Kutak Rock LLP, a national law firm with a Spokane presence, is expecting continued growth following last year's strong revenue at local and national levels, says Adam Baird, managing partner of the Spokane office.

The firm is perhaps known best nationally for its work in public finance, municipal bonds, and corporate real estate tax credits.

In addition, a third of the practice in Spokane involves general commercial litigation, Baird says.

He declines to name specific clients of the firm, but says the Spokane office represents many government agencies, universities, school districts, commercial developers, real estate organizations, and corporate entities in Spokane County.

“We have lawyers who are focused on local stuff, but also lawyers who work on a national scale,” he adds. “As part of my practice, I work with housing finance authorities throughout the country as a tax lawyer, from Alaska to Florida, from Maine to California.”

The office here opened in 2014, when Spokane bond attorneys Roy Koegen and Mary Edwards joined Kutak Rock. Neither is still with the firm.

Baird, who earned his law degree at the Gonzaga University School of Law, joined Kutak Rock's Spokane office about nine years ago, returning to Spokane after working at a law firm in Salt Lake City.

“I never really wanted to leave Spokane,” he says. “My family wanted to stay here, but when I graduated, the opportunity just didn’t present itself.”

He’s been the managing partner in Spokane for about 2 1/2 years.

Today, the Spokane office has 12 attorneys and a total staff of 17 people. The office occupies the top two floors of the eight-story Cutter Tower, at 510 W. Riverside, in downtown Spokane.

Eight of the attorneys here are partners, including recently elected partners Christopher Varallo and Austin Graves.

Varallo, former partner at Boise-based Hawley Troxell Ennis & Hawley LLP, joined Kutak Rock about a year ago, after Hawley Troxell closed its Spokane office. Varallo is focusing on banking, general business, real estate and intellectual property law.

“He has been able to integrate seamlessly into the Kutak Rock network,” Baird says. “In December, he was voted into the partnership.”

Graves, who focuses on the areas of real estate, corporate, and lending law and also was voted a partner in December, rose up through the associate ranks, Baird adds.

Four of the attorneys in the Spokane office are women, and three of them are partners, exceeding the 2023 national rate of 28% of law firm partnership roles held by women, according to the National Association of Law Placement.

Baird says the Kutak Rock model provides direction and oversight from a national executive committee, while lawyers are free to help satisfy client objectives in ways they deem appropriate.

The Spokane office, as well as the firm nationwide, had a record year in terms of revenue in 2024, due in part to adding lawyers in key practice areas, Baird says.

He anticipates revenue growth will continue.

“I’m very excited about the future, as well as to continue to look for more opportunities,” he says.

He hopes to see growth in the affordable housing space and in the demand for single-family mortgage revenue bonds, a space in which Kutak Rock is one of the largest providers of legal services throughout the U.S., he says.

“Just as a result of the economic environment, those kinds of transactions have become more frequent,” he says.

However, the current political environment is casting a shadow of uncertainty, he adds.

Baird says Kutak Rock is monitoring tax legislation and working with its housing authority clients and other public-sector and private-sector clients to ensure that the benefits of tax-exempt bonds are preserved.

“We’ve engaged a lobbyist firm in Washington, D.C., to assist with these efforts,” he says.

He explains that tax-exempt bonds are issued by housing authorities to finance mortgages for first-time homebuyers at below-market rates.

“The differential between a rate in the open market and a loan that the first-time homebuyer is able to get is pretty significant,” he says.

Baird says he also expects to see strong growth in other practice areas of employment law matters and commercial litigation.

“They are at capacity and (lawyers are) anxiously looking for ways to deliberately grow their practices,” he says.

Other growing practice areas include health care transactional work, alternative energy development, water rights, and carbon capture projects, he adds.

Kutak Rock is on the lookout to add lawyers in the Spokane office, he says.

“I think it’s a wonderful place for any lawyer who’s looking for a platform that provides them with the resources they need to grow their practice,” he says.

Baird says all of the attorneys in the Spokane office have connections to the community.

“We’ve gone to school here, or we’ve lived here and worked here for a long time, and we’re all deeply involved in the success of our community,” he says.

Such connections enable Kutak Rock attorneys here to identify needs of local clients, while leveraging the resources of a national law firm, "while not charging what one would describe as the typical rates of a national law firm,” he says.

Kutak Rock attorneys and staff frequently volunteer time and talents to community nonprofits, including Second Harvest Inland Northwest, Women Helping Women Fund, Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery, and Communities in Schools of Spokane County, he adds.

“I’m very proud of all the lawyers that I work with,” Baird says. “They are independently actively engaged in various philanthropic efforts. We collectively believe that by giving of our time and ourselves, we not only make our community better, but we make our office better.”

The 60-year-old Nebraska-based firm has 574 lawyers and a total staff of 1,016 in 19 offices nationwide.

“We’re not the smallest office, but we’re not quite midsized,” Baird says of the Spokane office. “We have some offices with 100 lawyers, and we have some that have five.”

He says the Spokane office is part of Kutak Rock’s Scottsdale-Spokane region, which has about 50 lawyers.

“Even though we’re broken up in regions … the firm doesn’t want regions to become insulated,” he says. “The firm doesn’t want this office to become an insulated office because we thrive when we’re all working together. The benefit of being part of a broader network is being able to tap into the additional resources.”