Member
Founder
Location:
Phone: 269-270-3500
Fax: 877-567-0404
Email: Email me
Areas of Practice
- Business Litigation
- General Civil Litigation
- Contracts and Business Law
- Banking and Finance
- Probate Litigation
- Mergers, Acquisitions, and Sales
- Real Estate Acquisition and Development
- Mediation and Dispute Resolution
Bar Admissions
- Michigan, 2000
- Illinois
Education
- DePaul University College of Law, Chicago, Illinois
- J.D.
- Extern, Hon. Erwin I. Katz, (Ret.), U.S. Bankruptcy Court, N.D. III
- DePaul Law Review
- Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois
- B.A.
Real Life Experience
It’s easy to assume that how things currently are for a person are always how they’ve been or were somehow inevitable for that person. But we all know that how we present ourselves in the everyday real world working life may not reflect what is going on in our real lives – our own experiences further back in life. We all have stories – positive funny stories, and negative stories. While those aren’t typically part of the public narrative we offer to others, those stories are who we are. That’s not to say that we are stuck in the past, but is to say that that we are affected by it as we go forward – and it’s our job as adults to make that a good thing and to move forward.
I am where I am because I fought, worked hard and continued to do so every day. It wasn’t foretold and it wasn’t destiny. I had advantages and disadvantages. There were external struggles and self-imposed challenges. And there were also a lot of stories which, looking back, are pretty funny. My parents divorced when I was pretty young. In my mind’s eye, things went from pretty darn good to pretty unbelievably bad through no fault of my own. But I was a pretty chippy kid, with decent talent and smarts. That can only get you so far though. As a socially adept guy, I was able to have a lot of success in superficial things in high school while getting by scholastically. There are pretty epic stories about my junior year. But at the same time, there was an awful lot going on at home which I was trying desperately to avoid. Add to that a Vice Principal who carried a personal grievance against me (not unfounded) which made Mr. Rooney’s obsession with Ferris Bueller look like a healthy rivalry, and I had a formula for problems. On the positive side, my experience provided a few early insights into my future career path, which included demanding a recall for a school election when no one else would (which ended up completely reversing the election results), asserting a First Amendment right to wear boxer shorts with the Vice Principal’s face silk-screened on the bottom, and asserting my right to counsel when being questioned about a school prank. Ahh, memories. That all – predictably – culminated in my crowning achievement in high school – getting booted my last semester before I graduated. Unfortunately, my sister did not catch our Vice Principal breaking into our house!
As it was, running away from things at home and accumulating high school accolades like winning the lip synch competition and choreographing a powder puff routine to a mash-up of the “Mission Impossible” theme song and the theme music to the film “Never on Sunday” was not leading to anywhere particularly positive beyond glory-days stories with my friends.
I took the GED test - passed - an then enrolled in community college. A few other, more significant family bombs dropped, but I couldn’t rely on the easy distractions of the high school social scene – I had to find a path. I moved into my Dad’s unfinished basement, crammed 2-years of college into 18-months while working nearly full time; received enough scholarships and financial aid to allow me to go off to a 4-year school that was small enough and good enough to advance academically and not get so distracted by personal things that I came off track. I was able to do well enough to get a chance to attend law school. Because I wasn’t sure of my decision – and didn’t have any money – I worked full time while in law school and went at night for a grueling 4-years including summers. My wife and I met during that time and got married. By the end, I had a job at one of the most prestigious law firm’s in Michigan, was married, had our first child and was on my way – which, as a guy with a GED, was more than a little strange when my fellow starting lawyers were Harvard and U of M grads.
I’d like to say that things were on the rails to success from that point on, but they weren’t. Being an unintegrated person with an only partially developed personal character, but had an outward image of success catches up with you. And I wasn’t well equipped to deal with other aspects of real life.
I ultimately decided that I, as the person who I actually was with the life experiences I actually had, I couldn’t be the lawyer – or the person – who I wanted to be and who I really was and remain at a large law firm. While those are great and necessary models, they required too much in terms of corporate and political structure and permitted too little flexibility in terms of taking on matters and clients that meant something to me personally and professionally beyond pure economic benefit. That’s when I left all of that behind and started Veritas. I wasn’t done growing as a person, and wasn’t done unfortunately making bad choices, but I at least had a context to practice that I could live with everyday.
Veritas means “truth” in Latin and was chosen as a name for the firm as both an aspirational and philosophical statement. During a teaching moment in a Latin class I audited in college, Professor Ron Miller riffed on our College’s motto taken from the Book of John and combined with a quote from Hamlet: “to thine own self be true . . . and the truth shall set you free.” It stuck with me, though I only recently understood the depth of what he was trying to convey.
I thought that all great attorneys worked only in huge law firms with lobby’s similar to the main floor of the Field Museum, complete with high ceilings, stone floors and the corresponding re-verb of your footsteps up to the disinterested receptionist. Veritas was the fulfillment of a dream I didn’t even recognize I had and is the career opportunity that has changed my life from top to bottom. When jumping from the relative predictability and safety of “big law,” I didn’t know that I’d be building myself and my character at the same time I was building a firm. I’ve learned that when you build something in your own image, you get a pretty clear idea of your own talents – and flaws. As a result, I’ve made a lot of adjustments in all aspects of my life and have grown substantially both personally and professionally.
Simply put, practicing through Veritas gives me the opportunity to be of service to people – clients and the odd person that just finds their way to my door step – in a way I never thought possible. The firm started out in an interior office with a part time secretary and it has grown since then. I’m looking forward to what’s next and I’m enjoying the ride. I choose the matters I work on and the people I work with. I run my practice as a business, but the guiding principal for me has never been – and never will be – operating for profit first and as a professional second. Guided by my personal and professional principals, the money that I need will come – or it won’t and I’ll figure it out. I’m in the right place, with the right people, doing the right things, for the right reasons.