2023 Unsung Legal Heroes: Carl Obermiller

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Stinson LLP

Carl Obermiller entered the collections and credit industry through a serendipitous route. Back in the late ’ 80s, while an undergrad at St. Cloud State University, he took a part time job in the credit department at Fingerhut Corp. After graduation, that led to full-time positions with with Norwest and Wells Fargo banks.

Obermiller was a bankruptcy manager for about a decade until the 2008 financial crisis led to a layoff from Wells Fargo. He then joined Service Corp. International, which provided outsourced collections and credit services to law firms. After working for Minneapolis-based Gray Plant Mooty he was recruited to join the former Leonard Street law firm in 2014, which eventually became Stinson through a merger.

In his role as credit and collections manager, Obermiller and the four-person team he leads are credited with collecting an impressive 15% of the firms’ annual revenue in the final month of the year, exceeding the firm’s annual budget by $11 million.

Obermiller enjoys the day-to-day variety of his position. He is often the firm’s first person to interact with clients who may be dissatisfied about being over-billed or over-charged. “Every interaction is different,” says Obermiller, who oversees a five-person team which handles credit for each of the Kansas City, Missouri-based firm’s 13 regional offices across the U.S.

He deals with a wide range of clients, from multinational corporations to individuals who may be using a lawyer for the first time. So he experiences a widely varying level of sophistication regarding the cost of legal services. It ranges from “‘I can’t believe how much these cost,’ to clients who are eager and willing to spend whatever is needed to achieve the outcome they are looking for.”

Perhaps the most significant change during Obermiller’s time in the legal field has been the advent of electronic billing, in a profession that has historically relied on mountains of paper documents. “Sometimes clients ask us to quit sending paper,” he noted. He and his team are happy to oblige.