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Growing family traditions, one pine tree at a time
October 7, 2024
NORTHEAST WISCONSIN – In 1949, Neil McCarty – an Army veteran and Harvard Law graduate – opened a law firm in his hometown of Kaukauna.
A little more than a decade later, experienced litigator Irv Curry, a graduate of Lawrence University and the University of Michigan Law School, joined the team to fill this role fresh from service.
Dennis Wydeven – a University of Wisconsin Law graduate – merged his independent practice with McCarty Law in 1972, bringing with him a background in real estate law, elder law and estate planning.
“Those are the three guys we consider to be our founders,” Managing Partner Scott Barr said. “They set the course for us – establishing the basic structure of our firm that still exists today.”
Fast forward to 2024, and the Appleton-based firm has grown from its humble beginnings of three to 18 attorneys – three of which just started this summer.
This year, McCarty Law celebrates its 75th anniversary in business – a milestone that Barr said underscores the firm’s longstanding commitment to providing “exceptional legal services built on a foundation of trust, integrity and community service.”
“We see this anniversary celebration as an opportunity to show our gratitude to the attorneys and clients who have made McCarty what it is today, as well as the staff members who have supported us along the way,” he said.
Three main areas of focus
McCarty Law, Barr said, focuses on three main groups that work in tandem with each other.
“We’ve got a litigation section – (which is the area founder Irv focused on) – that focuses on business and commercial litigation, but also does personal injury and general litigation and that come up,” he said.
McCarty’s business section, Barr said, represents companies from around the state – “that was the section Neil focused on” – that focuses on transactional business practices.
“We form companies,” he said. “We help people manage the ownership of their companies. We buy and sell companies. We do general contract review and drafting.”
The third area of focus, Reg Wydeven, estate planning and elder law attorney, said is characterized as McCarty’s general practice section – which founder Dennis focused on.
“It is, I would say, more consumer-focused,” Wydeven said. “It’s mostly estate planning and elder law – which is helping families plan for long-term care stays and those end phases of life – as well as probate and trust administration, real estate. So, more of the personal side of things.”
Generations of expertise
The legacy of the firm’s founding partners continues to be carried forward through McCarty’s current attorneys, including Gregg Curry and Michael Curry, the son and grandson of Irv, respectively; and Reg Wydeven and Katrina Hochholzer, the son and granddaughter of Dennis, respectively.
“Having multiple generations be involved with McCarty Law has been a real benefit for us,” Wydeven said. “I think that it allows us to better serve those companies, because we have such a rich history with them that when something comes up, we’ve seen this before – ‘yes, back in 1978 we dealt with this’ – that history is something that is difficult to replace.”
Following in his father’s footsteps, Wydeven said, also provided him access to a plethora of knowledge – even after he retired.
“When my dad retired and clients were stuck with the kid – at least they knew it was his kid,” he said. “They knew that if I ran into a logjam or needed help, that he was still there, and I could lean on him even though he was no longer in the building, so that made that transition a little bit easier.”
Wydeven said much has changed in the area of elder law since he retired in 2003 – “so I wouldn’t necessarily go to him with a lot of how-does-this-law-apply situations.”
“But I would frequently consult with him on practical client situations and family dynamics,” he said. “Being in practice for more than 40 years, he’d seen it all. So, it wasn’t a legal answer I would look to him for, but he would give me a practical answer you couldn’t find in text, you couldn’t find it online. That experience is invaluable.”
When Wydeven worked side-by-side with his family, he said he “leaned on him all the time when he was here in the building” for his expertise.
“I wore out a path in the carpeting to his office,” he said.
Even when he retired, Wydeven said he would look to him for guidance.
“That continuity really helped us serve our clients better,” he said. “Having that knowledge base to tap into at any point in time – I can talk to him about business on Thanksgiving – is irreplaceable.”
With Hochholzer joining the firm earlier this year, Wydeven said it’s on him to share that same expertise with her.
“It’s a huge privilege and responsibility to pass that institutional knowledge on to her,” he said. “She’s so much smarter than I am – she doesn’t need as much help as I did. But that’s the goal. We’re starting to transition some of the clients I work with over to her, and that’s gone very well. They’ve been very receptive and it’s a really exciting time.”
As the grandson of founding partner Irv, Mike Curry said the continuity of the firm’s multiple generations supports a depth of understanding.
“What we do requires knowing a lot about a matter, but I think we do it best because we know a lot about the companies and the people that we’re working with,” he said.
And Barr said that goes beyond teaching the next generation how to write a contract or how to form a corporation or how to litigate a case.
“Our efforts in the past and in the future are to replicate ourselves,” he said. “I’ve often been told that the most important job we have is to replace ourselves with someone better than ourselves. So, we’re constantly looking for the best people and then investing heavily in them as we train them to do this work.”
Not only does McCarty Law have multi-generational attorneys, but the firm also works with multi-generational companies.
“It’s a really neat aspect of our firm that not only do we have multi-generational attorneys here, but those attorneys have also worked with multi-generations within clients,” Wydeven said. “As businesses that we’ve worked with have been handed down from one generation to the next, we have been fortunate enough to continue to work with those clients.”
75-year milestone
Curry said many of the reasons McCarty is still here today stem from the foundations the founding partners set 75 years ago.
“It is important to make sure we’re grounding ourselves in the successes that we have had,” he said. “In some ways, the best way forward is to ensure that we are aligning ourselves with what’s worked well and with what our strengths are – ensuring that the values that have brought us to this point serve as a guide forward for the next 25, 50, 75 years.”
Wydeven said to do that, McCarty Law needs to balance staying true to its roots while continuing to embrace change.
“My understanding is we were one of the first firms in the Valley that had personal computers on everyone’s desk in the very early 1990s,” he said. “We were one of the first people to get a fax machine. Well before 2020, we all had Microsoft Teams on our laptops and computers, so when COVID-19 hit, and we all had to go home, we could still patch in.
Grasping technology, looking to the future and always making sure “we are providing the latest and greatest legal service to our clients while staying true to our roots,” Wydeven said is something he thinks McCarty Law has been able to balance well for a long time.
“And I hope we will continue to serve us well going forward,” he said.
McCarty Law plans to celebrate its 75th anniversary with an open house Oct. 30 with firm clients and community partners.
Curry said the celebration provides McCarty Law an opportunity to “not lose sight of the forest for the trees.”
“We spend a lot of time as driven folks trying to find ways we can improve, change things and be better,” she said. “Sometimes, when you’re spending your time and your effort that way, you lose sight of events and occasions that ought to be celebrated. It’s important to celebrate successes – both individually as a business and as a group of people working together.”
Though not directly connected to the firm’s anniversary, Barr said a founder’s wall is currently being constructed in the office’s lobby.
“At a meeting not too long ago, we were talking about something one of our former partners, John Peters, had said or done,” he said, “and one of our newer attorneys said, ‘who is John Peters?’ That really took us aback.”
Barr said to have a person in the building who wasn’t aware of some of McCarty’s history “was a little shocking.”
“So, we’ve been working on creating a founders wall, which kind of captures the people in the history, kind of a blend,” he said. “There will be a lot of focus on the folks we think of as our founder – Neil, Irv and Dennis – but also on all those other people who have been with the firm for 30, 35 or 40 years doing all that work and earning the trust of our clients.”
Barr said the founder’s wall will serve as a point of reference “so the people in our office remember who was here” before them.
“We can have a great foundation and all sorts of attitudes that will help us in the future, but our success depends on remembering all of that,” he said. “If these guys were wonderful people in the past, it doesn’t do us any good if we don’t remember how to be wonderful people in the future – practicing what they taught us.”
