Kelly & Berens, P.A. is a thirteen-lawyer firm located in downtown Minneapolis that restricts its practice to civil litigation. The work of the firm is exclusively pretrial preparation, trials and appeals. The firm also represents parties in alternative dispute resolution proceedings, e.g., arbitration or mediation, that involve the adversary process.
Our Practice:
The firm's practice is not limited to any substantive area of the law. Our work consists of business disputes. These disputes often involving financing or real estate and, recently, substantial employment litigation. We have significant experience in securities and antitrust litigation. We also have substantial experience defending businesses in class action litigation. The firm has a base of clients that regularly refer litigation matters and receives much of its work from other attorneys, often business lawyers who do not handle complicated litigation, or other trial lawyers who have conflicts of interest.
The best indicator of the breadth of our experience and the broad ranged nature of our practice is the Selected Trial Court and Appellate Decisions nearby.
Our Lawyers:
Biographies of the members of the firm can be seen from the Attorneys page. The actual trial work is done by the firm's five partners, Timothy D. Kelly, Barbara Podlucky Berens, Paul R. Hannah , Tracey L. Baubie and Sarah E. Bushnell. The associate attorneys do pretrial work and assigned tasks, aided by our support staff.
The senior members of the firm have an aggregate of well over 100 years of litigation experience. We believe that this firm brings as many cases to trial each year per attorney as any firm in the Twin Cities.
The firm's members are well known among the judges of the federal and state courts in Minnesota. We believe we are respected by these judges and by our peers in the trial and appeals practice. We invite you to evaluate our work by contacting in-house attorneys or other representatives of clients for whom we have handled significant matters. A reference list can be found in the Representative Clients page of this site.
Our Fee Schedule:
The attorney fee rates of the firm are set annually in February. These rates are competitive in this community for attorneys with our qualifications that do the type of work we do. The firm has offered a blended rate but discourages this form of representation because it presents economic incentives to have the less experienced laywers do a disproportionate share of the work. We encourage, on the other hand, project billing with an overall cap and a monthly cap so the client knows the maximum fee charge each month and the maximum for the work as a whole. Click here for our current fee schedule.
Our Strategy:
We believe that whether we represent a plaintiff or a defendant the best posture is to take the offensive. Our goal is to maintain the initiative and define the issues as favorably for our side as we can. Our experience is that this approach resolves disputes faster and cheaper than the alternative.
To that end, we have an established method for handling matters that seeks to avoid three questions frequently asked by clients after litigation ends:
- Why did it take so long?
- Why did it cost so much?
- Why, when we finally got to the courthouse steps, did my lawyer insist we settle?
We try to avoid or minimize these complaints -- which are somewhat inherent in the modern adversary process -- through three steps:
Step One: We develop a litigation strategy with the client at the outset. This written plan sets forth what we want to do and how we intend to do it.
Step Two: We establish a time-line and a budget. Most business persons work off budgets and cannot understand why lawyers are reluctant to do the same thing.
Step Three: We execute the plan and periodically notify the client of our progress and whether we are "on plan." If not, we explain why not.
In litigation, the client and trial counsel are partners. The way our firm handles these matters recognizes that fact.
