Minnesota Lawyer

Peter Williams took an unconventional approach to following in his father’s footsteps.

Brian Flakne, general counsel at Lupe Development, didn’t see himself entering real estate law.

Gary Koch had already worked with Christensen Farms for many years before becoming their in-house counsel, but he made the transition under less-than-ideal cir-cumstances.

“I’ve always liked helping people,” Richard Ruohonen says. He accomplished that in a big way throughout 2022.

Lewis A. Remele Jr. is an attorney’s attorney — literally. While his decades-long career has touched many areas of the law, helping other lawyers has been a recur-ring theme.

“One of the hardest things I’ve encountered as a lawyer is litigating against pro se litigants,” Tiffany Sanders says. “You never know what they’re going to do be-cause they’re not trained in the law.”

A contract is a contract, even under extraordinary circumstances. That’s the argument Mark Johnson and Aaron Knoll put forward in Reach Companies LLC v. Newsert LLC, a consumer products company.

Can a signed waiver protect a company from the effects of its blatant negligence? Attorneys Patrick Michenfelder and Mahesha Subbaraman be-lieved the moral and legal answer to that question was “no”—but it took them some time to convince the Minnesota courts.