My BarStory - 31 Kerin Kaminski, Karen Giffen, and Becky Ruppert McMahon

Kerin Kaminski and Karen Giffen have been lifelong friends and partners in the law for decades. These two pioneering women are joined by another longtime friend, CMBA CEO Becky Ruppert McMahon. They have a very special BarStory to tell, about the value of friendship, perseverance, and building a successful law firm.

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Becky Ruppert McMahon (00:05):
Hi, I'm Becky Rupert McMahon, chief Executive of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association. We are excited to bring you this week's my bar story. Throughout 2023, the C M B A will be hosting a series of podcasts that have created a living legacy in honor of our 150th anniversary. The response has been amazing, and these conversations are being shared around northeast Ohio and even the world. Now let's get started with another bar story.

Karen Giffen (00:34):
I'm Karen Giffin. I'm a partner at Perez Morris. Now I've had many other hats prior to that, but that's where I am now.

Kerin Kaminski (00:42):
And I'm Karen Kaminski. I'm also a partner at Perez Morris. I was a former partner at Giffen and Kaminsky.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (00:49):
So part of why I've been so excited to have this conversation with the both of you is because I feel like I knew the inside track story when the firm that the two of you founded Giffen and Kaminsky was coming about. In full disclosure, we have been friends for many, many moons. I wanna go way back. I wanna go way before I knew you to when you two first met each other.

Kerin Kaminski (01:11):
We were at Cleveland Marshall and I was interviewing Karen for a position at our then firm Cavitch Familo Law.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (01:19):
So, Karen, were you, so you were an associate at Cabbage at the time?

Kerin Kaminski (01:23):
I was an associate at Cabbage at the time, yes.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (01:25):
And how'd she do in the interview?

Kerin Kaminski (01:27):
Excellent. Knocked that out of the park. She was my number one candidate. No

Becky Ruppert McMahon (01:31):
Surprise there. Do you remember the interview, Karen?

Karen Giffen (01:32):
I do. It was Karen and another lawyer named Doug De Palma.

Kerin Kaminski (01:38):
Oh, I didn't remember the, Doug

Karen Giffen (01:40):
Had been in law school with a lawyer named Patty Franklin and she'd already taken a position and Cabbage Family was not on my list of potentials, but they got on my list because of Patty's recommendation.

Kerin Kaminski (01:54):
Well, but then she was considering lots of other firms and I worked pretty hard to convince her that she shouldn't go to those other firms.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (02:01):
What was the selling point?

Kerin Kaminski (02:03):
I think quick access to being out of the library and actually handling clients and work. A lot of the firms wanted Karen to do labor and employment work because she'd been at the national Labor Relations Board and I promised her and did deliver that she wouldn't just be, you know, cubbyhole into one area of practice that she could do all the different areas of practice that we would make sure of that.

Karen Giffen (02:30):
And you were paying

Kerin Kaminski (02:30):
Attention? I was, and I actually remember

Becky Ruppert McMahon (02:33):
<Laugh>, both of those are shocks, <laugh>, but you take what you can get. That's true. When did you go to law school and what was motivating you to go to law school?

Kerin Kaminski (02:43):
I went to law school at night while I was teaching history. What motivated me to go to law school? I always planned to be a lawyer because I, I was a nerdy little kid and I was very interested in history. I read by a lot of biographies and the people that made a difference in the world seemed to me to be lawyers. I didn't have the first idea what a lawyer did, but it seemed like they made a difference.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (03:07):
Did you know any lawyers growing up?

Kerin Kaminski (03:09):
None. Yep. Never met one.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (03:11):
You said you were teaching part-time or, or you were teaching full-time and gonna law school part-time. So what were you teaching history at a high school?

Kerin Kaminski (03:18):
Yeah, actually I was trained to be a history teacher, but my first job was as a permanent sub teaching Latin, of which I didn't know a word, so I had to learn it at night and try to teach it. But I did a, I brought a lot of history into at Latin class.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (03:35):
And you went to Cleveland Marshall at night? Yeah. And how did you find the pro? The combination of working during the day and going to school at night?

Kerin Kaminski (03:42):
Exhausting. But it was

Becky Ruppert McMahon (03:43):
Good. Karen, I'm curious about whether your pathway to law school was similar at all in terms of what Karen's path was? A

Karen Giffen (03:50):
Little bit. I also went at night, but it was perhaps more circuitous a route. When I graduated from college, I was sure I wanted to be an urban planner, but then got as a job as a, an intern with a national Labor Relations board. And that was my first real contact with a lot of lawyers. And I thought it was pretty cool. After I was there for eight or nine years or so, then I decided to go to law school, went to Cleveland State at night, just like Karen did.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (04:22):
What was it about the, the work that you did at the NLRB that made you decide law school was right for you?

