Martin Pierce went to law school in his home town of Memphis. Out of law school, he came to a job in Chattanooga with the largest firm in the area at the time, Stophel, Caldwell and Heggie. Pierce practiced with them for about three years and then practiced with Chambliss Bahner for 18 years and Husch Blackwell for a few years. After a total of 24 years with big downtown firms, he went out on his own in 2005.
Jodi Harris-Schafer grew up in Chattanooga since about the sixth grade. She went to Lee University in Cleveland and went to law school in Jacksonville, Fla., at Florida Coastal School of Law. She worked in Cleveland at the Church of God international offices doing estate development for about three years before joining Pierce last September.
Together, these two attorneys from different ends of the spectrum make up the firm Pierce and Schafer, bringing clients the best of both worlds. Concentrating on estate planning, elder law and some tax areas primarily, Schafer also brings her experience with family law in guardian appointments.
Pierce struck out on his own because the trend in the firms he was with were about business, bottom line, and making a profit, he says.
“I like the interaction relationship of helping people. I wanted to get away from the business model with more freedom to help people and charge based on value instead of time,” Pierce says.
He says he thinks the way he helps clients ends up being less than it would cost at a big firm, and yet clients are still getting big firm type work done at a better value for their dollar. Once Pierce was out on his own and looking forward, he says he wanted to bring someone young in, to have continuity for their clients.
Pierce says it’s always easy to say what he enjoys about law because it’s simply helping people.
“I never wanted to be a litigator because that’s battling and warring and all of that, and I always wanted to do something that was helping people. I like working with families and businesses to help them achieve their goals. I like the estate planning and I like the business, both parts of it,” he says. “A lot of time they are interrelated because it might be a small family owned business, and you can help them achieve a number of goals on a number of fronts.”
Schafer says in their practice they get a lot of one-on-one time with their clients, and this helps her to feel good at the end of the day that she’s made them feel better, more comfortable, or more confident in what they are trying to accomplish.
One of the interesting trends in the areas that Pierce and Schafer cover is the growing nature of elder law. Baby boomers planning for their parents and themselves by qualifying for benefits is rising and will continue to do so, Schafer says. In the estate planning area, second and third marriages, prenuptial agreements, blended families and same sex families are growing, Pierce says.
“Basically the law follows the trends that are going on,” he says. “When I first started practicing law, prenuptial agreements were disfavored and almost illegal as public policy. Now they are very ingrained and used all the time. It’s actually a very good tool so that one side of the family doesn’t get completely locked out of getting anything.”
Schafer says their firm likes to do work in teams with a client’s CPA or financial planner. Working with other professionals to get bottom line results is the best result for the client, she says. Pierce agrees that this method gets things clients need done in the most efficient way in practice as well as cost.
Schafer’s father is the minister at The Crossing, and her whole family is very involved with the ministry there. Her younger brother is the youth and music pastor, her husband (an attorney in Cleveland) and she are the young adult ministers/facilitators, and they are also involved with the music program.
Both Schafer and Pierce enjoy going on mission trips, and Pierce says he has always been involved in a lot of community activities and ministries through the years as well as helping establish non-profit entities. Pierce says he thinks Schafer and he are a well-rounded group that fit in with the community and the people they work with.
“This is a very comfortable place to come to, and you don’t have to battle downtown parking. The atmosphere is very friendly, business-like but not too business-like,” he says. “I think there’s a real difference in the service and level of expertise they get to beyond what many of the small firms are. We are a small firm but we have that big firm type practice, the best of both worlds.”