Four years ago, attorney P.J. Mahaffey called up Robert Seer from his student days at Grinnell College to pose an interesting idea — would his college best friend, a Chicago attorney with 7 years of experience, be interested in moving to Grinnell to practice law alongside him?
“At the time, I was like ‘thanks, but no thanks,’” Seer laughs. Despite being great college friends and singing in an acapella group together, Seer was not ready to move to Grinnell quite yet. But over the years, the idea of Grinnell became more and more attractive to him — small community, great homes, and his old college town. “I also began to think, how many chances do people have to practice law with one of their best friends?”
So, this past summer, Seer moved back to Grinnell to join Mahaffey at his firm, Mahaffey Law Office, formerly Schild Law Office. Mahaffey Law Office operates differently than your typical law firm in bigger cities. Instead of the attorneys specializing in one area, they can take on a wide variety of services — civil litigation for action disputes, contract law, estate planning, and probate law, as well as juvenile cases and cases involving Grinnell College international students. However, Mahaffey does *not* do taxes. “When I was in law school, I told my father I wouldn’t do taxes, and my father respected it,” laughs Mahaffey.
Funnily enough, the founder of Schild Law Office, Don Schild, started out as a political rival against Mahaffey’s father, attorney Michael Mahaffey. But as they began working as competitors in the legal market, they learned to work well together and referred cases to one another. “Relationships are everything,” says Mahaffey. “And they developed a relationship with the community, too. If anyone has a question about real estate, they just call Don. It’s cool to see how we’ve become a community resource.”
After having learned tricks from the trade from his father’s 50 years of experience at his Montezuma and Grinnell offices, P.J. Mahaffey officially took the reins in summer of 2023. While Schild regularly comes into the office to assist with abstracts and other matters, Mahaffey has been in charge of melding Schild’s practice with his own.
“So far, it has been a wonderful partnership, and Don is a fantastic mentor,” says Mahaffey. Plus, Mahaffey and his family are excited to be operating from downtown Grinnell. In a way, Mahaffey’s father often jokes that the Montezuma office paved the way to having a presence right at Grinnell’s fingertips, which is a challenge across rural Iowa at the moment.
“There is a real crisis in the number of attorneys we have in Iowa, specifically in rural communities,” explains Mahaffey. “I went back to my law school alma mater, Drake University, to talk about how to get those people here.” He stresses the importance of owning a local firm — “we are more effective and more efficient. And my team here is all local from Poweshiek County, too, not just me.”
Currently, Mahaffey and Seer split their time between the Grinnell and Montezuma offices while Seer waits to have his license from Illinois transferred to Iowa. If you are in the market for legal services, give them a call at 641-236-6506 or visit their website, https://www.mahaffeylaw.net/. If they’re not able to help, they would be happy to refer you to someone who can!
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