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Following in the Family Footsteps

Sharing a Dream:The Pittses

Christina wanted to pursue a law career when she graduated from high school at age 16, but her sister was already in college, and her family could afford tuition for only one at a time. So she went to Milwaukee to wait her turn and work in her sister's business. She met and married Clifford Pitts instead.

Trinette traces her own interest in the law to hours she spent after school watching her mother at work in the Milwaukee County circuit court as a deputy clerk. "What I didn't know was that she had always aspired to be a lawyer, too," Trinette says.

They received their undergraduate degrees on the same day in the spring of 1979, Trinette in a morning ceremony at Marquette University, and Christina that afternoon from U.W.-Milwaukee. Trinette headed for U.W. Law School that fall, and her mother followed a year later. For two years they roomed together and shared the limelight. Christina acknowledges that Trinette was more comfortable with the attention surrounding their unique status than she was.

"I remember once being up studying at 3 a.m., wondering, 'What am I doing? I left a good job for this?'" Christina recalls. "But then I realized there was no quitting even if I wanted to. I thought, 'If I flunk out of here, everyone will know.'"

They share a close relationship - Trinette's only concern about their shared practice is that their offices at opposite ends of the suite are too far apart - and complementary personalities. Christina remembers an advisor telling them as they prepared for their moot court competition in law school, "You'll make a great team. Trinette goes for the jugular, and you come behind and soothe the ruffled feathers."

Trinette spent a couple years working for another Milwaukee law firm before she opened the family practice in 1984. Christina, who had returned to Milwaukee County first as an assistant corporate counsel processing paternity cases and later as an assistant district attorney, worked after hours with her daughter and joined Pitts & Pitts, which bills itself as "the women who care about you," full time in 1986.

Their practice is truly a family business, with son/brother Robert working as the office manager. Even husband/father Clifford Pitts Sr., now a full-time pastor, has caught the law bug, sprinkling his sermons with legal terms.

"He'll come to us and say, 'Tell me about codicils,'" Trinette says. "Many people in his congregation know we're lawyers, and they just love it."

Talking Law: The Tierneys

The first Joe Tierney to practice law came from Menominee, Mich., to study at Marquette University. He graduated in 1913 and went on to become the first assistant DA in the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office. "He also trained a lot of lawyers," says his son Joseph Tierney Jr., a partner with Cook & Franke, who met many colleagues over the years who spoke fondly of his father's tutelage.

Joe Jr. joined the FBI straight out of law school in 1941 and worked with an espionage group in New York during World War II. After the war he worked in the Waukegan FBI office before he returned to civilian life as a CPA with Arthur Anderson. By the time he returned to Milwaukee to practice law, his son, Joseph III, had already launched his own practice.

Joe III, a partner with Meissner Tierney Fischer & Nichols, recalls no expectations that he take up the law, but adds, "I can't imagine doing anything else that would be as interesting. I created my own expectations, and I tried to do the same for my own sons."

Martin notes that "a lot of my friends in grade school and high school expected me to become a lawyer, but I never felt any pressure from the family. In fact, my parents did a wonderful job of getting behind me when I considered studying quantum mechanics."

Martin's brother, Joe IV, has been redirecting phone calls and email messages intended for his father and grandfather since he began practicing in Milwaukee. "It's always a treat picking up the phone and hearing, 'Joe, I haven't talked to you in 20 years,'" he says. "That would have made me about six."

But Joe IV, an associate with Domnitz, Mawicke, Goisman & Rosenberg, wouldn't trade places with a Tom or Sam.

"A lot of people view having the same name and pursuing the same career as a burden, but I've never felt that way," he contends. "Because people know my father and grandfather and like them, that opens doors for me. I don't mean economically, but just in getting to know people. I feel like I have a sense of history."

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