Karen Giffen (04:27):
The National Liberal Relations Board has two tiers of professionals. One are called field examiners and the other are lawyers. And I was a field examiner, but all field examiners work very closely with the lawyers in the office. I got to see what they did on a day-to-day basis and was exposed to the way lawyers think and that made a difference to me. I remember the first day at Cleveland State in law school was walking down ninth Street and I had a trench coat on

Speaker 4 (04:59):
And a briefcase. And I happened to see my reflection in one of the glass portions of one of the big buildings as I walked down ninth Street. And I did a double take, unsure if the person that I was seeing was me. And it was, that was pretty cool.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (05:17):
That's pretty cool. Yeah. Karen, when you were in law school, were there, was there equal number of men and women, or were there still more men than there were women?

Kerin Kaminski (05:25):
There were still more men than there were women, particularly in the night class. I mean, women weren't unusual at the time. Yeah. I would say what 30% of our class was maybe women at the time.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (05:36):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> about the same for you too, Karen, at the about. So Karen, when you came out of, of law school, how did you find your way to cabbage?

Kerin Kaminski (05:44):
So, I interviewed at all the larger law firms in town, cuz I was graduating at the top of my class. Not the very top, but I mean in the top

Becky Ruppert McMahon (05:52):
Summa laude, if I remember.

Kerin Kaminski (05:55):
No, that she's a summa. I'm only a

Becky Ruppert McMahon (05:57):
Magna. Oh, you were only a magna. Fair enough. Forgive me. I'm sure that has come up more than once in the history between the two of you

Kerin Kaminski (06:04):
By 0.02. Okay.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (06:06):
<Laugh>. Okay. But she's not bitter at all, Karen,

Kerin Kaminski (06:08):
I hear that.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (06:09):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I can now refer to both of you as Karen Magna and <laugh>

Kerin Kaminski (06:13):
Karen Summa. So, so I was interviewed by a lot of the large law firms and I didn't care much for the large law firms. The, the whole idea of being in a, a library, researching and all that kind of stuff. So Keef, which was getting ready to try a huge case against Medical Mutual Blue Cross and Medical Mutual for Lakewood Hospital. And they needed bodies to help them do this trial. So they were interviewing and I interviewed with them and I decide, and they wrote books. And I loved the idea that they were the authors and editors of books. Cause I said, Hey, that's, you know, I would like to do that. I was working as a law clerk at the time and I used some of their books. So then I interviewed and I really liked, liked the people that I met and I liked the idea of what they were gonna do.

Kerin Kaminski (07:04):
And I liked that I was immediately gonna be involved in that trial. So I decided I wanted to go to work for them. And if I didn't get an offer from them, I would just wait and I would bang on their door until I got an offer from 'em. And what I didn't realize, and time went on and it was a month went by and I still hadn't heard from 'em. Well, what happened is, is the day had a guy Tom Baldwin called me and left a message, this is Tom Baldwin, gimme a call back. I thought it was some guy I'd met in a bar. So I never called him back. And so finally I called Cabbage and said, you know, I really wanna come to work for you and I just haven't heard anything from you. And they're like, we've been trying to get you to call us back for like a month. So they said, you know, we'd like you to come to work for us. And I said Yes, without even knowing how much money I was gonna make or I had no deal, nothing. And I showed up for work.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (07:55):
Oh my gosh. That's that's unbelievable. Only you could ignore the call Uhhuh <affirmative> and still get the job.

Kerin Kaminski (08:01):
I got the job.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (08:01):
That's impressive. And so when you first started with Cabbage, were you doing general work? Were you, did you were, did you go right into litigation?

Kerin Kaminski (08:08):
I went right into litigation cuz they had this big case. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and we were, we were actually sleeping downtown and working on that case. It was a, it was a fabulous experience. We had Ben Ti who was the ex attorney general of the United States and his firm were trying it with us. So I had just great exposure to he, he was a great courtroom lawyer. And I actually played the role where we read the deposition and everything with Ben, ask him questions and everything. You know, he actually, he was a great lawyer. He had a guy on the stand during that case. He said to him, the guy says, I don't wanna tell you the answer to that. That's a secret I don't wanna tell you. And in this packed courtroom it had, all the cameras were there and everything. Ben leaned over and said, I won't tell anybody, just tell me. It was just great. It was classic. He was a really good lawyer. So I started out there and then I fought very hard to get into litigation and to stay in litigation cuz I was never one, I never enjoyed doing the business work. I got trained to do business work, which I'm glad of because I think it informed my litigation. But I definitely very quickly went into litigation.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (09:14):
So when you were smart enough to extend the offer through the firm to Karen Giffin to come join the firm, where did, where did you place new associates? Was there still a rotation? When Karen got started, there

Speaker 4 (09:24):
Was supposed to be a rotation. It really didn't work very well.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (09:28):
So what were you doing?

