Varnum attorney Conor Boland (center) was selected as a member of Trinity Health’s Up Next program, which educates participants about the hospital’s core service offerings.
By Julie Freer
Legal News
A common thread in Conor Boland’s education, from his Catholic high school in Delaware through law school at Notre Dame, was taking a holistic approach to learning and growing.
Boland, a business attorney at Varnum in Grand Rapids, attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. where he earned his bachelor’s degree in history and theology.
“I wanted to continue my educational journey in Catholic education because I found the focus on forming the whole person —spiritual, physical, emotional, and intellectual —to be powerful and something that was important to me,” said Boland.
He will be able to apply that same holistic approach to his latest endeavor as a member of Trinity Health’s 2025 “Up Next” cohort. Boland was selected for the program last spring after being introduced to it by Linsey Gleason, a colleague at Varnum.
The “Up Next” program, which is unique to Trinity Health Grand Rapids, was established in 2009 and brings together professionals across a range of corporate, civic, and volunteer backgrounds. During the five-session program, participants learn about Trinity Health and its core service programs, like the Trinity Health Lacks Cancer Center and the Trinity Health Hauenstein Neuroscience Center, getting an insider’s view of how the organization fulfills its mission of improving the health of the community.
“Trinity doesn’t focus only on making sure patients are physically healed, but focuses on healing the whole person and breaking down various structural issues that prevent certain people from accessing the care they need to thrive,” said Boland, whose interest was piqued in the topic after taking a class on Catholic health care systems and related legal issues while at Notre Dame Law School.
“It is such a fantastic program because I’ve been able to meet a variety of people from Trinity with my cohort, who are such accomplished and talented young professionals in the community and learn what goes into delivering world-class health care to West Michigan,” said Boland.
Boland grew up in Wilmington, Del. as a triplet – he has a brother, Patrick, and a sister, Madeline.
“While we’re not identical, we definitely had some telepathy going on growing up! It was a blast,” he says. “My dad was an in-house patent attorney for his entire legal career and my mom was an elementary school teacher before deciding to stay home.”
As a kid, Boland thought he would become a high school history/theology teacher at a Catholic high school.
“Both my parents inspired me to work extremely hard, to have a positive attitude, and be intellectually curious,” said Boland. “Those traits have served me extremely well in all facets of my life!”
While at Catholic University of America, Boland served as a student minister and earned the John K. Zeender Prize for the best senior thesis by a history major. During college, he enjoyed building lifelong friendships with people from across the country and exploring Washington – going “monumenting” around the Lincoln Memorial and Congress on warm fall and spring nights.
It wasn’t until after he graduated from CUA in 2017 and was working as a research analyst that Boland began thinking about law school.
“At that job, my company had recently acquired another entity for certain IP,” Boland recalls. “I saw the impact that IP had on our company overall and realized I would really enjoy helping other businesses grow and accomplish their goals. So, from the beginning, that combined with also learning that Delaware is the mecca for corporate law, I had an interested in practicing corporate law.”
For law school, Boland was looking for a legal institution with strong employment outcomes, a solid corporate law program, and to be able to graduate with minimal debt.
“Notre Dame checked all those boxes and more,” said Boland. “My favorite law school memory was externing with Vice Chancellor McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery. She’s a fellow native Delawarean and graduated from Notre Dame Law School before becoming a Vice Chancellor. I learned so much from her. She is a hard-working, talented, and smart jurist. And the Delaware Court of Chancery is rightfully renowned across the world as the forum of choice for U.S. business law disputes. So that experience of seeing how the Chancery Court approaches complex business law issues was really neat and informs how I practice business law today.”
After working at Varnum in Grand Rapids as a summer associate in 2021, Boland was hired as a business attorney by the law firm in 2022. He advises private and family-owned businesses, family offices, and private equity funds, offering strategic legal guidance on a range of business law matters, including mergers and acquisitions, regulatory compliance, and general corporate counseling.
“I’m blessed because I love what I do — coming into the office each morning and helping business leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators accomplish their goals and doing it with talented colleagues who are at the cutting edge of their respective practices is a privilege,” said Boland. “I enjoy the reward from helping businesses solve their problems by providing actionable, practical, solutions-orientated legal advice. That is really a hallmark of how we practice law at Varnum — and clients really appreciate that, and it is part of what makes us so successful.”
A challenging element of the work is thinking about how to incorporate technology into practice to “make us more efficient and able to focus more time on practicing at the ‘top’ of our profession,” Boland says. “With a variety of AI tools, ranging from Harvey AI to CoCounsel, I think this technology will change, for the better, how we practice law.”
Boland and his wife Tiffany make their home in Ada, just east of Grand Rapids, and are parents to two young children. In addition to participating in the Up Next program, Boland also serves on the St. Robert Catholic School Board of Directors in Ada and Young Catholic Professionals, Grand Rapids Chapter Board of Directors.
While work, volunteering and his young family keep him busy, Boland enjoys getting up north to Elk Rapids in the summer, rooting for the Notre Dame lacrosse and football teams, and playing tennis and pickleball with friends.
