By Cynthia Price
Legal News
Ginny Mikita has a lot going on.
Ginny Mikita has a lot going on.
Nonetheless, the attorney from the Mikita Kruse Law Center is generous with her time and knowledge, particularly when it comes to the challenges of starting a solo practice. So generous, in fact, that she was willing to write an article for the Michigan Bar Journal in 2005 about her move to independence.
In “Is Your Parachute Ready to Make the Jump?” Mikita told readers about the pitfalls of starting to practice on her own, but focused on what she considers the great advantages. “[E]ven after four years, I still have to pinch myself,” she writes. “When am I going to wake up, realize I am dreaming, don a suit, and head back to an office for some ‘non-billable’ meeting?”
That article was 11 years ago, and her husband Robert Kruse has since joined the firm, but she is still overwhelmingly happy having her own business, for any number of reasons. “It’s been really great. We really are not like the lawyers you see on TV, it’s just very much more personable than that. There’s a formality that we’re able to dispense with,” she says.
Mikita hastens to add, however, that she was also very fortunate to be at her previous firm, Smith Haughey Rice and Roegge. “It was a great firm, and Bud Roegge is a wonderful man,” she says. “I’m so grateful for those years of experience with them.”
She met and married Kruse while at the firm, so there are fond memories for both. “We remain friends with many Smith Haughey people. I was so fortunate to have had that opportunity to work with such consummate professionals,” she comments.
Smith Haughey was just one stop on a widely-varying journey that preceded her decision to hang out her own shingle.
After a youth spent in Spain and Germany due to her father’s Air Force career, Mikita took her bachelor’s in economics, starting out for a year at the Munich campus of University of Maryland, and finishing up at the University of Florida after returning to the United States. For three years she followed the path expected with her degree and was a corporate lender in Washington, D.C., but something kept nagging at her, forcing her to question her choice.
“In my senior year at the University of Florida I took a class called Contemporary Moral Issues. My main interest going into that was to write a paper about the death penalty, but our teacher had us read Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, and that was all I needed.
“It’s the reason I went to law school – I thought I might be an animal rights lobbyist,” she adds, noting that she had always had a soft spot for cats and dogs and even the bulls she saw gored when she was in Spain.
While in Washington, Mikita had volunteered for FARM, the Farm Animal Reform Movement. After her first year at Notre Dame University School of Law, she was privileged to spend a summer working for FARM, paid for in part by her fellow students.
“There was something called the Student Funded Fellowship, where the students who were going to work at large well-paying firms would all agree to pledge some money to someone who was going to work for a non-profit. The students voted for it to go to me, and they were all very excited about it, but the administration initially refused it,” Mikita says, adding with a smile, “That was my first battle, and I won.”
She leveraged that experience to become in-house counsel for the very radical People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) after graduation, persuading prosecutors across the U.S. to prosecute animal cruelty laws against furriers.
“I basically prepared their whole case for them so they wouldn’t have to put the time and energy into it,” she explains.
She also did what amounted to a clerkship for Animal Legal Defense Fund, again in D.C.
But prior to that, right out of law school, she had clerked for federal Judge Joseph Scoville, which she very much enjoyed — “We’ve stayed in touch, he’s such a great guy,” she says — so she decided to return to West Michigan and landed the position with Smith Haughey.
While there, Mikita happened to be involved in a case the settlement of which involved children, and that was her introduction to Guardian Ad Litem and conservatorship work. She pursued that as her specialty and became deeply involved, while still taking animal law cases of a wide variety.
After the birth of her second child in 2000, Mikita wanted to spend more time with her children. She assessed that she could do a better job with both the animal cases and the probate work if she struck out on her own.
Mikita often found fortuitous solutions to many of the challenges faced by solo practitioners. A former probate court employee offered to work for her on a contractual basis, which Mikita counts among her greatest blessings. A colleague discussed incorporation with her after asking her to do some work for him, and assisted her in finding the right structure. She found malpractice insurance surprisingly inexpensive, though it has increased over the years. She got along with minimal technology needs at first, but regards smart phones as incredibly advantageous.
One critical piece of advice she shares is that, like some other solo practitioners, she gave herself a deadline to be successful, and promised herself that if she was not, she would change course. This helped to relieve her anxiety.
But she met with success almost immediately, never really having to advertise. She now has a highly satisfactory practice conducted on her own terms.
It is sometimes challenging to get coverage so the couple can vacation, but Mikita says she has been incredibly impressed with the support provided by other solo practitioners in this area. “Here’s where one of the other beauties of this comes in. There’s a network of solo and small firm practitioners; we’re our own community. I can ask someone to cover for us, and then we’ll do the same for them,” she adds.
The biggest challenge she’s encountered, she says, is that balancing time demands can be tricky. Because the firm provides guardian services for hospitals, Mikita is sometimes called out at non-traditional hours, but she also has the ability to set her own schedule and
participate easily in the daytime activities of her children. (Her son Spencer and daughter Greta are both in their teens.)
“It’s all about relationships,” she says. “We can be accessible when we need to, which not all lawyers can.”
Mikita is not the slightest bit apologetic about becoming emotional over some of the pain she has witnessed in the course of her work. Now that
her practice has morphed into representing the rights of refugee children, through Bethany Christian Services, she shares in a lot of the grief and uncertainty of her young clients.
“When I did the neglect and abuse cases, sometimes I just wept during a hearing. But judges were forgiving. I have a pretty tender heart so it’s really hard.”
She notes that some of the refugee children cannot even get in touch with their families because it would put those left behind in jeopardy.
As if her animal law and refugee child representation were not enough, Mikita is also pursuing a Master’s in Divinity. She conducts a blessing of the animals service each year at Artprize and plants to continue.
“I try hard to give back,” she says. “I really have been very blessed.”
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