Photo by Lisa Predko

A life ofcompetition

By Roy Strom

The twilight sky is split — half black,half light — at Boomers Stadium inSchaumburg, and it’s causing havoc for

the Traverse City Beach Bums left fielder.To the delight of the 5,985 in attendance on

this August Friday, the visitors’ outfielder hasjust lost two lazy fly balls somewhere amongthe fading sun, rose-red clouds and whitelights. As a result, the Boomers have whatwould be their first run of the game standingat third base.

Pat Salvi, the managing partner of the plain-tiff firm Salvi Schostok & Pritchard, looks onfrom his first-base-side owner’s box. As sum-mer grinds on in the independent Frontier

League, Salvi’s first-place Boomers — losing atthe moment — have a slim lead in the stand-ings over the second-place Beach Bums.

Salvi knows the standings like he knows hisplayers’ names, the business of minor leaguebaseball and what he and his players have rid-ing on the night’s game.

Then a wild pitch reaches the backstop.“Come on!” Salvi says, leaning forward and

grabbing the railing with both hands. As therunner leaves third and scores uncontested,Salvi stands to cheer.

Between lost fly balls, a wild pitch and abottom of the seventh inning that began withthree Boomer walks, everything seemed to go

right for Salvi’s team that night. They won 4-3.This is Salvi’s recreation.“My primary focus, every day, is running a

law firm and being a trial lawyer,” he said.“Some guys play golf. Some guys travel. Someguys hunt and fish. I own and operate threebaseball teams.”

Salvi — who owns the Boomers, GarySouthShore RailCats and New England’sNorth Shore Navigators — seems to take onlythree things more seriously than his role asCEO of Salvi Sports.

There is his job as a trial lawyer and man-aging partner of 14-attorney Salvi Schostok &Pritchard, the firm he started as a one-man

Whether it’s minor league baseball,Notre Dame footballor becoming an elite trial lawyer,Pat Salvi wants to win.

Salvi > cover story

show in Waukegan in 1982 that he says nowhas one goal: To become the No. 1 plaintifffirm in Chicago.

While Salvi admits that is a difficult taskconsidering the stiff competition in the city,his firm has won historic verdicts and nego-tiated settlements that, according to the JuryVerdict Reporter, include the highest LakeCounty verdict on record at $33 million in2009; the highest Jefferson County verdict at$11 million in 2002; and a 2012 verdict of $8.25million that broke a $4 million record in Illi-nois for an infant death.

A second is Notre Dame football. The NotreDame Law School alumnus sat in the standsfor 38 of the last 39 Fighting Irish game daysbefore this season as he watched his sons —Will and Christopher — don gold-colored

helmets and take the field, the last time in Miamiat the BCS National Championship Game.

A third is his family. He and his wife Lindyhave five sons, two of whom — his oldest, 31-year-old Patrick, and 26-year-old Brian — arelawyers at the firm. The family is also mourn-ing an unexpected loss. Michael Schostok —Salvi ’s first law partner, whom he described asa brother — died last year of a brain tumor.

Chicago Lawyer spent time with Salvi andthe lawyers of Salvi Schostok & Pritchard todiscuss where the 31-year-old firm stands afterwhat has been, in many ways, a remarkableand challenging past 18 months.

Great expectationsYou could easily mistake Salvi’s corner of-

fice on the 16th floor of the Block 37 officebuilding for a shrine to Notre Dame football.

A wall-length cabinet is lined with usedcleats and game balls. There are pictures ofSalvi ’s sons at games in Ireland, Soldier Field,Yankee Stadium, FedEx Field (home of theWashington Redskins) and, of course, NotreDame Stadium.

There is a piece of turf, but that’s just froma salesman who wants to install it at one ofSalvi ’s baseball fields.

What Salvi first pointed to is a portrait-sizecover of Sports Illustrated hanging on the ad-jacent wall. The cover shows No. 24, ChrisSalvi, running behind a Notre Dame kick re-turner at Michigan Stadium.

The photo is a proud moment, but the mem-ory of the game — Michigan won by scoring atouchdown with two seconds left — stillstings Salvi and his son, Brian, as they discuss ittwo years later.

