Nine Lawyers from Keating Muething & Klekamp Named Leading Lawyer by Cincy Business Magazine

Nine lawyers from Keating Muething & Klekamp (KMK) were named Leading Lawyer by Cincy Business magazine: Steven C. Coffaro (Business), Richard L. Creighton, Jr. (Civil Litigation), Timothy A. Garry (Construction), Pamela Morgan Hodge (Insurance), Kevin E. Irwin (Bankruptcy), Gail T. King (Mergers & Acquisitions), Mary Ellen Malas (Family/Domestic Relations), Timothy B. Matthews (Banking) and Edward E. Steiner (Mergers & Acquisitions).

According to Cincy Business magazine, hundreds of members of Greater Cincinnati’s legal community nominated colleagues for this honor, specifying a particular strength and area of practice for each nominated attorney, and a jury of peers made the final selections.

Mr. Coffaro focuses his practice on commercial litigation matters. He represents both public and private companies and individuals in a wide variety of business disputes. He has actively represented clients in litigation matters pending in state or federal courts in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. In addition to his commercial litigation practice, Mr. Coffaro also devotes part of his practice to the representation of firm clients in the defense of personal injury matters.

Mr. Creighton is a trial attorney whose practice is concentrated on complex business, antitrust and tort litigation, including class actions. He has served as lead or co-lead class counsel in several class action cases, including antitrust price-fixing cases. In the business law arena, he has successfully defended clients in a variety of contract and/or fraud cases. In the area of intellectual property, Mr. Creighton has defended individual and corporate clients in trademark, copyright and patent cases. Mr. Creighton is recognized for his experience in counseling clients on matters involving defamation and invasion of privacy. A licensed instrument rated private pilot, he has also successfully represented numerous clients in aviation related matters, including aviation crash cases and administrative proceedings before the Federal Aviation Administration.

Mr. Garry focuses his practice on corporate law, including construction law and succession planning. He has been active in many aspects of the legal community including service as a member of the State of Ohio Public Defender Commission, as President of the Cincinnati Bar Association and as a board member of the Cincinnati Center for Resolution Disputes. Mr. Garry has also served on the Advisory Board of the Xavier Entrepreneurial Center, and on the Board of Trustees of several educational institutions.

Ms. Hodge represents companies in a variety of circumstances, including: insurance coverage litigation, bad faith litigation, managing insurance claims to obtain coverage without the necessity of filing suit, construction claims, tort claims, contract claims, and employment claims. She is an experienced litigator having tried, arbitrated and mediated many cases with extensive experience in insurance matters.

Mr. Irwin has represented creditors’ committees, court appointed legal representatives, and the trustees of mass tort settlement trusts in large mass tort bankruptcy proceedings. Mr. Irwin is lead counsel to the Celotex and UNR asbestos trusts, respectively one of the largest and oldest such asbestos settlement trusts operating today. He has represented creditor groups in many mass tort bankruptcy proceedings, including the Eagle Pitcher Industries, Wallace & Gale, Dow Corning, Babcock & Wilcox, and G-I Holdings Corp. cases. Mr. Irwin also represents secured and unsecured commercial creditors in insolvency related matters inside and outside bankruptcy proceedings. He regularly appears in bankruptcy courts throughout the nation.

Ms. King's practice is concentrated in the areas of general corporate, mergers and acquisitions, and finance. She has been the lead partner on many of the firm’s merger and acquisition engagements. She regularly represents clients in the insurance and financial services industries in major acquisitions and divestitures, such as Great American Life Insurance Company, American Financial Group, Inc., and Great American Financial Resources, Inc. Ms. King also handles finance transactions for major lending institutions. She is the first African-American female to be named a partner in a major law firm in Cincinnati.

Ms. Malas is the leader of the Family Law section of the Private Client Services Group. Her practice is concentrated in all areas of domestic relations, including divorce, dissolution, premarital agreements, juvenile law, grandparent rights, and collaborative law. She is a frequent lecturer in the area of family law and is one of the founding members, and current Steering Committee member, of the Collaborative Family Lawyers of Cincinnati. Ms. Malas represents clients in Hamilton, Butler, Warren, and Clermont counties.

Mr. Matthews heads the Commercial Finance and Reorganization Practice Group at KMK. A graduate of Harvard Law School, his career began with an emphasis in taxation which led him to complex transactional work having tax implications, such as tax-free reorganizations, mergers and acquisitions, and project financing transactions. His transactional expertise led to devoted much of his later career to transactions within the banking industry, including bank mergers and acquisitions, divestitures of ancillary operations as well as branch purchases and dispositions, and loan portfolio sales. He regularly represents banks, funds and financial institutions in connection with syndicated loan transactions, asset based lending, commercial lending, mezzanine lending and project financing. His work in the financing area is not limited to lenders, but he also represents companies with financing needs across a number of industries, and serves as general counsel to several companies.

Mr. Steiner practices in the firm’s Business Representation and Transactions Group. The focus of his practice is corporate, securities and financing law, where he has extensive experience in mergers, acquisitions and divestitures representing both public and closely-held corporations and other entities. He is part of the team at KMK that has overseen more than 300 acquisition and divestiture transactions in the past five years with an aggregate transaction value in the billions of dollars. He also regularly represents investment limited partnerships in venture capital and private equity investment transactions, as well as institutional investors in their acquisitions of interests in venture capital and private equity limited partnerships. He has significant experience in initial and follow-on public offerings of securities, and in representing issuers and investors in private placements of securities. He also regularly represents franchisors and franchisees.

KMK, a full-service Cincinnati law firm, was founded in 1954. We have approximately 115 lawyers and a support staff of more than 150 employees. For more than 50 years, we have contributed to the success of many businesses from Fortune 500 corporations and small start-up companies to non-profit organizations and government entities. Our mission is to provide high quality legal counsel to clients by meeting their identified needs and developing appropriate solutions. Our vision is to excel as a law firm by recruiting and retaining the highest quality attorneys and personnel in order to deliver outstanding legal services.