Ney Climbs Ladder, Sets Roots in NWA

In the late 1980s, while working in Topeka, Kansas, as a terminal operations manager for ABF Freight System Inc., Marshall Ney began to think about a career change.

“I don’t know if you have ever been to Topeka, but it inspired me to find something else to do,” Ney said, in jest.

Now in the 25th year of a successful legal career, Ney jokes that the path to becoming an attorney was set in motion in some small part by actor Corbin Bernsen.

“This is going to sound totally silly, but at that time the hottest show on TV was ‘L.A. Law,’” Ney recalled, referencing the award-winning legal drama that aired on NBC, with Bernsen playing a leading role. “I thought, ‘That looks cool. I can do that.’ I am embarrassed to say that, but it’s true.”

Hollywood’s influence notwithstanding, Ney’s decision to shift gears as a young adult has proven to be a smart one. During two separate stints totaling more than two decades (1990 to 2014), Ney developed a strong presence in the legal community while working for Little Rock-based Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard, one of the largest firms in Arkansas.

His practice focused on commercial disputes, education law, employment claims and insurance coverage issues.

In the middle of his time at Mitchell Williams, where he became a partner, Ney also spent three years (2002 to 2005) as an in-house counsel for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a move that brought him to Northwest Arkansas.

And in mid-December, Ney left the local office of Mitchell Williams to join Friday, Eldredge & Clark, the state’s largest law firm, with headquarters in Little Rock and two strategic bureaus in Northwest Arkansas.

“I’ve always had a high level of respect for Marshall; he serves his clients well,” said Kevin Crass, head of the Friday firm’s class action and business litigation practice group. “He is a high-quality lawyer and I am glad he has joined us. I’m looking forward to working on the same team.”

During a recent interview at his Rogers office, Ney said the circumstances that led to his departure from Mitchell Williams were difficult to succinctly describe.

 “My best response is that it didn’t happen overnight, and spending 21 out of 24 years at the same shop likely puts me in the distinct minority of today’s professionals,” he explained. “It was just time for a change, and as long as I have been practicing law, it has been my impression that the Friday firm was No. 1 in this state. Because of its position in the market for as many years as I can remember, I feel like every [firm] measures themselves against the Friday firm.

“I am honored to be here, but I also feel privileged to have spent so many years at Mitchell.”

 

Maturing Profile

While Ney’s presence in the legal community matured over the last 13 years, so, too, did his profile in the community in general.

Ney, 50, served as an elected member of the Bentonville School Board from 2003 to 2011, and co-chaired the district’s successful millage campaign in 2012. Presently, he serves as counsel to the Bentonville School District, and is a member of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Foundation Board.

He was also a spokesperson and legal counsel for successful and well-publicized ballot efforts to approve the sale of alcohol in Benton County (2012) and Saline County (2014) in central Arkansas.

Ney also chaired the annual Children’s Hospital fundraiser Color of Hope Charity Gala in 2013, one of the largest fundraisers in Northwest Arkasnas, and was chosen as a “Gentleman of Distinction” for Hope Cancer Resources. He also took a turn as a contestant for “Dancing with the Stars of Northwest Arkansas,” a fundraiser for the Amazeum in Bentonville.

“A lot of people had a lot of fun at my expense with that one,” Ney joked. “I was not a good dancer. I was horrible.”

 

Reroute From Retail

Fortunately for Ney, dancing doesn’t have to pay the bills. In fact, while growing up in Fort Smith, he thought he would eventually do that by working in the family business — retail.

In 1892, Ney’s great grandfather established what became known as the Boston Store, a well-known department store on Garrison Avenue and later an anchor tenant at the Central Mall when it opened in 1972.

Ney remembers working on the receiving dock when he was 13 years old and progressing up to the sales floor a few years later. While attending college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, he continued to work jobs at Boston, which also added a store on Fayetteville’s downtown square (and later the Northwest Arkansas Mall).

Unfortunately for the Ney family, it became harder to compete against larger retailers, and the business ultimately sold in the early 1980s.

