‘Team’ approach proves pivotal to the success of Kentucky firm
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Attorney Spotlight
‘Team’ approach proves pivotal to the success of Kentucky firm
By Brian Cox
The word “group” in the name Eddins Domine Law Group, PLLC, might just as readily be “team,” according to founder Kevin Eddins’ view of how the Louisville firm operates.
“That’s probably what I’m proudest of in terms of the firm, the team that we’ve built,” says Eddins. “The culture and environment that exists here is not like what happens at a lot of other places.”
When Eddins started the firm in 2005, he decided to brand its mission as “Committed to Our Clients’ Success,” which he recognizes may at first sound overly broad, but at its core the declaration represents a fundamental commitment Eddins expects from every attorney in the firm.
“My focus is on [my clients’] success and making sure that happens as much as I can,” says Eddins. “For me that means being able to put yourself in the client’s shoes. The commitment comes about by envisioning that their pain is your pain. The checkbook they pay you with is your checkbook. The loss of the money or the loss of a partner is your loss of money and your loss of partner.”
In short, the firm’s mission requires attorneys to live their clients’ problems and make it personal.
“Put yourself fully in your client’s position and see things with their eyes,” says Eddins. “That’s what gives you the imperative to do good work and to be able to stay with it.”
Eddins believes it is a mindset that can be coached.
“For some of us it’s a little more of an inherent trait,” he says. “Some of us can come by it a little more easily. Others need to be reminded of it from time to time.”
The mission incorporates three essential concerns: Focusing on the client, focusing on employees, and focusing on community.
“The team is the centerpiece of all that,” says Eddins. “It is the nexus that ties everything together. If you don’t have a good team, you can’t help your clients do anything. You’re not going to be very helpful as far as your community is concerned either.”
Over the past 17 years, Eddins and managing partner Alissa Domine have learned to be frank with potential hires about what their expectations are and how the firm functions as a team.
“There is no hierarchy of tasks,” says Eddins, who prefers to lead by example rather than manage from the top down. “We’re all in it together. I pitch in when it’s needed – be that person that isn’t drawing lines. If the floor needs to be scrubbed, you scrub the floor.”
Eddins looks for attorneys who are willing to “jump in” and do whatever needs doing; attorneys who demonstrate ownership of their assigned tasks and approach their work with the attitude of “If a fire needs to be put out, I’m going to go in with a hose to help put it out with the rest of you.”
Says Eddins: “No one here is the most important person. We’re all going to treat each other with respect and appreciate the contributions that each other make.”
At the same time that the firm functions as a team, Eddins fosters an environment where it feels like a family. Brief meetings are held every Monday where everyone catches up on the weekend and what’s going on with their families. Personal relationships are encouraged through impromptu happy hours, quarterly social events, community service projects at least twice a year, and annual retreats. Members, staff and their families also get together every fall for a picnic at a lake house he and his partner and their families own.
Attorney Kevin Eddins with his daughters Isabelle (left) and Helen at a Cuban restaurant owned by a client and good friend.
“We want it to feel and be like family and have opportunity for everybody’s input,” says Eddins. “Let’s have this place be a place where we can openly share ideas, we can respect each other, and we all feel like we play a part.”
A Kentucky native, Eddins was born and raised around Louisville in the Bluegrass State where his father worked in the printing business. His parents married young, when his father was 18 and his mother 16. His parents stressed the importance of education from an early age.
“I can remember as a youngster my mom beating it into our heads, knowing that’s how you get out of a bad neighborhood and letting us know we can be anything we want to be. We had the power to do that,” he says.
Eddins attended Hanover College, the oldest private college in Indiana, where he studied theology and political science.
“I was fascinated by the two topics you can’t have discussions about in polite conversation,” he jokes. “People often ask me if I ever considered the ministry, and the very quick answer to that is no.”
Though not particularly religious, he continues to be intellectually stimulated by discussions of theology and enjoys challenging extreme positions people can adopt with little consideration.
