Managing Partner, Hale & Mercer LLP · Trial lawyer · Chicago
Chicago · Hale & Mercer LLP · 1048+ connections
I run a forty-lawyer firm in Chicago and I still try cases, because I think the person who sets a firm's standards should have to meet them. We take on commercial disputes, deals, property, family matters and IP for businesses and families who want to know their lawyer by first name.
Before Hale & Mercer I spent a decade at a large Loop firm, where I learned a great deal about trial work and a little about how not to treat clients. I was second chair in a federal jury trial at twenty-nine and first chair at thirty-two. The case I am proudest of kept 140 truck drivers employed when everyone told the owners to settle.
Outside the office: a 14 handicap, cold water, and Sunday dinner for twelve. Trustee, Chicago Legal Clinic.
Forty-one years ago today Margaret Hale and David Mercer left a big firm with one rule: a client should always be able to reach the person handling their matter. We are bigger now. The rule has not changed, and the day it does I will have failed at this job.
A client asked me this week whether to settle. I told her what I tell everyone: I'll give you my honest read of the odds, the cost, and what a trial will take out of you. Then it's your decision, not mine. Lawyers who make that choice for clients are usually choosing for themselves.
And the honest read includes 'I don't know yet' when that's the truth.
Proud of Aisha Mahmoud, who this month argued her first motion in the Northern District and won it on the papers. She read 40,000 pages nobody else would. That is the whole job, and she does it better than I did at her age.
Thank you. The two paragraphs were on page 31,207. I checked.
Congratulations, Aisha. Reading everything is a competitive advantage that never stops working.
Our pro bono numbers for the first half of 2026: 2,140 hours across the firm, 51 matters, every lawyer over the 50-hour minimum. The Chicago Legal Clinic's housing docket is where most of it went. If you are a Chicago lawyer with a free Thursday evening, they will put you to work.
Lead a 40-lawyer, 62-person firm; chair the pro bono committee; still first-chair two or three trials a year.
Built the firm's contract-dispute and business-tort practice. Tried the 2011 trucking verdict's appeal through the Seventh Circuit.
Document review, then depositions, then trials. Learned that someone has to actually read the exhibits.
Paid for university. Learned what a contract looks like from the loading end.
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, J.D., 2001
University of Minnesota, B.A. Economics, 1998
Same-day callback rate for September: 99.4%. The 0.6% was a snowstorm in Duluth, so I'm counting it.
The rule is also the reason our conflicts process works. People tell you things when they trust you'll pick up.