Kansas City Business Journal - October 18, 1996 by Chris Anton Paus
College prof turned lawyer thrives on intellectual challenge in courtroom
When Greg Leyh decided to change careers, he did it in a big way, moving from college teacher to attorney. As a practicing attorney, he is still doing things in a big way, taking on the tobacco industry and a major life insurance company.
"He is a lawyer that enjoys intellectually difficult cases and matters. Things that are challenging intellectually seem to attract him. He has really taken a number of cases that are beyond the ordinary," said Kenneth B. McClain, a managing partner at Humphrey Farrington & McClain, the law firm where Leyh practices.
Intellectual challenge is what drew Leyh to law. He had a doctoral degree in political science from the University of Minnesota and was an associate professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Ill., where he taught public law and political theory. He also published books and papers on legal theory, constitutional law and politics.
"That's what got me thinking about law school," Leyh said.
Ah, the Rule of Threes
When his wife's job took them to Indianapolis he enrolled in law school at Indiana University-Bloomington. While there, he edited an anthology of essays on legal interpretation.
Leyh said at first he just wanted to teach law, then his wife Jan became pregnant with triplets, and the couple knew the family income needed a boost. So Leyh jumped into practice. He got his start as a law clerk with the United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit in Lansing, Mich. Midwesterners, the couple chose to move to Kansas City where they could be closer to her parents in Springfield, Mo.
After short stints with another law firm and as a sole practitioner, Leyh said Humphrey Farrington & McClain asked him to join the firm. He knew law firms can be rigid, stuffy places where an academic might not fit.
"It was an adjustment becoming a lawyer. I was doing whatever I wanted in academia," Leyh said. "I am very fortunate to be working where I am now."
McClain said his firm has few rules to stifle its attorneys.
"My basic premise is that you don't need to make up rules to regiment plaintiffs lawyers. We provide the structure by which a talented lawyer can do well," McClain said.
And McClain said Leyh, who has been with the firm since 1993, is doing well. He recently was made a shareholder in the firm.
Leyh has taken on Globe Life Insurance, representing agents in a class action lawsuit against their employer. The agents are suing for benefits they said they lost when the company no longer recognized them as employees but as independent contractors.
His biggest challenges could be against the tobacco industry. Working with McClain, Leyh filed a case in New York in August on behalf of Janet Sackman, the former Chesterfield poster girl who now has lung cancer.
He has a tobacco case in Kansas and a class action case in Missouri against the tobacco giant Brown and Williamson.
In this case, the judge has ruled that documents from a special projects division of a national tobacco industry council are not privileged information.
"I had a similar ruling in Kansas. I've been rather active in trying to get special project documents disclosed," Leyh said.
Attracted to underdog
These documents are key in the cases because they could disclose more proof that the industry concealed important information about the dangers of its products.
Leyh also is representing Willie Giles, the former acting superintendent of Kansas City public schools who faces charges of nepotism and sexual harassment. Leyh's wife doesn't think it's unusual that her husband is drawn to difficult cases.
"He's always been like that. He's always been for the underdog," Jan Leyh said. "The bigger the fight, the more he excels."
Life has changed for the Leyh family since Greg began practicing law. Life is more hectic. The triplets, two boys and a girl, are now five years old. Jan Leyh is in law school at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she is ranked ninth in her class.
"He certainly works an awful lot and his job requires that he travel a lot, but I think Greg more than makes up for it when he's home," Jan Leyh said.
McClain praises Leyh's work ethic.
"Lawyers here seem to work more hours than their counterparts, but I doubt many lawyers work more hours than Greg does, not because of rules, but because he is interested in taking cases to successful completion," McClain said. "He's pretty driven."
McClain calls Leyh an asset to the firm, which has grown in the past few years to 14 attorneys.
"The tobacco stuff is labor intensive," Leyh said.
Besides taking on the challenging cases, Leyh would like to see lawyers educated in a different way. He still is involved in academia, teaching occasional courses for the political science department at UMKC.
"I think legal education is so overly technical and specific and disconnected from humanity," Leyh said. "It's a real shame because law is such an interdisciplinary subject."
McClain said that with three small children, a wife in law school, heavy case load and outside activities, Leyh is doing fine.
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