Arizona Attorney of the Month | Paul Rowley | Divorce Lawyer Mesa ...

With his newly minted law degree in hand, Rowley, his wife and
three young sons (two daughters would be born in the coming
years) returned to Arizona. “After I passed the bar exam, I went to
work for a small, three-attorney office in Mesa.”
BUILDING A BUSINESS
In 1987, Rowley started his own firm where he, along with good
partners, has established a ten-attorney, full-service law firm with a
solid reputation for providing excellent legal services in a wide
variety of practice areas.
During the early years, Rowley took every opportunity to go to
court. “I took some personal injury cases to trial and did some
family law cases, and decided that litigation and family law was
where I wanted to be.”
Family law can be an emotional minefield, but Rowley learned
to compartmentalize things in order to keep the emotional
challenges at bay. “I don’t take the emotional part of work home
with me,” he says. “I prefer to think of what I do as helping a
family through a crisis because I can analyze issues and solve
problems so they can get on with their lives. I’m also good at
protecting my clients, most of whom become friends.”
SIGNIFICANT CASES
Along with his family law practice, Rowley’s firm has handled
first-degree murder cases as well as sophisticated death and injury
cases involving mass disasters, including commercial airline
crashes. He has submitted three cases to the United States Supreme
Court, most notably in 2001, when he appealed the Arizona
Supreme Court’s ruling in Graville v. Dodge concerning
grandparent’s rights. “We litigated for four years all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court and we won,” he says with well-deserved
pride. “We established that a fit parent has priority rights over
grandparents when it comes to raising their children.”
PHILANTHROPY IMPORTANT
Giving back is a huge part of Rowley’s psyche and he embodies
the true spirit of community service. To wit: He serves as a
Maricopa County Superior Court judge pro tem and as a justice of
the peace pro tem in Maricopa County. Since 1986, he has been a
member and Commander of the Maricopa County Sheriff ’s Divers
Posse, an all-volunteer group that assists with recovering drowning
victims in the state’s numerous lakes and rivers.
“I am certified as a master scuba diver and as a rescue diver,” he
says. “It’s always been something I really enjoy and I’ve been
fortunate to be able to use those skills to help our community as
well.”
When Rowley gets a diving call, he grabs his gear and heads to
the lake or river where he’s needed. “We’ll usually deploy in one
of the Sheriff ’s Office airboats or helicopters and they’ll drop us
off where they think the search should be started.”
Rowley notes that diving in Arizona means you’re pretty much
in black water all the time. “At 100-feet, it’s completely dark and
you have to feel around for a body,” he says. “I’ve recovered about
fifty bodies, and you have to learn how to deal with it or it will
really get to you. Getting a body back is important to help families
find closure, and it helps me a lot knowing that at least I could
return their loved one’s body to them.”
A PILOT AS WELL AS A RESCUE DIVER
But it’s not just being under water that intrigues Rowley; it’s also
being high in the sky.
“I’ve always wanted to be a pilot, and when I turned 50, I
decided it was time to get my license. Now I own a Piper Dakota
high performance plane,” he says. “It’s a true workhorse and has a
lot of fancy GPS navigation systems on board that help with
weather and traffic avoidance.”
© 2011 Andrew Paul Photography