When you look at our firm’s history, it parallels the history of the legal profession in the state of Kentucky,” said Douglas Barr, managing director and chairman of the board for Stoll Keenon Ogden (SKO), a leading commercial law firm started in Lexington. “We’ve been deeply involved as a leader in many ways, and we intend to continue that.”
This year marks the 125th anniversary of SKO. The firm has grown and thrived by continually adapting to the flux of the business world and done so with an ever-changing roster of partners.
Douglas Barr
That capacity to adapt has been put to the test by the pandemic, a time during which the firm continued to serve its clients with strategic legal counsel in commercial litigation, transactional law, labor and employment law, utility and regulatory law and more than 40 practice areas in all.
While SKO currently employs 147 lawyers across its offices in Kentucky and Indiana, the firm started when a sole lawyer opened a practice in Lexington near the end of the 19th century.
Richard Stoll graduated from Kentucky State College (now the University of Kentucky) in 1895. As the story goes, it was Stoll who suggested blue for the college color scheme, and the shade of blue was determined by the necktie he was wearing that fateful day. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1897, Stoll returned to Lexington, joined the Kentucky Bar Association and opened his law practice in downtown Lexington.
One of Stoll’s first clients was First National and Trust Company of Lexington. In 1909, Lexington Utility Company, now Kentucky Utilities Company, became a client. “We have a really burgeoning utilities practice,” Barr said. Today, the firm’s roster includes Kentucky American Water and Louisville Gas & Electric and utilities outside of Kentucky.
In 1935, the firm was instrumental in the formation of Keeneland Association, which oversees a world-class Thoroughbred racetrack and auction house. SKO has been at the center of the development of equine law, and Barr said much of its international work comes from the equine industry. “Clients from England, South America, France and other countries involved in the equine business inevitably became involved with Kentucky,” he said.
In 1956, SKO represented IBM when it opened operations in Lexington. It currently represents Lexmark International. Current clients also include Brown-Forman Corporation of Louisville, the Kroger Company, The Breeders Cup, and Central Bank and Trust.
The firm’s Lexington location occupies four floors atop the downtown Central Bank building, with about 60 lawyers and a support staff of 100 or so paralegals, secretaries and assistants. SKO also has law offices in Louisville similar in size to that of Lexington, as well as in Indianapolis and Evansville, Indiana, and Frankfort.
Pandemic speeds workforce changes
SKO has seen a lot of changes and challenges over its 125-year history — including two global pandemics.
“It was almost exactly two years ago when we started hearing about COVID-19,” Barr said “In a span of about 10 days, we went virtual.
“The preference before the pandemic was always face to face, person to person,” Barr said. “But one of the things the pandemic has taught us is that there are things that can be done just as well remotely.”
He discovered that arguments before the Kentucky Court of Appeals work effectively through Zoom, for example, where only lawyers and judges are present, and that depositions and certain aspects of trials and hearings can also effectively be done remotely.
“It will become more a part of the regular practice that some things are done remotely for cost savings and for the convenience of witnesses,” Barr said.
However, “when you really need communication — when you need to read other people, read the jury, read the judge, read the people in the courtroom — being in person makes all the difference,” he said.
The pandemic also brought a wave of clients needing legal guidance in taking their businesses online. “It brought up lots of issues that we hadn’t seen much of that we now see a lot more of,” Barr said. “For example, states passing statutes that permit the signing of instruments remotely and the circum- stances under which you can do that.”
Responding to calls for social justice
The pandemic and recent national events also laid bare systemic racism and inequities that pervade social institutions, law enforcement and the justice system.
Every lawyer at SKO has an annual allotment of billable hours with which they can provide pro bono legal counsel and services to the community and the underserved. The firm doubled those hours from 50 to 100 for each lawyer during the pandemic.
Dana Howard
“Those hours can be used to serve diversity and equity work, including things like restorative justice projects, equal justice projects and even voter registration,” said Dana Howard, a partner in SKO and current chair of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee, which works with the Mansfield Rule Certification Program, developed by Diversity Lab.
According to Diversity Lab’s website, the Mansfield Rule advises firms “to consider at least 30 percent women, lawyers from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, lawyers with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ lawyers for top leadership roles, senior-level lateral hiring, promotions and into the equity partnership, and participation in client pitches.” Diversity Lab has reported that, in 2022, more than 160 large law firms in the United States and Canada had been certified with the Mansfield Rule, SKO being one of them. Since its 2017 inception, research shows that participating firms “have increased the racial and ethnic diversity of their management committees by 30 times the rate of non-Mansfield Rule firms.”
“I think the leadership of our firm, the way it looks, has changed,” Howard said. “There’s a much larger female lawyer presence in our management committees. Racial and ethnic diversity is certainly a large goal of ours, to increase that at all levels.”
Blending tradition with progress
While law firms, such as SKO, are currently negotiating how to manage a blend of in-person and remote work, firms in smaller markets are also finding increased competition from big-city firms that are hiring remote workers.
“It does make recruiting a little more difficult,” Barr said, “because we’re now instead of just competing for talent in our existing markets in Kentucky and Indiana, sometimes we’re competing for talent with firms in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.”
Still, experience shows there’s no substitute for in-person mentorship of the next generation of legal professionals.
“Early in a lawyer’s career, face-to-face interaction with other lawyers within the firm and lawyers outside the firm — with judges, with administrators — all of that is invaluable,” Barr said. “We’re trying to find that balance of being flexible to maximize someone’s ability to work remotely but at the same time making sure we have a social connection and cohesion in the firm.”
It’s another example of how SKO draws from its institutional history to put forth new best practices.
“There’s not any way that we could have remained in business in any form without constantly being aware of changes and adapting to them, so as to best serve our clients,” Barr said. “And that’s been it for 125 years and a lot more to come.”