Phillip G. Greenfield

In football there are only two players who touch the ball every play: the quarterback and the center who snaps the ball.  It would not surprise many of his legal colleagues to know that Rouse Hendricks German May shareholder Phillip Greenfield was a center: in the trenches, in the middle of the action, part of a team.  Greenfield was an Academic All-Conference player on the 1983 7-5 Missouri Tigers football squad.  He says the move to law was a natural one.
 
My undergrad was in accounting.  And that's a fine profession, but it just wasn't for me, he says.  I wanted more competition.  And becoming a lawyerbecoming a litigatorgave me some of that. In the trenches, in the middle of the action, part of a team.

Greenfield, like all RHGM attorneys, held a clerkship after law school.  He clerked for Federal District Judge Scott Wright.  Greenfield says RHGM values that clerkship experience.  We think it's important because in your formative years of being a lawyer, you know you're going to do a lot of grunt work: researching and writing, he says.  A clerkship provides a better quality experience for honing those skills.  When you're a young associate at a law firm, you don't necessarily grasp how the work that you're doing fits in the context of an entire lawsuit.  But when you see it on a clerk level, you have a much broader view of the case and the issues.  And you get to work hand in hand with the judge.  In the trenches, in the middle of the action, part of a team.

Greenfield spent two years with a large law firm in Kansas City before joining Rouse Hendricks German May 1993.

It was fantastic to find what was, back then, essentially a startup' firm that was doing the same kind of work I wanted to do with the same kind of quality clients and colleagues, Greenfield says.  He now focuses solely on complex business and commercial litigation.  I've never seen the concentration of great trial lawyers that we have here.  Don't get me wrong: there are a number of  very good lawyers at other firms, too.  But the breadth of expertise and the WAY we do our work here is amazing and, quite honestly, inspiring.  We all do it the right way.  We get right in there.  Get our hands dirty.  And work together better than anyplace I've ever seen.  in the trenches, in the middle of he action, part of a team.