Grand Rapids law firm adds eight attorneys to its roster

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

The 68-year-old Grand Rapids law firm of Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge has hired eight lawyers with an eye to broadening the firm’s offerings and bringing more young talent into the company.

“A couple of the new people are younger lawyers who have clerked with us, and one is a young woman who is coming back to Grand Rapids where she was born and raised,” says Pat Geary, CEO of Smith Haughey, 250 Monroe NW. “Of the new attorneys, four will work in Grand Rapids and four in our Traverse City office.”

The firm has a third location in Ann Arbor.

With the addition of the new attorneys, the firm broadens its offerings in bankruptcy law and land conservation issues.

“We added a lawyer in the Traverse City office whose specialty is bankruptcy, and he is really going to be able to open the bankruptcy rights area of practice for us,” Geary says. “And we can now offer a land conservancy opportunity because one of the new attorneys is established in that. That’s an up and coming area of practice in Michigan because of our significant amounts of farm land.”

Geary credits opportunity and a proven business model for the growth of the firm, which now employs 85 attorneys.

“We’ve had the opportunity to meet and attract some very good lawyers to the firm, and when you have that opportunity you really want to make the most of it,” he says. “We’ve followed a business model to keep us, to use the old cliché, lean and mean. We haven’t been in a position where we’ve been required to lose people, and our clients have been supportive and loyal, for which we’re immensely grateful.”

Geary expects to hire one to five more attorneys this year.

Source: Pat Geary, Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge

Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].