legal perspective
The "Kansas City Factor"
by pete smith

Few Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Kansas City, and certainly the legal activity surrounding the money centers on each Coast often passes Kansas City by. Kansas City is, nevertheless, an excellent market for a lawyer wishing to join the fray. The metropolitan area is big enough to have plenty of legal action, but small enough that an individual lawyer can develop a reputation apart from the law firm itself.

In the money centers, where public companies tend to headquarter, vast law firms have controlled the business for decades, if not centuries. Law business flourishes, but it has a tendency to be governed by Newton’s First Law of Motion, the law of inertia. Those who have always had the business—mostly the large, old-line firms—will keep the business, and those without it will still be without it. Of necessity, the firm becomes all-important, and the concept of an individual talent to solve a particular problem becomes lost in the morass. Clients stay with the status quo, and law firms are allergic to their clients going to other lawyers.

Such is not the case in Kansas City. A lawyer with particular skills and expertise can, and will, become known for his or her talents. Furthermore, it is not just the other lawyers and law firms that hear about the talents of certain lawyers—the client community as well seems to have ample sources of information about which lawyer is the “go-to” person for a particular set of circumstances. Our town is not small, but the number of people at the center of business and commercial activity is relatively modest. This tight circle of players assists lawyers who get law business by doing law business—as opposed to advertising for it. Business people in Kansas City are a helpful bunch, and when they run across someone with a legal problem, they do not hesitate to offer their advice on the best lawyer to be consulted. In short, in Kansas City people know where to go to get a good steak and where to go to get the right lawyer for the job.

Additionally, the lawyers and law firms in Kansas City are generally more interested in helping a client with a serious need than they are in keeping the fee revenue for themselves. Kansas City lawyers frequently refer good, long-time clients to another lawyer or firm, if the situation calls for it. In New York, Los Angeles and similar headquarter towns, it is more difficult for the client to get connected to the right lawyer and for the lawyer to get connected to the client. Instead, the law firm emerges as the equalizer. As a result, the practice of law becomes more institutionalized.

Kansas City clients have a tendency to hire lawyers and not law firms. The individual has not been subsumed by the organization. As a result, a client is often served by several lawyers in several different firms, with the client wise enough to know that the best talent for the specific job often resides outside the client’s regular counsel. Clients everywhere do not have that luxury, because finding the right lawyer is dependent on the information available. In New York it might be like finding a needle in a haystack; in Kansas City, our helpful attitudes and the widespread publication of business and litigation news makes the process easier.

Kansas City benefits both the lawyers who excel and get business thereby and the clients who are able to find the right person, right here in Kansas City, to handle their legal issues. It allows me to be an individual as opposed to a team. I like that.

Pete Smith is the managing partner of McDowell, Rice, Smith & Gaar PC. He can be reached by phone at 816.753.5400 or by e-mail at petesmith@mrsg.com.