About 24 results for Elena Marsh
Leads the firm, still tries cases, and will tell you exactly where you stand. Elena grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, the daughter of a harbour pilot and a high-school chemistry teacher. Dinner-table arguments were a sport i…
I run a forty-lawyer firm in Chicago and I still try cases, because I think the person who sets a firm's standards should have to meet them. We take on commercial disputes, deals, property, family mat…
Managing Partner @ Hale & Mercer. Trial lawyer. Duluth-born, Evanston-based. Lake Michigan swimmer, April to November. Opinions are mine and usually firm.
Lawyer. Swimmer. Cook. Evanston. Mostly the lake.
First swim of the season that didn't hurt. 61°F. Summer, officially.
Twenty-five years since I was sworn in. Advice to the version of me who stood in that room: the people who read the exhibits win. Everything else is theatre.
Our pro bono numbers for the first half of 2026: 2,140 hours across the firm, 51 matters, every lawyer over the 50-hour minimum. The Chicago Legal Clinic's housing docket is where most of it went. If you are a Chicago la…
Spent the morning at the Chicago Legal Clinic housing docket. Eleven families, eleven different landlords, one judge who knows every tenant's name. That courtroom is the best argument for legal aid funding I know.
Clinic morning with the housing docket volunteers. Eleven families helped.
Proud of Aisha Mahmoud, who this month argued her first motion in the Northern District and won it on the papers. She read 40,000 pages nobody else would. That is the whole job, and she does it better than I did at her a…
If you receive a lawsuit: do not call the other side. Do not post about it. Do not throw anything away. Call a lawyer today, not Monday. More on the firm blog this week.
What to do, what not to do, and why the quiet week after a lawsuit arrives decides more than the trial. Most lawsuits are not lost in a courtroom. They are lost in the first week, by people who did perfectly reasonable t…
Firm photo day. They let me keep the one where I'm not smiling too hard.
Shot 88 at Canal Shores. Honest 88. Two of those were a tree that moved.
Canal Shores, Sunday. 14 handicap and the tree is still there.
A client asked me this week whether to settle. I told her what I tell everyone: I'll give you my honest read of the odds, the cost, and what a trial will take out of you. Then it's your decision, not mine. Lawyers who ma…
Sunday dinner for fourteen. Walleye chowder, Duluth recipe, still not writing it down. Menu notebook now in its 22nd year.
Sunday dinner for fourteen. Chowder is a Duluth secret.
Jury selection tip from twenty-five years of doing it: stop trying to read people. Ask them a real question and listen to the whole answer. Most lawyers stop listening at the first word they wanted to hear.
Forty-one years ago today Margaret Hale and David Mercer left a big firm with one rule: a client should always be able to reach the person handling their matter. We are bigger now. The rule has not changed, and the day i…
Lake temperature at Lee Street Beach this morning: 54°F. Six of us went in. The seventh is 'thinking about it' for the fourth year running.
6 a.m., Lee Street Beach, 54 degrees. Best hour of the day.
Hale & Mercer LLP has logged more than 2,000 pro bono hours this year, most of it on the Chicago Legal Clinic's housing docket. Managing partner Elena Marsh says the minimum is not negotiable. On a Tuesday morning in the…
September same-day callback rate: 99.4%. Every client who called the firm heard back from their lawyer the same day, except during one snowstorm in Duluth, which I am counting as an act of God and Elena is counting as an…