Matt’s Story

I am the fourth generation lawyer in my family.

I remember walking home from my grammar school in the late 1960’s, I would have been ten or eleven years old. My school sat on the edge of the downtown, near where the Concord River empties into the Merrimack. I would walk down in front of the War Memorial Auditorium, across a barren parking lot with a burned out building on it.

From there I would cross the canal on a foot bridge, cut through another municipal lot and up to a new, gleaming glass three-story building next to the Lowell District Court.

On the third floor, was my father’s law offices, he practiced law there with my grandfather and his brother, my uncle.

Sometimes when I arrived I would walk in and he would be with a client. If he was wrapping up he would introduce me.  At other times I would walk in and see my uncle at the door of this father’s office, (JP he was called) talking about a case or a judge or a lawyer.

During the holidays, our expansive family would gather at my grandparents’ house and my grandfather would sit in the corner chair in his library and his sons would gather round, and talk – business, law, finance, politics, and sports. 

 There was talk of cases, wrongful death cases, murders, bad business deals, bad clients, land use matters, zoning, etc.

This is where I grew up — on the step stool in the corner listening to law and politics, and business deals. Long before even high school or college, unknown to me, I was a 4^th generation lawyer in training.

I have observed lawyers practicing their trade my entire life — the stress, strain, the fights and finger pointing, the investigation and research, tedious negotiations and the endless discussion about cases and pending trials.

And it continues today… I practice in space across the hall from where I visited as a child.  My grandfather’s corner office sits across the hall and was recently occupied by my partner as we have expanded our space in the past year.

I operate from my grandfather’s desk in my office.

It is the most natural thing in the world for me to represent a client. I learned to do this somewhere between walking, talking and dining at home with a father who took every call from a client  even during dinner time much to my mothers rage!

I was told by friends and neighbors growing up that lawyering was in my blood. It is because it is not an academic exercise or a legal exercise — its life.