Speaker 4 (09:29):
I did transaction work for maybe a minute and a half, otherwise I was doing litigation, litigation support mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, so that, that ended up, so I was working with Karen and John Prisco and Ralph Cascar and there were some really good litigators

Kerin Kaminski (09:45):
Who Michael knew

Speaker 4 (09:46):
Michael. He, oh, that's another really good litigators that we learned from.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (09:50):
So did you work on cases together?

Kerin Kaminski (09:53):
Yeah, a little bit, but not, not much. Not at the beginning

Speaker 4 (09:56):
For sure. Not at the beginning for sure. They split us up a lot at the beginning and

Kerin Kaminski (10:01):
Models working together. Two women, there were three,

Speaker 4 (10:03):
There were only three women who worked in the firm, all litigators. And so we were sort of doled out to others to actually do work. But we talked amongst ourselves quite a bit

Becky Ruppert McMahon (10:14):
As you were want to do. So if memory serves me, Karen Kaminsky, I think you were the first partner, female partner to be made at Cabbage.

Kerin Kaminski (10:22):
I was the first female hired as a lawyer. I was the first Cleveland Marshall grad ever hired by gage. They always hired from the bigger schools. And yes, I was the first female partner. Let me say something though. You know, one of the things that we got, both of us, Tom Schrader was there

Speaker 4 (10:39):
Too. Oh yes.

Kerin Kaminski (10:40):
Is we had to, to learn from these guys who had completely different styles and completely different approaches. And like, it's one of the things I tell young lawyers is work for as many people as you can with different styles. Because I got to pick and choose from each of 'em what works for me and what I thought was good. And so I got to see lots of different styles and I think it really helped me develop.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
Yeah, Ralph Casper had a very, you know, he was a former A U S A and he had a very methodical dot all your i's cross all your T's approach to litigation. And John swa and Tom had a very more shoot from the hip approach. And then Mike was somewhere in the middle. It was really good to have a, a wide range of the way people,

Kerin Kaminski (11:27):
Tom Schrader could stand up in court and cross examine anybody based on no information whatsoever.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
<Laugh>. It was fabulous. Well, whereas Ralph had all of every information he, every bit he knew all of it when he was doing that. Yeah, he

Becky Ruppert McMahon (11:40):
Did. I'm curious then, with all of these great people from whom to learn, what choices did you make? What style did you build for yourself?

Kerin Kaminski (11:49):
I think I tended towards <laugh>. I tended towards Ralph with a little Tom thrown in when necessary.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (11:56):
Oh yeah. Yeah. You are not a shoot from the hip lawyer.

Kerin Kaminski (11:58):
No, I mean, I can be yeah. To if, if, if the situation calls for it, I can do it. Right. But I really prefer, prefer preparation, preparation, preparation are the three things I, I think are important.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (12:08):
Yeah. And I think your colleague, Ms. Giffin would add a fourth preparation on her side of the house.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
I agree. I, you know, nothing replaces that knowing the case forwards and backwards. But the, and the reason why I think the partnership has worked so well for so many years is we do have a, a basic difference in the way we approach litigations. I would describe Karen as if you needed to explain to her, juror a judge in, in terms that they're most likely to understand the circumstances of whatever it is that you're advocating. The person that you would talk to isn't me, it's Karen. Because she'll be able to connect with that individual and whatever she knows about the potential juror, but the judge, et cetera. And what, what's the case of that for? By way of example, the question that Karen always asks me in regard to any matter, any legal matter is does it smell, pass the smell test? And that's really been helpful.