“I had just assumed I would go into that business,” Ney recalled. “Since there were three generations, I thought the future was bright. I had no idea the competition was starting to take its toll.”

When the store chain was sold, Ney was scrambling to figure out what was next. After graduating SMU in 1986, he returned to Fort Smith, placed a phone call to one of Fort Smith’s most deep-rooted companies, and soon found himself in ABF Freight’s management trainee program in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Ultimately, after two years with ABF, Ney thought utilizing his finance and business background as a trial attorney would bring the most professional satisfaction, not to mention a way to get back to Arkansas.

Because the legal market in Little Rock was more established at the time than the one in Fayetteville, and the money was greater there for law clerks, he opted for law school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Upon graduating in 1991, he had opportunities to begin workingwith several law firms, including two of the state’s “Big Four” — Friday and Mitchell.

Ney chose the latter, he said, for two reasons — a “highly persuasive” dinner with Jim Guy Tucker at upscale Little Rock restaurant 1620, and his impression that the firm would give him more of an entrepreneurial opportunity.

Tucker, who would later be elected governor in 1994 before resigning two years later with possible impeachment hanging over his head, practiced law as a senior partner at Mitchell Williams from 1982 to 1991.

“I understand that he went through all his troubles, but he didn’t get to be elected governor by accident,” Ney said. “He had tremendous intellect and skills, and he was just a persuasive guy. And right or wrong, my sense was that I might have an easier time making a name in a firm that was growing than one that was so incredibly established. So, I chose that path.”

 

Candy Store for Lawyers

In 11 years with Mitchell Williams, Ney developed a solid practice in Little Rock, but he was interested in moving to Northwest Arkansas.

He could have simply relocated his practice to the firm’s local office — established in the early 1990s with the acquisition of an existing practice owned by Bentonville attorney Earnest Lawrence — but because of what he termed a bit of frustration of working his way “up the chain” at Mitchell Williams, he looked for other job opportunities.

He found one at Walmart, representing the largest company in the world, a setting Ney described as a candy store for lawyers.

“There were many issues and a staggering scale,” he said.

While at Walmart as associate general counsel, Ney was responsible for commercial, employment and personal injury litigation.

Ney said he learned a lot in those three years, namely that “there are a lot of really smart and talented people in the world, and Walmart has a lot of them.”

He was exposed to hundreds of law firms across the country while representing Walmart, a fact that helped him find a greater appreciation for his time at Mitchell Williams

“I found that none of them, not a single law firm in America, in my view, had it perfect,” he said. “So to the extent you ever get in a position that you think the [grass] is always greener, I quickly started to figure out these firms in Arkansas have a pretty good model. I appreciated more the law firm opportunity and certainly the autonomy.”

 

Final Move

In his second stint at Mitchell Williams, Ney saw a “ground-floor” opportunity to try and build the practice.

From 1992 to 2005, the firm’s Northwest Arkansas office essentially doubled in the number of local attorneys — from one to two.

“The approach of having a local office and developing business by using attorneys in Little Rock and sending work to Little Rock did not work,” Ney said. “My theory was that Little Rock may as well be a foreign country to the Northwest Arkansas communities. Especially in Benton County, where so many people are not from Arkansas.”

To that end, the growth strategy was to have more lawyers domiciled in the local office who could be the “face” of every major practice area needed in Northwest Arkansas.

By 2013, the number of local attorneys had reached 18.

“I didn’t feel like we needed an incredibly deep bench in every one of those [practice] areas, but we had to have the ‘storefront’ to get and retain business,” Ney said. “Without that, it was never going to succeed. Over the years, that’s what we created and that’s why we have succeeded.”

Ney said he is now focused on helping the Friday firm flourish in Northwest Arkansas. He said he has enjoyed good professional relationships with the other seven attorneys in the Rogers office, and together, he hopes they can grow the Friday brand in this part of the state.

“I would like to finish my career here,” Ney said. “This is my final move.”