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Father, son trade views on being a lawyer

MICHAEL WITTENBERG
STEVEN WHITTENBERG
Law Bulletin columnists

Published: December 10, 2018

Working with family can be fraught; people constantly tell us they could never do it. But there’s a long tradition of family law firms and, in particular, of fathers bringing their sons (and now daughters) into their practices.

We can certainly understand why some people want to keep business and family in very separate parts of their lives, while others want to stay close to their loved ones in everything they do. Over the course of our careers as lawyers, we’ve done both.

Michael Wittenberg: You could say that Steve followed in my footsteps to the University of Illinois for college and Chicago-Kent for law school, but I think he always saw himself as being on a different path. As a parent, you’re torn because you want your children to pursue their dreams, but, of course, there’s always a part of you that wants to keep them close. After law school, Steve launched his career about as far from home as he could get, working in Hollywood as a talent agent.

Steven Wittenberg: As a kid, and as a young man, I thought about all these things I wanted to do that would be bigger and better than what my father did. That’s probably typical. I saw him as a great lawyer, but I looked at how he had kept his practice relatively small and close to home, and that seemed limiting. To me, at that time, the measure of my ambition was in absolutes: How far, how much, how big.

Michael Wittenberg: Having practiced family law for much of my career, I have a profound respect for the value of relationships. But that was something I had to come to on my own. Everyone has to decide what’s most important to them; it’s not something you can dictate to someone else, even if you are older and wiser.

Steven Wittenberg: Eventually I did find myself missing the more down-to-earth quality of life in the Midwest. I couldn’t see myself having a family in Los Angeles. I came back to Chicago and joined my father’s practice. I didn’t necessarily consider it a permanent move, but it was certainly a great opportunity. And I quickly discovered a passion for both the business and personal aspects of the work, helping clients protect their financial interests while moving forward in their private lives.

Michael Wittenberg: With his background in accounting and finance, Steve offers his clients a unique insight into the financial aspects of divorce, especially in complex cases where you have business valuations to deal with or there are potentially hidden funds to trace. At a certain point, I realized that I wasn’t teaching him the business any more. The relationship became more reciprocal and synergistic.

Steven Wittenberg: When the opportunity came up in 2016 to join this new firm, with Dean Dussias and, later, Michael Koenigsberger, I was thrilled about the chance to be part of something new. Dean and Mike are contemporaries of mine — a generation younger than the heads of most of the established firms in town — so the idea of that, of being in the vanguard for a new class of firms, was tremendously appealing.

Michael Wittenberg: I wasn’t pushing the idea that I should join the new firm as well. I could see the talent involved and who they were going to recruit, and I knew it was going to be successful. I also knew that it was very much about building something for the next generation, for younger attorneys and younger clients.

Steven Wittenberg: Bringing my father on board as senior counsel felt perfectly natural. My partners were thrilled to have him. He’s got tremendous experience, of course. In 50 years of practice, there’s not much he hasn’t seen. But he’s also someone who makes it a point to stay current, so, if he’s thinking about a case or a precedent from years ago, it’s because it’s relevant to what we’re doing now and there’s something for us to learn from it.

Michael Wittenberg: The name “Wittenberg” is on the door, but I know it’s Steve’s name, not mine. And I couldn’t be prouder of that.

Michael “Mickey” Wittenberg and his son, Steven Wittenberg, practice together at Dussias Wittenberg Koenigsberger LLP, with downtown offices and in Oak Brook, Deerfield and Tinley Park.


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