Speaker 4 (13:05):
And it is for me, an area where I think I have a blind spot I'm much more likely to care about. So what is the legal implications and how do I describe this to the judge and the court of appeals and how do I write, write the motion for summary judgment in order to make whatever it is we're advocating stick, but not very helpful if you're trying to reach out to a juror or a judge and to pass the smell test. And I think that's one of the advantages that we have is that our skills are complimentary in that regard. Different and complimentary.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (13:36):
So it's kind of the natural then segue into, so Karen Kaminsky becomes the first woman partner, Karen Giffin. You become the second woman partner at Cabbage, and then at some point you two make the decision that you're going to leave the firm to do something radical and crazy. Found your own firm. Can you talk a little bit about what were the motivations? What were you thinking about? Why did you wanna start your own firm? That's a huge undertaking.

Kerin Kaminski (14:02):
There was a

Speaker 4 (14:03):
Slight bit of

Kerin Kaminski (14:04):
Ignorance to that decision. I mean, I would tell you yeah, you're right. It's huge to start your own firm and everything, but if you don't really get the size of what you're about ready to do, it's a lot easier. <Laugh>. Fair enough.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
So, but the, the, the lead up to that was 2002, the early two thousands, very early two thousands. Cabbage was going through some shifts. What kind of a law firm did it want to be? There was a tension between the business side of the firm and the litigation side of the firm. And Karen and I were in our early to mid forties at the time. And it was were we gonna be able to create a fulfilling productive practice? And the more we thought about it, the more we thought, well, maybe not because of some of the shifts that the firm was likely to, to experience. And that's not unusual law firms. Like we've since learned all law firms go through cycles of how they, what the business climate is at the time of the people are, et cetera. And this was one of those periods of transition. So we thought, well what if we did this? And then a really good friend of ours who was at the time in the corporate world, in house council for the, in the corporate world, began to talk to us about, well what what about starting your firm? And it was really encouraging. And what

Becky Ruppert McMahon (15:33):
That would be, I have to interrupt because I recall it very differently. I recall, for

Speaker 4 (15:38):
Those of you who don't know, it's Becky, we were talking about,

Becky Ruppert McMahon (15:41):
I recall the three of us having lunch at shooters on the patio one day along the river. Along the river. This is true. And you too said to me very nervously with shaky voices, we're thinking about starting on from, because you had been hearing me talk about the effort that I was leading at KeyBank while I was in-house council on their minor minority women diversity spend effort. Kaminsky wants to jump in here cuz I can see you do, you don't even agree with my recollection.

Kerin Kaminski (16:09):
No. Well, it, I do agree with your recollection, but what happened, what, what precedes that launch is that you had told us that they were looking to diversify their outside spend. And I said, well then bring the work off because Karen and I get credit for it. And we're we're women. And you said, no, that's not enough. We're looking to, for firms that are are and that really

Becky Ruppert McMahon (16:31):
Ownership, we were looking for our ownership.

Kerin Kaminski (16:32):
Yes. That really planted a seed. And I can remember going on, so you know what Becky says. So maybe because that's right when all these changes were going on, and quite frankly, I, I would say this will show our difference in style, how she said that and how I'm gonna say it is that, you know, we needed to have clients and the older fellows were passing off all of their clients to the younger fellows. And we hadn't needed to have clients under their, their compensation system. But going forward, we were gonna have to. And the way they developed clients there is the old fashioned way. You know, they knew an accountant who sent over a work and they knew this guy and they knew that guy. Well, Karen and I had never, we'd been busy working, we hadn't developed all of that. So for us to develop work just like that, w wasn't gonna be easy. It was gonna be years of grind and work. That didn't sound like too much fun. Whereas when you said that, I was like, well, we could go out if we had a woman owned firm, let's find out about this. And so we did a lot of investigation and then we, we sit down at shooters and he asked you, I think what question we asked you is, how many lawyers would we need for you to bring us work if we left Cabot and we were women owned.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (17:44):
I don't remember that question, but there were certainly a lot of questions that day. And, and the reality was you guys were already doing the work. You had done it really, really well. And in fact you had come in Kaminsky, I think I met you Bec really got to know you. I'd met you sort of casually at bar stuff, but really got to know you because you had stepped into a matter that somebody else in the firm had been handling. And there had been some challenges. So you came in, I won't say save the day, but you certainly flipped the case on its head and then had a period over a period of two or three years together with Karen Giffin had done just tremendous work. And so frankly it was an easy sell when I left that lunch and I went back to the then general counsel John Mancuso and said, you aren't gonna believe it, but we, there's gonna be a firm in town that could do our work. And he was very supportive. And so it was an easy, easy decision to make.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
The piece that I wanna add to that is the intervening like year, cuz we were, we had been thinking about it for a long time and Karen Kaminski has a thousand ideas before breakfast. Only one of, of like, she's worth anything. I have one idea every two or three weeks and it's usually not worth anything. So odds, odds wise, you go with Kaminsky. We were thinking about it. She was more gungho than I was and we did a lot of things to, to investigate it. And finally we had done a business plan and a proforma. We talked to people, it was, we had talked with you and thought there was a possibility and we were at a W N B A game when Cleveland had the rockers.