“It was about as heartbreaking a way as youcould possibly lose,” said Brian, who graduatedfrom Notre Dame Law School last year.

“We won. We lost. We won. We lost,” hisdad responded.

Sitting at his desk, Salvi showed a highlightof Chris making the tackle on the openingkickoff at FedEx Field against Maryland in2011. (Notre Dame won, 45-21.)

“That would be all year,” Salvi said. “That ’swhat a joy it was to watch those games. … He(was) on kickoff and kickoff return. And sowhen everyone’s ready for the game, no mat-ter what, he would be right on the frontline.”

While this is the office of a “proud papa” —as partner David Pritchard called Salvi — it isalso where the managing partner guides hislaw firm as he attempts to accomplish what hesays has been his main goal since 2005.

“Both my sons joining me make me feel as ifI still have some of my best days ahead of me,not just behind me,” Salvi said. “And, as a lawfirm in Chicago, we’ve been here since 1999.But relative to our competition, that reallyisn’t that long. And so we still have a long waysto go to get to where we’d like to be. And thatis to be regarded as the best plaintiff’s personalinjury firm in Illinois.”

When asked what the firm needed to do to

reach his goal, Salvi began by saying he thinksthe legal talent is in place. Admitting his ownbias, he said he feels like he got “the first pickin the draft” by adding sons Brian and Patrick.And picking up Jeff Kroll, a 17-year attorney atClifford Law Offices before he started his ownfirm, was “like a big free-agent signing,” Salvisaid.

The firm’s name and marketing — the bulk ofwhich is handled by Chief Operating OfficerTJ Saye — means it “gets the cases” necessaryto rank with the biggest of names in Chicago.

What ’s left, he said, is the execution andconsistently large results.

“I think we have the cases and now we needto continue to get really extraordinary resultsconsistently in order to achieve the results ofPower Rogers and Smith, or Clifford’s office. I

see those as the firms that we’re kind of chas-ing,” Salvi said.

“It ’s friendly competition. And I think itwas Bob Clifford who always said — I don’tknow if it’s still true, but he always said —‘There’s plenty of business for all of us.’ I don’tknow if that’s as true as much as it used to be.Maybe it was when it was just a handful oflawyers.”

From Lake County to ChicagoThat handful of lawyers didn’t always in-

clude Salvi.Born the oldest of nine children to an attor-

ney father who worked as a general prac-titioner in Lake Zurich, Salvi always had aninterest in sports. He coached his youngerbrothers’ baseball teams and scratched his ownsports itch by playing goalie for travelinghockey teams in Northbrook.

He went to St. Mary’s University of Min-nesota with hopes to play goalie at the NCAAlevel, but he didn’t make the cut — the teamhad seven goalies vying for two spots. So hespent four years manning the net in a Winona

“I think we have the cases and now we need to continue toget really extraordinary results consistently in order to

achieve the results of Power Rogers and Smith, or Clifford’s office.I see those as the firms that we’re kind of chasing.”

cover story < Salvicity league that he said “really taught me tough-ness.” He also attended the school at the same timeas Chicago Blackhawks President John Mc-Donough, whom Salvi calls a personal friend.

“There would be some of the most brutalfights I would ever see,” Salvi said about theleague. “But in hockey, even in that level, solong as a goalie doesn’t insert himself into thefray, it’s kind of like an unwritten rule youdon’t go after the goalie.”

After graduating from Notre Dame LawSchool in 1978, Salvi went into his father’sgeneral law practice. He was drawn to thecourtroom and soon found the fastest way tospend time at trial was picking up cases fromthe Lake County public defender’s office.

He then handled a medical-malpractice casein Lake County. He remembers hiring aneconomist, which was at that point “unheardof” in Lake County, he said. Trying a medical-malpractice case wasn’t typical, either.

“A lot of lawyers at the time said you didn’twant to handle malpractice because you’ll an-tagonize the doctors who are your witnesses inpersonal-injury cases,” Salvi said.

They were wrong about that, he said — buthe didn’t mind, since his practice benefitedfrom a statewide explosion of medical-mal-practice claims in the 1980s. On Jan. 1, 1982,Salvi opened his own firm in Waukegan.