By Julie Freer
Legal News
A common thread in Conor Boland’s education, from his Catholic high school in Delaware through law school at Notre Dame, was taking a holistic approach to learning and growing.
Boland, a business attorney at Varnum in Grand Rapids, attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. where he earned his bachelor’s degree in history and theology.
“I wanted to continue my educational journey in Catholic education because I found the focus on forming the whole person —spiritual, physical, emotional, and intellectual —to be powerful and something that was important to me,” said Boland.
He will be able to apply that same holistic approach to his latest endeavor as a member of Trinity Health’s 2025 “Up Next” cohort. Boland was selected for the program last spring after being introduced to it by Linsey Gleason, a colleague at Varnum.
The “Up Next” program, which is unique to Trinity Health Grand Rapids, was established in 2009 and brings together professionals across a range of corporate, civic, and volunteer backgrounds. During the five-session program, participants learn about Trinity Health and its core service programs, like the Trinity Health Lacks Cancer Center and the Trinity Health Hauenstein Neuroscience Center, getting an insider’s view of how the organization fulfills its mission of improving the health of the community.
“Trinity doesn’t focus only on making sure patients are physically healed, but focuses on healing the whole person and breaking down various structural issues that prevent certain people from accessing the care they need to thrive,” said Boland, whose interest was piqued in the topic after taking a class on Catholic health care systems and related legal issues while at Notre Dame Law School.
“It is such a fantastic program because I’ve been able to meet a variety of people from Trinity with my cohort, who are such accomplished and talented young professionals in the community and learn what goes into delivering world-class health care to West Michigan,” said Boland.
Boland grew up in Wilmington, Del. as a triplet – he has a brother, Patrick, and a sister, Madeline.
“While we’re not identical, we definitely had some telepathy going on growing up! It was a blast,” he says. “My dad was an in-house patent attorney for his entire legal career and my mom was an elementary school teacher before deciding to stay home.”
As a kid, Boland thought he would become a high school history/theology teacher at a Catholic high school.
“Both my parents inspired me to work extremely hard, to have a positive attitude, and be intellectually curious,” said Boland. “Those traits have served me extremely well in all facets of my life!”
While at Catholic University of America, Boland served as a student minister and earned the John K. Zeender Prize for the best senior thesis by a history major. During college, he enjoyed building lifelong friendships with people from across the country and exploring Washington – going “monumenting” around the Lincoln Memorial and Congress on warm fall and spring nights.
It wasn’t until after he graduated from CUA in 2017 and was working as a research analyst that Boland began thinking about law school.
“At that job, my company had recently acquired another entity for certain IP,” Boland recalls. “I saw the impact that IP had on our company overall and realized I would really enjoy helping other businesses grow and accomplish their goals. So, from the beginning, that combined with also learning that Delaware is the mecca for corporate law, I had an interested in practicing corporate law.”
For law school, Boland was looking for a legal institution with strong employment outcomes, a solid corporate law program, and to be able to graduate with minimal debt.
“Notre Dame checked all those boxes and more,” said Boland. “My favorite law school memory was externing with Vice Chancellor McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery. She’s a fellow native Delawarean and graduated from Notre Dame Law School before becoming a Vice Chancellor. I learned so much from her. She is a hard-working, talented, and smart jurist. And the Delaware Court of Chancery is rightfully renowned across the world as the forum of choice for U.S. business law disputes. So that experience of seeing how the Chancery Court approaches complex business law issues was really neat and informs how I practice business law today.”
After working at Varnum in Grand Rapids as a summer associate in 2021, Boland was hired as a business attorney by the law firm in 2022. He advises private and family-owned businesses, family offices, and private equity funds, offering strategic legal guidance on a range of business law matters, including mergers and acquisitions, regulatory compliance, and general corporate counseling.
“I’m blessed because I love what I do — coming into the office each morning and helping business leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators accomplish their goals and doing it with talented colleagues who are at the cutting edge of their respective practices is a privilege,” said Boland. “I enjoy the reward from helping businesses solve their problems by providing actionable, practical, solutions-orientated legal advice. That is really a hallmark of how we practice law at Varnum — and clients really appreciate that, and it is part of what makes us so successful.”
A challenging element of the work is thinking about how to incorporate technology into practice to “make us more efficient and able to focus more time on practicing at the ‘top’ of our profession,” Boland says. “With a variety of AI tools, ranging from Harvey AI to CoCounsel, I think this technology will change, for the better, how we practice law.”
Boland and his wife Tiffany make their home in Ada, just east of Grand Rapids, and are parents to two young children. In addition to participating in the Up Next program, Boland also serves on the St. Robert Catholic School Board of Directors in Ada and Young Catholic Professionals, Grand Rapids Chapter Board of Directors.
While work, volunteering and his young family keep him busy, Boland enjoys getting up north to Elk Rapids in the summer, rooting for the Notre Dame lacrosse and football teams, and playing tennis and pickleball with friends.
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