Karen Giffen (19:17):
We were there and there were a whole lot of other people there. And so we said, let's go over here. And we went to one of the high top tables at a bar outside where the rockers were playing and said, alright, I think we have to fish or cut bait

Kerin Kaminski (19:33):
<Laugh>. Finally, finally,

Karen Giffen (19:35):
Cuz it had been a year we decided to do it. And then we, we walked back to our seats with all of these people who were at the rockers game. So we were gonna do it. So it's a big cheer for that. It sort of felt like a, yeah, this is a good sendoff. So we opened our doors on January 1st, 2004.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (19:52):
And you opened your doors and then you really took Cleveland by storm over the course of 15 plus years. You really built a firm that in many ways was very different from, from lots of other firms exclusively women owned at the time. At your peak, how many lawyers did you have?

Kerin Kaminski (20:06):
21 or 22 at one time.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (20:08):
What were your thoughts going into it with all of your plans about the culture that you wanted to build? That

Kerin Kaminski (20:14):
All sounds so, so good that you know, <laugh> 22. Can I just describe our first day for you? Our first day, our phone system for some reason went to Cabbage. Why? Or how that ever happened? Nobody ever explained to us. So if you called our number, the phone was answered. Cabbage Family. Okay. Our new number. Second of all, I had a phone call. We had three clients when we started only three. We had key, we had a title company and we had one other small matter. And we did a lot of work for the title company. A woman that was at the title company that was gonna bring all of her cases. She called me up and she said, Karen, charity, good news. This is charity I got such exciting news for. You said, what is it? Charity? She says, yeah. She says I'm moving to Chicago with my husband and I'm giving up my job.

Kerin Kaminski (21:05):
<Laugh>. Okay. So there's one client out the door. Anyway, we, we had lots of problems on our first day. It looked like we were going to have like two cases left before the day ended. But in the long run, this is my, my lesson. Okay. It drove from, from two to 22 by a lot of change. Yeah. Lots of change. Because what happened is, is that woman went home, went, went to Chicago, stayed home for a year, and then came back into the same company at a much higher position and brought us much more work than we ever would've had from her in her first position.

Karen Giffen (21:38):
That was one lesson of don't ever burn bridges, stick with it. I think the best thing that we did early on was connect with an outside business consultant whose name is Judy Nanner, who helped us not just with how do we market? How, what, what approach do we take? How do we get known in the community as you've described. But she also really encouraged us to be very intentional about these are what our values are, this is what we wanna do to make it happen. We set goals, we looked at those goals quarterly and they weren't just goals about revenue, they were all kinds of things. And that really made a difference. I think that really saved us at the beginning. It kept us on track. Judy really kept us on track with all of that.

Kerin Kaminski (22:31):
We had many a fight over lots of things, but never our values. Yeah.

Karen Giffen (22:35):
But we had fights over and waters the color scheme to use in <laugh> office.

Kerin Kaminski (22:40):
What's the design of our logo

Karen Giffen (22:42):
Look like? What's the Oh God. Oh. I mean, they're terrible fighting. We, we don't have didn't still don't have taste that are exactly the

Kerin Kaminski (22:51):
Same, but

Karen Giffen (22:51):
Not That's all right.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (22:52):
Karen Giff, you've been an amazing leader inside the legal aid organization, including serving as president. And then Karen Kaminski, you charted your pathway through the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, including becoming president of the Bar Association. Why was civic engagement so important to both of you? Yeah,

Kerin Kaminski (23:11):
We actually let people build time to their civic activities and we counted that towards how we figured out what people were gonna make or whatever. Because we really want, we didn't wanna just say civic activity is important. We wanted to, you've gotta count it. If it doesn't count, it doesn't matter, right? So we wanted to make it count.

