Minnesota Lawyer

A legal administrative assistant at McGrann Shea Carnival Straughn & Lamb in Minneapolis, Puchtel has brought years of title company and real estate legal work to her job.

If you ask his supervisor, Rick Priebe has saved the Minneapolis law firm Bowman & Brooke from certain doom, but for Priebe, it’s all in a day’s work.

The Target Corp. will devote a billboard to Deb Pennington if she ever retires. The tag line could be, “She answers questions.”

If there were a Good Witch of the Midwest, it would be Jane Panzer. This is a woman who has time to celebrate everyone’s victories — in fact, to make every day a victory. Panzer finds joy wherever she goes.

Theresa Murray Hughes almost hates to admit it, because it sounds so corny: She went into the law because she wanted to help people. Thousands of people in Minnesota think she made the right choice.

Delivering excellence, on time and on budget, is what Stephanie Moran is all about — if you ask her colleagues, that is. She will only say that she’s pretty good at her job.

When Roberta Mathisen picks up the phone, she has you at “hello.” Her colleagues said that purely by example she makes it impossible to be cranky or unhappy.

Susan Marsh has a calm about her that must be one of the reasons she is such a good chief operating officer at Hellmuth & Johnson. It is her job to keep the nonlegal aspects of the firm running smoothly, and she seems to manage that without blinking.

Liz Kuntz is not your typical Unsung Legal Hero. She shares all the basics, of course — she excels at her job, she makes it look easy, and she is tireless and works behind the scenes to make everyone out front look good. Kuntz does all this and returns to her office to do the same for another client the next day.

A paralegal for 30 years, her focus now is on franchise and trademark. She has her own clients and works independently, but she never forgets she is a member of a team.