Supreme Court at least once a year, even though justices only accept 6 percent of cases, he said.

Rathsack finds that being on his own also comes with challenges. For example, he writes his own briefs — a task that can put pressure on solo practitioners.

"The defense firms opposite me have whole staffs of lawyers who do this and I know whatever I write is going to be reviewed by lots of people and by judges," Rathsack said. "If it's not right, you lose credibility. That affects your ability to represent your next client."

Unlike Ettinger, many attorneys find federal cases more difficult since they involve multiple players like the FBI and the DEA as well as boxes and boxes of documents.

"Some attorneys do volume and you can't do volume at state court and then start practicing in federal court," Ettinger said. "There's too much work on each case in federal court, especially if you're trying."

Two or three weeks before each trial, he schedules nothing other than work related to that trial. He relies on law clerks, who know how to research and assist with motions, he said.

In the late '80s, Ettinger represented John Cappas, a 22-year-old charged with conspiring to run a multimillion-dollar drug ring on the South Side.

He later represented former Cook County Circuit Judge Adam Stillo Sr., who was convicted on corruption charges during the Operation Greylord scandal and former state Rep. Roger Stanley, who was convicted of paying bribes to obtain Metra rail contracts during the Operation Safe Road scandal.

Last summer, Ettinger defended Robert Blagojevich, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's brother.

His longtime friend Sheldon Sorosky, who first represented Rod Blagojevich, knew that Robert Blagojevich would be charged and asked Ettinger to represent him, he said.

Ettinger called Robert Blagojevich's case a "monumental task." It took 13 weeks from the time he picked a jury until the time the jury came back hung in a 9-3 acquittal for his client.

He sorted through more than 500 hours of audiotapes, 3.5 million documents and nearly 70,000 pages of witness statements. He put together a team that included Schroeder and Robyn Molaro, another attorney in his firm, as well as other attorneys and paralegals. They also met with Rod Blagojevich's 12 lawyers three times a week.

Ettinger worked to explain Robert Blagojevich's statements on the tapes, he said. Using modern technology, they showed that he was distracted during conversations with his brother, he said.

"Robert was in a Starbucks with his wife, just trying to relax, and here comes Rod, who calls him up on the phone, and said, 'I'm promoting Jesse Jackson,' " Ettinger said. "All Robert is saying is, 'OK, OK.' The government charged him based on that one phone conversation with conspiracy to bribe.

"I had to show that Robert wasn't paying attention because of Starbucks, and in the last seven days, Rod had changed his mind about who he was going to appoint and with eight different people starting with Oprah Winfrey … we had a color headshot of every person and which day Rod chose them. The jury loved it."

As a new lawyer in a small firm, Bellows sought the camaraderie of other lawyers and joined the Young Lawyers Section of The Chicago Bar Association.

She became more passionate about the organized bar over the years, and by 1991, she was elected CBA president.

She later became president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents and now serves as president-elect of the American Bar Association.

"With large firms, there is an internal referral opportunity and the name of the firm is essentially the calling card," Bellows said. "But a small firm doesn't have the stamp of approval of that large law firm's reputation.

"I have found that my work with the organized bar has provided two important opportunities for building that reputation. That is the ability to develop an expertise in a field of law without having partners to show me the ropes and to provide a network of experts to whom I can turn with conflicts and for advice."

Bellows talks with people about what she does for a living at every meeting or event. She tells lawyers not to distribute business cards to everyone, but since she deals with executives in transition, giving her cards to their family and friends brought her business as much as five years later.

Leahy served as president of the Illinois State Bar Association in 1993. He took advantage of meeting different people, including those in bar associations in Wisconsin and Kentucky.

He said joining the organized bar becomes vital for solo practitioners and small firm lawyers. Their contribution to legal education or charitable organizations typically leads to business opportunities, he said.

Leahy also finds that as the law becomes more specialized, these lawyers need to call on their fellow bar members. He often relies on advice from other lawyers, and in recent months, helped a colleague locate a cardiologist who could testify for him.

"Personal relationships are of paramount importance in this business," Leahy said. "If you develop a good personal relationship with a client or referring attorney or opposing attorney, it will make your practice more rewarding, it will assist you in the business end of the practice and it will make life a whole lot easier."

Latherow recently became the president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. Since most of the organization's presidents come from large firms, he argued in his installation speech that solo practitioners and small firm lawyers can also be leaders.

"With the likes of me being in this position, it shows those folks out there who don't think they have a shot of being head of ITLA or active in ITLA because they're not from the Corboy firm or Clifford firm or Ozmon firm that, 'Hey, you can be if you put in the time and effort and step up to the plate,' " he said.

Latherow said he realizes that spending more time lobbying in Springfield will affect his firm more than it would a larger firm. He recently spoke to an attorney about a case that will come before a judge in November. He wants to try the case in January or February, while the other attorney wants to try it in April.

"The legislature's going to be in session a lot more days in April than they are in January or February," Latherow said. "That's where it affects my practice. I want to get trial dates before the legislature gets into their busiest times."

Bellows said few solo practitioners and small firm lawyers become ABA members, since it involves so much travel. In the next few years, she plans to ask her associates to double their business development efforts. She also tells other attorneys that they need to send her business.

As part of Bellows' new role, she intends to help other solo practitioners and small firm lawyers build their business opportunities. She said she hopes to offer more networking initiatives and provide practical advice on running a law firm.

"In these economic times, we're all fully aware that there are lawyers who have graduated who are going to need to hang their own shingle," Bellows said.

"I know the organized bar is there to help with mentoring and specific advice on the practical and substantive sides of simply being a lawyer."