Karen Giffen (23:33):
And there's really two reasons for it. The first one is because both of us, and I think everybody that we ever hired

Karen Giffen (23:44):
Feel like being a lawyer is a extraordinary privilege. It's, it's an amazing opportunity that we are given by our, our state, by the nation. It is just a truly special thing to talk about the law to represent individuals interests or corporate interests to really grapple with some of the most important issues. I've our done sort of as a payback for that privilege. You've gotta stay involved in the community. People who do that, our experience, people who do that are way better lawyers, not just better people. They're way better lawyers if they have a broader experience of, of giving back to the community. So that's the overall picture. The non altruistic motive is because every time I did something with legal aid, Karen did something with Bar association, someone else did something with a refugee center. I mean, you know, we, the list goes on and on. That means you were out in the community, you were meeting people, you were making a name for yourself, you were making a name for the firm. So there was also a, is purely business development purpose behind it.

Kerin Kaminski (24:57):
I think particularly since we were gonna have a litigation firm, one of those early decisions was we weren't gonna do what we didn't know how to do well. So we turned away a lot of work and that was very hard cuz we'd come from a firm that could take on all different types of work. But we decided, no, we're just gonna do this small niche and we're send the rest away. I think because we're litigators, it's important to be in the world because you have to bring that experience to whatever you're advocating. And if you can't bring all those different varied experiences, I think your advocacy is less.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (25:29):
So another core value of your firm was really about mentoring and about teaching newer lawyers, less experienced lawyers, how to be really good lawyers. I wonder about sort of, did you guys ever sort of really talk about that were early influences from your former firm, what you got or didn't get? Did that influence that, that intentionality around mentoring? Or maybe it goes back, Karen Kaminski to your teaching origins.

Kerin Kaminski (25:57):
No one becomes a good lawyer without somebody taking an interest in teaching them and teaching them to find what they're good at. You know, I, I think the central purpose is you can teach the basics, but then everybody has to find their own voice. And I think the encouragement to find your own voice is extremely important. At some point you have to let go of, it has to be done this way in order to explore how a a different person does things differently.

Karen Giffen (26:22):
This would be an area where I don't think we've fulfilled our mm-hmm.

Kerin Kaminski (26:26):
<Affirmative>

Karen Giffen (26:26):
Goals as much as I would've liked.

Kerin Kaminski (26:28):
Why do you say that? I agree with that.

Karen Giffen (26:31):
I think you, you know, lawyers in private practice, and you're told this at the outset, if you try to do business development, is you have x amount of hours in the day when you're gonna do all your client related matter. You're gonna service, you're gonna do the legal work and you must, if you want to develop your business, you must spend x amount of time in building client relationships and new client relationships and spending time at the bar. And, and I think we did figure out a way to make time for all of that, including having personal lives that were somewhat, I I do think we figured out a way to do that. But I think there is another bucket. And that bucket is being very intentional about committing time, energy, resources, and a process to mentorship. And I think I, I'll speak for names. W I did do that in terms of working with younger lawyers in the firm, but I don't think I ever created the, the process that it would have made that more effective. That is the bucket that I don't think I paid enough attention

Kerin Kaminski (27:45):
To. I, I would agree that I, I would, if I were to rewrite history, I would rewrite that. Yeah, well let's fine pretend we did that. There you go. And I,

Becky Ruppert McMahon (27:56):
As an outsider, I will tell you, I've thought, I thought many, many times, if I had had teachers like the two of you senior to me when I was first coming outta law school, I think I could have had a very different career. I

Kerin Kaminski (28:07):
Can think of four or five people. We actually did that with that, that we did well. The rest of whom I think we could have done, done better. But one thing I do think we did good that wasn't that intentional design of a program is is that everybody that came in here, we gave them contact with our clients. Yeah. We had a theory of abundance. We took them with us. Even if we had to write off their time, they went to court with us. Even if we had to, you know, like I say, write off their time because we wanted them to be involved in a whole matter. We didn't just piecemeal things so that you're just, oh, I'm just gonna research this and then I have to research that. We really tried to get them to think about a whole matter and to keep them engaged.

Kerin Kaminski (28:49):
And I think by virtue of having them with us as much as we did, and by not keeping our clients from them, cuz we decided, and we know, and it happened to us, you know, when you introduce clients to other lawyers, they can then take 'em with them when they leave. And we had clients leave with lawyers that we introduced them to and we fostered their relationship. But it was our theory of abundance that there's enough clients to go around and we're not gonna, we're not going to hurt a young lawyer's growth by not letting 'em involved in everything that we do. So I do think we did that well. Gave him whole matters and had complete involvement, which I think is mentoring. Yeah.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (29:28):
When Karen Kaminski became the it woman on the short list of becoming president of the Cleveland Bar and then ultimately the brand new Cleveland Metropolitan Bar, and it was, I think it was within that first year that your doors were open that you actually, she described, Karen describes it as you sort of making the final push that twisted her arm to say yes to joining the ranks of the leadership at the bar.

