Robert Bob Friedman

In family law, ending up in front of a judge is akin to choosing surgery when a diet change would suffice. In other words, a much greater risk for minimal return. Minimizing your client’s risk while providing them the greatest possible control over their case is best achieved through mediation or even arbitration. Former family law judges, Kristin Ruth and Michael Denning, who joined Smith Debnam’s family law group in 2014 and 2020, respectively, share that philosophy.

Devshi Mehrotra was a freshman computer science major in 2015 at the University of Chicago when a video from the prior year’s murder of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer was released to the public. A dashcam video showed the 17-year-old African American was unarmed and walking away from a police officer, not coming forward with a knife as police claimed. The event had a profound impact on Mehrotra.

When Ruth Sheehan was in third grade, a class assignment was to write an essay, “If a UFO landed on the southside of Milwaukee, what would you do?” “Who wouldn’t want to be the one that gets to go out there and see the UFO?” she said. “Ask the questions, experience it? I thought, ‘This is absolutely what I’m going to do.’” So, if Sheehan’s name sounds familiar, it’s because she was a reporter and columnist for The News & Observer of Raleigh for nearly 20 years.