5 Law Firms Make Case To Hinsdale D86
HINSDALE, IL – The Hinsdale High School District 86 board, whose law firm terminated its relationship in September, heard presentations from five firms vying for the district's legal business Tuesday.
Last year, one of them was shown the door at Lyons Township High School.
The five finalists are Franczek, Odelson, Kriha Boucek, Ottosen, and Klein, Thorpe and Jenkins.
They are vying to replace Robbins Schwartz, which called the board "unreasonably difficult" when it departed. Recently, the board voted against paying a $132,000 monthly bill from the firm.
The biggest firm seeking the district's legal business is Franczek, with 33 attorneys. The websites for Franczek and Kriha Boucek indicate their chief specialty is schools.
At the meeting, Adam Dauksas, a Franczek partner, told the board that his firm had a "deep bench of lawyers that are experts in almost every aspect of school law."
Another partner, Brian Crowley, called his firm "incredibly responsive" to clients.
"We stand apart from our competition there," he said.
Franczek experienced an unhappy end as the attorney for Lyons Township High School. In summer 2023, the board replaced Franczek after its handling of the school's controversial effort to sell land in Willow Springs to an industrial buyer.
The attorney general found the Lyons Township board illegally closed the doors for 10 meetings about the land. Franczek partner Ares Dalianis, who advised the board on the land deal, attended at least some of the sessions .
At one of the meetings, the recording revealed Dalianis telling the board that an industrial developer would have a good shot at getting an exception to Willow Springs' zoning. That was despite a village's inherent powers over zoning and Willow Springs residents' objections to putting industry next to a school and houses.
Dalianis was at Tuesday's District 86 meeting, but he said little, other than to speak about his firm's billing practices.
For Kriha Boucek, partner Sara Boucek acknowledged the nine-attorney firm wasn't as old as the others.
"While it seems like we're the new kid on the block, we actually have a lot of old kids on the block," she said.
Partner Kevin Gordon said his firm lays out the pros and cons of issues and lets clients decide. He brought up the mask controversies from three years ago.
"There were raging debates in every district," he said. "We're not pro-mask or anti-mask. We're pro-district autonomy on decision-making."
Burt Odelson, founder of the firm that bears his name, said his 20-attorney team's work with all types of government bodies would help District 86. That work includes the state government, he said.
"We do work in the General Assembly on both sides of the aisle," he said.
He also said the firm's rates are reasonable. He said the firm offers a "blended rate," so a client is not charged more when a partner, rather than an associate, handles a task.
"After 50 years, there isn't much we haven't done in the area. We always look for new challenges. We don't try to reinvent the wheel," Odelson said.
At the 30-lawyer Klein, Thorpe and Jenkins firm, partner Mallory Milluzzi said her firm's representation of other kinds of clients "bleeds over" into school law.
"There's almost no area of the law that we haven't touched a little bit," Milluzzi said. "I've been in bankruptcy court before."
About masks, she said that each of the firm's dozens of clients had a different take on the issue.
"It was not our place to make those decisions," she said.
In 2021, Milluzi, whose firm represents the village of Hinsdale, was involved in the village's decision to keep secret a report on an investigation into the fire department that cost more than $100,000.
At the 26-attorney Ottosen law firm, partner Maureen Lemon said the firm's job is to inform clients about possible legal risks.
When one school district wanted to discipline an employee, she said, her firm advised it not to because the worker had a claim against the district.
"It would have been seen as retaliatory," Lemon said.
In some districts, the firm's attorneys are at every board meeting, Lemon said, while they hear from others only when they have been sued.