Karen Giffen (29:53):
That's true. That's true. You, you really wanted to do it.

Kerin Kaminski (29:57):
I wanted to do it, but I didn't see how it could be possible. Right.

Karen Giffen (30:01):
<Laugh> new firm, we didn't have that many people. It was gonna be a challenge, but it was certainly all worth it in the end. There's no question about it. I mean

Kerin Kaminski (30:11):
That's, you're selling that short. She came into, you said, this is why we formed the firm. Yeah. So that we can do these things that are important, not just build time. We, we formed this firm so that, so that we could do these things that meant something to us. You'd be great said this. Yeah. Much better answer. She said, I did not get it. Of course she did. White knuckle it probably the whole last two years and particularly when I was president, how embarrassing would I be in public at some point in time? <Laugh>, I'm sure she had many sleepless nights. What is she gonna say next? <Laugh>. Thank God she came through it. All right. Well yeah.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (30:45):
One of the other professional commitments that you all made with your firm was to get very active with the national organization. You were one of the early members of the National Association of Minority and Women-Owned Law Firms. Can you talk a little bit about that group?

Karen Giffen (30:58):
It was, seemed to be an obvious fit. It's the National Association of Minority and women-owned law firms, also known as Nam Wolf. A terrible acronym. But nevertheless, it was itty bitty. When we first joined in 2005, there were maybe 20 firms,

Kerin Kaminski (31:18):
God if that,

Karen Giffen (31:19):
It's now huge. And there are hundreds and hundreds of firms. And, and I was on the board for many years. I remember the one of the bigger annual meetings that we went to. And I remember walking into the room for a dinner. It was like a gala affair walking into the room. And there were just a sea of people who were black and brown and yellow and white and so, so many women. It was nothing like any major national lawyer function I had ever been to. It was thrilling.

Kerin Kaminski (32:02):
Yeah.

Karen Giffen (32:02):
And, and the Nam Wolf has become an advocate for all kinds of diversity efforts. So it's been truly amazing.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (32:09):
So I'm curious, as you think about Giffin and Kaminsky, what, what are you most proud of?

Speaker 4 (32:15):
I did not grow up in a family that put a lot of value in on business. And I never foresaw that I would, in my professional life, be proud of creating a very viable, successful business. It's just not, I just never conceived of it. And thankfully I met Karen Kaminsky who played with an NRC cash register <laugh>. She was a little girl <laugh> and so did have that instinct about what it was like to own a business, create a business, and how fulfilling that bit could be. So I'm most proud that we were able to figure out a way to marriage all of the, that what we talked about earlier, that great privilege, that extraordinary thing that we do, which is the practice of law in whatever setting we do it. That we were able to marry that really good work with this successful business at the same time that we were able to stick with and adhere to those personal values that we've been talking about this all time. That was a good answer. <Laugh>.

Kerin Kaminski (33:37):
I always say that we didn't fail.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
Well that's a good, you sure didn't. <Laugh> that's

Kerin Kaminski (33:44):
Tell you the story. Judy Bodenham came to us and she said, slow, who's gonna be your clients? So we listened to those three I talked about earlier and she said, well, who else do you know? Let's just list who you know, <laugh>. This

Speaker 4 (33:58):
Is a funny story.

Kerin Kaminski (33:59):
And I listed maybe four or five people. Karen listed one or two, you know, she says, no, no, you know more people than this. Not really.

Speaker 4 (34:07):
No, no, no, no.

Kerin Kaminski (34:08):
And we weren't gonna go after cabbages clients. That was, I mean, we made a deal with 'em. We weren't gonna do that. So we came up with this list and right about the time we're making this list we got this brochure from the ABA that said they were having a

Speaker 4 (34:24):
<Laugh>.

Kerin Kaminski (34:25):
They said they were having a diversity conference and they were gonna have the managers of the largest law firms with the general counsels of the largest law firm of the largest companies to talk about diversity. And I saw that, I said, Kira, we should go to this cuz we're sort of, we're involved in this and everything, but it was by invitation only. So we wrote them a letter, the aba, and we said, look, I see you got, you know people from Walmart, you got people from all these big companies. You got all these big law firms. Where's the people that are like women owned or, or minority owned? Don't you think they should be represented at this conference? So the woman called me up, she said, well, it's by invitation only. I said, yeah, I'm asking you for an invitation. That's why I wrote you.