“I didn’t really have a mentor,” he said. “Ididn’t come from one of the big PI firms inChicago, so I had to just kind of learn on myown. And so I became very involved early on inthe Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. And Iwould attend every seminar I could. I wouldconstantly be asking questions of all these big-shot lawyers.”

Salvi served as ITLA president in 1993 andhe began practicing with Mike Schostok outof their Waukegan office. A string of successesled up to the firm’s 1999 opening of a Chicagooffice.

“I tried two cases back-to-back,” he said. “Iwas fortunate to get a $3 million verdict inWaukegan — and then I was sleeping in ahotel, working out of Joe Power’s office andwe got a $7 million verdict (in a Chicago case).And I tried the case with Mike Schostok at thetime. And he said, I remember, he would callme ‘chief.’ He said, ‘Chief, we gotta have ourown office in Chicago.’ ”

Shortly after that, Salvi & Schostok becameSalvi Schostok & Pritchard, with the addition

of David Pritchard, who at that point was a 22-year veteran defense lawyer.

“I liked him right away,” Pritchard said ofSalvi. “I like people who are really good atwhat they do but still laugh and have fun andsee the joy in life. And he was like that whenwe first met. … He has a great capacity to enjoythings and be fun, but he’s a damn seriouslawyer. I mean, he’s really intense when he’s ona case. He’s just completely focused in andgoing to town on it.”

In 2008, with his law firm established inChicago, Salvi bought the Gary SouthShoreRailCats. It was the first of what are now histhree minor league baseball teams.

His second team — the Schaumburg Boomers— came in 2011 after the Schaumburg Flyersfranchise stalled; its overdue rent payments ledto the Boomers’ lease at the Schaumburg sta-dium. The North Shore Navigators are a NewEngland wood-bat, summer league team forcollege players based in Lynn, Mass.

Sitting in his owner’s box at Boomers Sta-dium (the team is still looking for a namingrights agreement), Salvi said he had alwaysbeen a baseball fan and when the opportunityto buy the RailCats emerged, he figured it was“now or never.”

And, the White Sox fan joked, “I couldn’tafford the Cubs.”

For a man constantly watching the score-board at his law firm (One actually exists: It isa list of expected settlements and their pay-ment dates on a whiteboard in the COO’s of-fice), owning three minor league baseballteams may seem like a work overload. Salvisaid that isn’t the case.

“Minor league baseball is a great escape,” hesaid. “I work seven days a week — 10, 12, 14hours a day. But I enjoy it. I really enjoy thelegal side and the business of running a lawfirm. And on the sports side, I love the com-petition.”

To a large extent, he’s able to be a fan of theteams. In minor league baseball, the managersdo most of the player-personnel work. Histeams have general managers who attend roadgames and Salvi Sports — the entity that ownsthe teams — is staffed with a president andgeneral counsel to handle a large portion ofday-to-day matters.

He said he mostly gets involved in leagueissues, future planning (the Boomers will hostan all-star game within two years) and strat-

e g y.“The nice thing about baseball is that if you

lose, you play the next day,” Salvi said. “In alegal case, if you lose, you may not try a case foranother six months, a year or two years. Andyou’ve got to live with that bad result all thetime. In baseball, you can lose two in a row;they can be gut-wrenching losses. And in thenext week — in one week — you can be on topof the world because you won seven games ina row. It’s unbelievable.”

Remembering a ‘brother’ and partnerPritchard said he knew Salvi’s reputation

before he started the firm’s Chicago office. Hewas less familiar with Schostok, but remem-bered having the chance to see him on trial inCook County while he was negotiating to jointhe firm.

“I went and I watched him,” Pritchard saidof his late partner. “And he was so good. Triallawyers will never admit that someone’s betterthan they are. He’s better than I am at trial.”

Schostok, a father of three and husband ofIllinois Appellate Justice Mary SeminaraSchostok, died at age 51 in July 2012. He wasdiagnosed with glioblastoma brain cancer inApril 2011.

A former ITLA president, Schostok won atleast $142 million in verdicts and settlementsfor his clients from 1989 until last year. Someof his record-breaking cases included a $15.35million jury verdict in 2008 in DeKalb County,the high mark for that venue at the time. In2001, he won $13 million from a Cook Countyjury in a birth negligence case. The law firmsaid it was a then-national record for a brachialplexus injury.

