Editorial
Front Page - Friday, March 19, 2010
Miller & Martin attorney enjoying life in Chattanooga
David Laprad
Matthew Bell is an attorney with Miller & Martin in Chattanooga. His practice primarily involves corporate transactional work.
- David Laprad
Matthew Bell, an attorney with Miller & Martin in Chattanooga, has just two stories to tell, and although time and space separate them, they fit together like two pieces of a puzzle to describe why he enjoys working for the firm.
“At Wake Forest, the law school shared a building with the business school,” he says. “On my first day of class, the dean told us that if we wanted to make a lot of money, we were on the wrong side of the building.”
While that could be distressing for a new student of the law to hear, it didn’t phase Bell. Rather, after seeing the kind of work the attorneys did for a business Bell and an older brother had formed and operated for three years, he knew he was on the right track.
“Both of my parents were teachers, so I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher,” he says. “But having an undergraduate degree in English, I enjoyed reading, writing and analyzing materials, so I thought being a lawyer it would fit with what I believed were my strengths.”
As an experienced businessman, Bell also knew he wanted to do corporate transactional work, but he wasn’t sure that’s what he’d end up doing, since there are no guarantees a lawyer will find work in his preferred area. Then, while Bell was clerking at Miller & Martin, one of the lawyers at the firm told him the people with whom he practiced were more important than the kind of law he practiced.
“I’ve found that to be true,” he says. “I’ve had the benefit of practicing the kind of law I want to practice, but the reason I chose this firm was because of the people here. They exceed my hopes and expectations every day.”
Bell says Miller & Martin also has great clients, which “makes a huge difference.”
As Bell explains the three kinds of work he generally does at Miller & Martin, his voice takes on a more clinical tone, perhaps because he’s shifting from the things that steered him toward law to the day-to-day realities of practicing it. “I work on mergers and acquisitions, which usually involve small to mid-market manufacturing companies looking to make an acquisition or divest part of their operations,” he says. “I also work with small business start-ups, helping to get them formed and capitalized.
“The third thing I do is help those businesses with their ongoing operations, specifically with respect to their purchase and supply agreements, since a lot of the clients with which I work make or sell a good or service, and often want to form long-term relationships with their customers.”
While that might not sound as dramatic as Clarence Darrow defending John Scopes in the Monkey Trial, the work Bell does is important to his clients, in both good and bad economic times.
“Our goal (in the corporate division of) Miller & Martin has always been to add value to our client’s business,” he says. “We didn’t have to turn that on when the economy started to go downhill; it’s what we do. So we’re positioned to help our clients with whatever struggles they’re facing today.”
Bell says he finds the work he does professionally satisfying.
“I enjoy the corroboration I’m able to have with opposing counsel on a transaction or while negotiating a contract,” he says. “And even though I have a background in small business, I learn new things about my clients and different kinds of transactions every day. No two are the same. That makes my work both challenging and interesting.”
Bell, a native of New England, has also found living and working in Chattanooga to be personally gratifying. He grew up in Vermont, attended undergraduate school and met the woman who would become his wife at Wheaton, then got married and started a third-party medical billing business with his brother.
“At that point, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I took a stab at running a business,” he says. “In many states, school districts provide health services, such as speech therapy, to children of families on Medicaid. Those schools can be reimbursed for providing some of those services. We learned about it through our father, who was a school superintendent in New Hampshire.”
Bell and his brother ran their business for three years and then sold it. At that point, he went to law school and his brother went to business school.
After law school, Bell accepted an offer to work in the corporate division at Miller & Martin. His reasons for moving to Chattanooga extended beyond gainful employment, however, as his wife grew up on Signal Mountain and still had family there. The Bells and their two sons – Luke, 4, and James, 1 – now live on Signal Mountain as well. Although Bell misses deep snow and winter sports, he says he likes life in Southeast Tennessee.
“It reminds me of New England,” he says. “We have a lot of mountains around here, and I grew up in the mountains. I also grew up in a small town similar to this one. I’m glad this is where I’m raising my family.”
While Bell’s work at Miller & Martin keeps him busy, he does make time for his wife and kids. He also enjoys running, sits on the board of a local Boy Scouts council and is a deacon at the First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga.
Bell has made a good life for himself and his family in Chattanooga. Moreover, he’s so content at work, he’s never tempted to call his brother, who lives in Washington D.C., to suggest they go into business together again. He does, however, appear to be a little concerned about his lack of stories.
He doesn’t need to be. Bell is part of the good legal stock of which the Chattanooga Bar is made, and that’s what Miller & Martin, his clients, his family and the city need from him right now. The stories will come over time.
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