Kerin Kaminski (35:11):
So she said, well, let me think about that. Let, let me see what people say. So I don't know, within a week we got this invitation in the mail to go to this thing. So we went and what we did on the plane on the way there, which we, we actually had flash cards with us, we little index cards. We had pictures of the different general counsel we thought we should meet, so we would know them in the room. And we learned all about about what, 15 or 20 different businesses. We knew everything about what they did, what their markets were and everything. So when we went to a cocktail party, we could actually talk to these people. And you should know that I started out as a person who couldn't even say hello to the person who pumped my gas. I'm

Speaker 4 (35:49):
Very shy

Kerin Kaminski (35:50):
By nature. And so we, we, you know, put on our big girl clothes and we went and we got involved. We had all these talk groups. We had I remember sitting at a table with general counsel of ibm and I was telling him what I thought he should do <laugh>. And, and we came out of there with some, some contacts and clients.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
I know so many people who have fallen out with their business partners. It, it happens over and over and over again that people lose sight of why they decided to go into business with these people that they went into because they trusted one another. And that's certainly something that's been important. It's always been number one on our goals list is our friendship was more important than the business.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (36:39):
I think your greatest accomplishment is that as you were personal friends and professional friends, when you decided to go into business together, and now almost 25 years later, whatever the number is, you're even better. You're, and you still respect each other. You still like each other, you still tease each other

Speaker 4 (36:57):
Mostly. Yes. Mostly we we're at the stage. Covid covid hit us pretty hard. And we are now, instead of being early forties, we're now mid sixties. Am I allowed to say that? I just did. I just did. And so we were deciding, so what should we do? How do we find a great place for our clients, for our people who work with us? How do we do that? And this firm, Perez Morris, who's been in Columbus, they're, they've also been in Na Wolf law firm for decades. And we've known for many, many years. So we talked about it, their business values, the way they approach things very similar to ours. And it just made sense that this was be a way into the future for everyone, for Pres Morris, for forgive and Kaminsky, that that process could only be aided by doing the merger. So that's what we did about a year ago.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (37:56):
How do you feel about the practice of law today? If you were coming outta law school now, knowing what you know, would you still become lawyers?

Kerin Kaminski (38:04):
I would, I would for sure. I actually think that it's a little bit better than it was when I first came, particularly for women. That's a lot easier road than it was when I first started practicing.

Speaker 4 (38:18):
I have two answers. The first answer is the one I would've given for sure four years ago, which is no, I wouldn't practice alone. I would do something different. I think it's can be a very tiring, deflating, disappointing profession. But three or four years, years ago, I started teaching as an adjunct at Cleveland State College of Law. And my enthusiasm for the law and for people entering it has really changed. You know, the, the cynicism that I built up over time sort of is being washed away a bit by watching these people who really care and, you know, watching them get excited. And I remember all of the possibilities that I thought I saw, and it's still true. They're all still there. So I I, so I have a different answer now, but I think it's mostly because of that experience. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is getting back into working with younger lawyers that has made the difference for me.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (39:25):
So, you know, it just dawned on me, there is one other major accomplishment that I think the law firm of given and Kaminsky had. And that was every event you went to where you were presenting or at these expos that Nam Wolf and others did, you had the best tchotchkes. Oh,

Speaker 4 (39:41):
Thank

Becky Ruppert McMahon (39:41):
You. The best branded tchotchkes, Uhhuh <affirmative>. So I think it goes back to those early days playing with the cash register. You just brought it forward with all kinds of spinners and whatever. But I, you were always a hot commodity on the tchotchke tables.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
And I just, I just wanna say that every year when that issue would come up, x number of months before the holidays or before a convention, and Karen would walk into my office and say, alright, here's the ideas for the tchotchkes. And I just rolled my, I said, I just don't care. But thank you for caring all of those here. I didn't care. I like to, I actually like to sell our tchotchkes more than our locker <laugh>.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (40:19):
Well, I think you've just proven to us that you can work hard together and you can play hard together. So let me just say thank you. Thank you for making so much time today to talk with us and to share your incredible bar stories. It's quite a legacy you have built. You've still got lots more great work to do here at Perez Morris and into whatever happens afterwards. So enjoy this, the rest of this sunny day out there. And again, thank you for sitting down to talk with me.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
Thank you. Thanks, Becky.

Becky Ruppert McMahon (40:44):
Thank you for joining us for another edition of my bar story. We appreciate the hundreds of you who have downloaded and subscribed to this podcast. Let's keep this conversation going. Visit cle metro bar.org/podcast to listen, subscribe, and to schedule a recording of your own bar story. See you next week.