Salvi, though, remembers Schostok as afriend first.

“He was a very loyal, true friend. Therewasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for you,” Salvisaid. “And we were a very good team in court,too. … A lot of times you try a case and you’reon pins and needles when somebody else isdoing something — opening statements ortaking a witness. And you’re thinking to your-self, ‘Oh I wish I’d be doing it,’ or ‘I wish Icould take over.’ I never felt that way withMike.”

Pritchard said he knew Schostok mostly as acolleague until the past year, when he beganmaking the three-mile trip to Schostok’s homemultiple times a week.

Salvi > cover story

“All three of us have really great families,and it’s probably the old joke that we marriedwell,” Pritchard said. “I love Michael’s kids andI love Pat’s kids too. But (Schostok) really be-came like a brother to me that last year. Andyou couldn’t get sad because you had to bekind of strong.”

Tara Devine, who began her career at thefirm in 2004, said she remembered Schostok assomeone “jurors would want to hang out withafter a trial.”

“I think that’s how he really stood out. Hewas someone who was likeable,” Devine said.“And there are no words that can describe hisimpact on this law firm and his presence,”Devine said. “And we miss him every day. Nota day goes by that any of us don’t think of himor his impact on the firm.”

Saye, the firm’s COO, also serves as pres-ident of the Michael Matters Foundation,which was started to raise funds to benefitglioblastoma cancer research. In May, thegroup took in $70,000 at its inaugural event.

“Before he passed away, he told Mary Schos-tok that if he had one wish, it would be thateveryone could have their life extended, evenif it’s by one week or a month, to get that extratime with their family,” Saye said. “And sothat ’s what our mission is. … Ultimately, it’s tofind a cure.”

Patrick Salvi II, a partner at his father’s firm,worked on one case with Schostok, which set-

tled just before trial.“The confidence he had intimidated me, to

an extent,” he said. “And then we worked onthat case together … and I was so glad we didthat before he got diagnosed with that hor-rible cancer that he had. Because even thoughhe always respected me, I felt that I had earnedhis respect through that process.”

The next generationGetting the opportunity to work more cases

with Schostok, the younger Salvi said, wouldhave made him a better lawyer.

While he lost a mentor, Salvi gained amentee this year — his brother, Brian, joinedthe firm after graduating from Notre DameLaw School.

While Patrick and Brian are good friends —

they traveled nearly 16,000 miles together at-tending every Notre Dame game last seasonand Brian will be Patrick’s best man at hisNovember wedding — Patrick said he looksforward to teaching his younger brother athing or two about the law.

“He understands I’ve been out six years.He’s been out zero, so he’s got to listen a littlebit,” Patrick said. “He’ll come to realize veryquickly how much work and preparation goesinto working up a case and trying a case. Andwhen we do ultimately get that opportunity totry a case together, I can’t wait for that.”

Patrick said he is going through his own

learning process as a young attorney — onethat can be difficult with your father’s nameon the door.

“As Pat Salvi’s son, I want to overcompen-sate for that. And what I mean by that is, Idon’t want anything handed to me. I want tomake sure that I make my own way; I make myown reputation,” Patrick said.

As far as settlements go, he appears to be offto a quick start. He won the aforementioned$33 million verdict in Lake County as the sec-ond chair with his father in 2009. And last year,he and David Pritchard reached a $29.1 millionsettlement in a birth-injury case that playedout in federal court because the doctors werefederal employees.

Pat Sr. said having two of his five sons chooseto join the firm is a proud accomplishment.

“There’s really kind of nothing like tryingcases in terms of the intensity, the emotion,the human drama (and) the chess moves,” SalviSr. said.

“And when you combine that with the re-lationship of one of your sons, and you ex-perience that together — and we’ve had thegood fortune of doing that now four times —that ’s fantastic. And it obviously helps whenyou win.”

The same goes for his baseball teams. AndNotre Dame.

rstrom@lbpc.com

“As Pat Salvi’s son, I want to overcompensate for that.And what I mean by that is, I don’t want anything handed to me.

I want to make sure that I make my own way; I make my own reputation.”

© 2013 Law Bulletin Publishing Company. Reprinted with permission from Law Bulletin Publishing Company.