General Counsel, Hale & Mercer LLP · Ethics, conflicts, risk · Trustee, Chicago Bar Foundation
Chicago · Hale & Mercer LLP · 911+ connections
I am the firm's own lawyer. Ethics, conflicts of interest, professional responsibility and risk: the work that makes sure Hale & Mercer deserves the trust its clients place in it. Trust is the only product a law firm sells. My job is to protect the inventory.
I was born in Lagos and came to Minneapolis at nine, learning English from courtroom dramas that gave me a wildly inflated idea of how often lawyers get to shout. Philosophy at Carleton, law at Michigan, and a 2016 decision to advise my former firm to walk away from a lucrative client over a conflict nobody else had spotted. It cost that firm a client. It is why Elena Marsh hired me as this firm's first General Counsel.
Steel-frame bicycle, jazz standards after dinner, three beehives in Oak Park.
Every new matter at this firm goes through a conflicts check before anyone opens a file. This week the check flagged a party name that matched a matter from 2019. It took four hours to resolve, and we declined the engagement. Four hours against a reputation. Cheap.
The Chicago Bar Foundation's annual report is out: 14,000 Cook County residents got legal help through funded programmes last year. If you are a lawyer and have not given this year, the link is on their site. Trustee's privilege to nag.
Done, and the DePaul clinic has three of those programmes' clients this term.
Ten years ago I told my then-firm to withdraw from a very profitable engagement because of a conflict no one else had noticed. The partners were not pleased. A decade on, the lesson stands: the engagement you walk away from is the one that keeps every other client's trust intact.
This is the post I'd show a first-year who asks what General Counsel does.
The firm's first GC. Built the conflicts process every new matter goes through before a file is opened. Ethics counsel to 40 lawyers.
Advised law firms on their own obligations. The 2016 withdrawal advice that defined the practice.
Learned that most ethics problems start as scheduling problems.
University of Michigan Law School, J.D., 2005
Carleton College, B.A. Philosophy, 2002
Cheapest four hours the firm spent all year.
And the client thanked us for telling them straight. They'll be back with something we can take.