“Extreme approaches to things in general, whether they be on one side or the other of the political spectrum, are not interesting and they don’t really inform humanity in any meaningful way,” he says. “The truth isn’t on the edges. It’s in the middle.”
After college, Eddins moved to Washington, D.C., with a friend to explore his interest in politics. Over the next two years, a score of Hanover graduates made their way to the nation’s capital, including Eddins’ future wife, Anne.
“It was a good place to be right out of college,” he says. “It was a lot of fun being in the center of things.”
In D.C., Eddins worked as a research assistant for the National League of Cities, heading up two major projects. One was a nationwide survey of municipal officials and the other was a State of the Cities report, which benchmarks the top issues facing the country’s mayors, such as economic development and infrastructure.
Eddins also worked for an environmental political action committee that sent him back to his home state to run the congressional campaign of attorney Ned Pillersdorf. It proved a fortuitous assignment. Pillersdorf’s wife, Janet Stumbo, was a Court of Appeals judge who won her bid that year for a seat on the Kentucky Supreme Court. Eddins would end up serving as a judicial clerk for Stumbo his first summer after law school at the University of Louisville.
Eddins and his wife, who is a speech pathologist, have two daughters, Isabella and Helen. Isabella has just started college, and Helen is a high school senior. He finds time to engage in outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, and canoeing, and particularly enjoys hearing alternative rock bands in small venues. He’s always willing to strike up a conversation with strangers.
As a young lawyer, Eddins continued to dabble in politics, serving two terms on the city council of St. Matthews, a city of around 20,000 in the Louisville Metro area known as a popular shopping destination. In 2004, he made a bid for a seat in the state House of Representatives. The unsuccessful campaign was a turning point in his life, setting him on a new career path.
“The loss of that race was really the launch of this current chapter of my life, which was forming the firm,” says Eddins. “It was the perfect time to do it. I look back and it seems like a risky decision, but honestly it felt like the only decision.”
The firm he had been with for almost eight years was going through organizational changes and becoming more of an “office-share” type of arrangement, which wasn’t a satisfying fit for Eddins, who wanted to be part of a team-oriented firm.
He considered who he might want to branch out on his own with and the choice seemed obvious – Alissa Domine, a family law attorney he had interviewed when she joined his prior firm.
“She was really quite honestly the only person it could have worked with,” says Eddins. “We complement each other quite well. It’s been a great partnership. I wouldn’t want to row this boat myself, and I don’t know who else I could have rowed it with.”
The firm – which focuses on family law, estate planning, and business and corporate law – has grown steadily and organically over the years. With nine lawyers, Eddins expects to add a tenth by the end of the year. A key to the firm’s success is the diversity of its client base.
Attorney Kevin Eddins on a recent visit to an apple orchard with his daughters, Helen and Isabella.
“Even in severe economic downturns, we’ve managed to continue growing our business,” says Eddins. “If you have a good work product, people learn about you. You keep doing good work, and people stay with you.”
Eddins enjoys the ins-and-outs of running a business as well as devising marketing and strategic planning. He embraces the role of mentor. He describes himself as a generalist, able to advise and assist his clients with the vast majority of their business legal concerns.
“I’m a weird sort of animal,” he says of his practice, which is divided between high-level transactional work and litigation typically surrounding business deals gone bad. “We can do 80 to 90 percent of what a mid-size or even large business owner needs.”
Membership in Primerus has helped the firm to serve client needs more fully and effectively and to compete for the sort of business that might previously have been beyond its grasp.
“It’s been great to plug in to certain areas of expertise that are not in our wheelhouse,” says Eddins. “[Primerus] enables us to provide more and better services to the clients we have and to be able to compete with larger firms that seem to have unlimited resources.”
He recently attended the Primerus Southern Regional Meeting in Houston where he appreciated insights into building a solid marketing and business development culture.
“It’s helped us get to a different level and to begin to think more broadly about the sorts of things we’re capable of doing,” he says.