Lawyers in love: Lisers team up at work, home

Grant and Sandy Liser will be celebrating their 19th wedding anniversary later this month. They are both successful trial lawyers at the same firm, and they often work on the same legal team, defending clients who can benefit from having two attorneys with different but complementary skill sets.

But when the Lisers were at the firm — now Brown, Dean, Wiseman Proctor, Hart & Howell LLP — in the late 1980s and announced they were engaged, the news formed tension between some of the then-partners and eventually meant that Sandy was voted out of the firm as a newlywed.

“I found it very disheartening, and then we had the issue that Sandy is a very talented lawyer but she needed a place to practice,” said Grant.

Sandy said it came down to either marrying Grant or working with him, and she chose to get married and work at Cantey Hanger for about 10 years before returning to Brown Dean in 1998.

Today, the Lisers have put the firmÂ’s old fears behind them and are again working at the same firm. While itÂ’s not uncommon for attorneys to marry each other, it is unusual that they work in the same field, in the same office and in the same courtrooms. Neither knows of another lawyer couple that works together so closely.

They say living and working together sometimes gives them advantages other couples may not have. Taking work home isnÂ’t as much of an issue as with other couples, since they can talk through issues without having to explain as much. If one is working at the office on the weekend, chances are the other one is as well.

“Because we love what we do so much, it’s OK to talk about it [at home],” Sandy said.

And for attorneys, taking work home is inevitable, Grant said.

“Law isn’t just a job; it’s a profession,” he said.

ItÂ’s also a competitive profession. Sandy said while surgeons have a stressful job trying to better someoneÂ’s life, they arenÂ’t competing with another set of surgeons on the other side of the table trying to ensure the surgery fails. She said being a defense attorney (they both largely specialize in transportation) means always having to deal with another team and any advantage in the court room must be exploited.

When they work together, they have different styles that appeal to different facets of a jury. Additionally, having a woman and a man on the team means that if the jury is mostly female, Sandy can take a lead and if the jury would respond better to a male, then Grant can appear more involved. While both are equally responsible for cases, flexibility in the courtroom only helps clients, they say.

“We like to capitalize on it,” Sandy said.

“We think it’s a tactical advantage,” Grant said.

John Proctor, an attorney at Brown Dean who was named partner around the same time Sandy joined the firm, said when Sandy was voted out, the legal field in Fort Worth was just seeing its first large wave of female attorneys and probably some people were afraid of having a couple on the staff.

“I don’t think that there was anything personal about Grant and Sandy that was a problem, but just the idea of having husband/wife at the same firm at the same time made some people uncomfortable,” he said.

Sandy said she didnÂ’t necessarily take it personally.

“I’m sure the partners were thinking, ‘What if this doesn’t work out and we’ve got two divorced people working here who hate each other?’” she said.

Grant said the field was a bit slow to adjust to the influx of women in law and to the idea that a married couple can work together and be completely professional.

“The practice of law can get behind sometimes,” he said.

Proctor said aside from the fact the Lisers usually get lunch together and occasionally stop by each otherÂ’s offices at the end of the day to see if the other is finished with work, there is no evidence in the office that they are married.

Sandy and Grant have been working at the same firm for about a decade now, and they agree that while it wasnÂ’t pleasant to have one voted out of a law firm due to a relationship, both established themselves on their own merits and it was the right decision for Brown Dean to hire Sandy back, Grant said.

“It wasn’t just getting my wife back,” Grant said. “It was getting a damn good attorney.”

Contact Bassett at ebassett@bizpress.net