Shaun Baldwin Profiled in Leading Lawyers Magazine - Tressler LLP

SM
SHAUN McPARLAND BALDWIN
Insurance Coverage Expert
Makes Big Waves
by Laura Fletcher
Bob Soderstrom, a partner at Tressler LLP
and longtime mentor to Shaun McParland
Baldwin, likes to kid about his colleague’s
physical slightness, bestowed on her by
genetics: “I used to joke that when the tornado
came, the McParlands would just stand under
the dining room table.”
Baldwin, mother of two teenagers and
daughter to an Irish-American attorney and
World War II vet, has faced her share of
tornadoes in the courtroom. There was, for
instance the London, Kentucky personal injury
lawyer she faced in her first bad faith jury trial,
who sent Baldwin a scathing letter dismissing
her as an inexperienced rookie. He set forth a
multi-million dollar settlement demand,
painting her client as an evil insurance
company straight out of a John Grisham novel.
(The jury passed a verdict of $25,000.)
Then there was the blustery, old-fashioned
judge who, during a 1980s suit against a cab
company, ordered Baldwin and the opposing
counsel into his chambers for a conference, but
then asked her to stand in the corner of the
room for the length of the discussion because
he “didn’t like to swear in front of a lady.” (She
asked to be removed from the case.)
Finally, there was the threat of time itself
when she had to present an argument in a
Kane County courthouse while very pregnant,
so pregnant that even the judge seemed
nervous. (After he ruled against her argument,
he told her that it was one of the best he had
ever heard.)
Somehow, Baldwin has managed, despite
these minor tempests, to develop a national
practice in commercial liability insurance
coverage law, and she has become a shaping
force at Tressler LLP, Chicago.
Fearless Pioneer
“I must have looked very young,” the fivefoot-one
Baldwin remarks, recalling her initial
venture into the legal world upon passing the
bar in 1980. “At the McKenna Storer firm, we
had to call all of the partners ‘Mister.’ There
were probably business sectors where women
were more plentiful, but they clearly weren’t in
the law at that point in time. I had never even
met a woman partner. I’m sure that they
were out there, but they were so few and
far between.”
Baldwin began her career assisting
Soderstrom with appeals at McKenna Storer.
It was here that she honed her skills as a writer.
“Each of these appeals was a work of art to
me,” she notes.
Soderstrom appreciated Baldwin’s writing
skills but thought it would be best for her morale
if she were allowed to deliver some of the oral
arguments as well. By the time she had been
practicing law for three years, Baldwin had
argued before the Illinois Supreme Court, the
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Illinois
Appellate Court and had prevailed against the
renowned plaintiff attorney Phil Corboy in a
summary judgment argument.
Soderstrom left McKenna Storer in 1986 to
help start Tressler, and Baldwin followed him.
The two spent their early days at Tressler
working in a corral-like office that all of the
attorneys shared. Their desks were so close
they could pass the phone to one another.
Working together on the Jewel salmonella
insurance dispute, they often bet a Friday
happy hour beer over the names of cases,
grammatical issues or the spelling of various
words. (Spell check had yet to be invented.)
They soon became wrapped up in a highexposure
case addressing a multitude of
insurance issues regarding the toxic shock
syndrome cases that had been filed against
Procter & Gamble in the mid-80s. On one of
her numerous flights to and from Cincinnati,

SM
where Procter & Gamble is based, Baldwin
met her husband-to-be, a flight attendant, who
made an overture with free almonds and wine.
Although they divorced 10 years ago, he lives
a few blocks from her home in Glen Ellyn and
assists in raising their sons.
“I had two c-sections and was back at work
in five and a half weeks both times,” Baldwin
says when asked how she managed to
balance work and family at this critical point in
her career. “I so wanted to be an attorney
there’s no way I would ever bring up childcare
issues. My husband took a very hands-on role
when the children were young.”
“She is somewhat of a pioneer,” Soderstrom
concurs. “I marvel sometimes at her inability to
say no. If you ask her to do something, she’ll
do it, and she’ll do a very good job at it.”
In the 1980s, many attorneys generated
business by taking their clients out for drinks
or entertaining them at restaurants. It was an
atmosphere that made Baldwin, a single
woman catering to a predominantly male
clientele, feel uncomfortable. Fortunately, one
of the primary philosophies of the Tressler firm
from the beginning was that attorneys should
have ample time to invest in professional
development.
Turning Point
Baldwin began to write articles on different
aspects of insurance law and became active
with the Insurance Law Committee of the
Defense Research Institute (DRI), with the
hope of meeting clients and other insurance
coverage attorneys.
A DRI seminar she attended in the late ’80s
was looking for volunteer presenters, so she
suggested the topic of self-insured retentions,
which she had dealt with in the Procter &
Gamble case. The conference coordinator
responded by giving her a speaking slot
amongst a host of well-known and highly
respected attorney presenters.
The lecture she gave was meaty and
relevant and marked a turning point in her
career. She soon became nationally known,
educating audiences on the topic of insurance
coverage throughout the country and
generating new clients at each presentation.
Ultimately, she also became chair of DRI’s
Insurance Law Committee and was able to
give other young coverage attorneys their first
speaking opportunity.
Soderstrom recalls that at one point,
Baldwin had expressed concern to him that
her work on insurance coverage was drifting
out of the mainstream culture of the Tressler
firm, which was focused at that time on
insurance defense.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you do what you want to
do? Do this insurance coverage work and be
valuable in that way, and perhaps it will be
more valuable than being in the mainstream. In
other words, it will develop a whole new
practice area… You can build your own niche.’”
Baldwin was instrumental in the Tressler
firm’s shift from being an insurance defense
firm to now being largely known as an
insurance coverage and insurance services
firm. Many of the attorneys practicing at that
firm work in Baldwin’s area of specialty, and
she has trained a fair number of them.
Much of the work Baldwin has done in the
last two decades has been assisting insurance
companies in evaluating whether they owe a
defense or indemnity obligation to their
policyholder for claims or suits filed against the
policyholder. “Sometimes that evaluative
process takes place in the context of a lawsuit,
although not always,” Baldwin says.
Baldwin has also assisted insurers in
drafting endorsements and policy forms, with
the goal of using language that accurately
reflects what the company intends to cover in
the policy. Generalities in the language of
insurance coverage policies that were written
prior to technological expansions such as the
dot-com boom have exposed companies to
numerous coverage risks that had been
unimaginable previously.
Rewriting policies, however, only creates a
new set of challenges for insurance lawyers,
since every time an insurance company
changes its language, the body of case law
that was based on the old language no longer
provides a helpful predictor of how the policy
will be interpreted by courts.
Robert Mooney, the senior vice-president of
claims at Arrowpoint Capital, called Baldwin
cold 15 years ago, after a colleague had praised
her expertise on policy writing. “She not only
gave me ideas that were innovative but that
were also practical, too,” Mooney says.
Baldwin became Arrowpoint Capital’s lead
coverage attorney and handled a number of
cases in which a significant sum of money
hung in the balance. “We’ve always been able
to work out either a favorable resolution or a
victory,” Mooney reports. “Plus, she’s just so
pleasant to work with.”
Ethics and integrity are hallmarks of
Baldwin’s practice. “I will not sacrifice either to
win a case for my clients. I try to fairly assess
the risks and advise my clients accordingly. It
is their risk, not mine.”
Important Lessons
Where she becomes invaluable both to
clients and to the attorneys who work
underneath her is in her appreciation of the
nuances of the law. According to her former
junior associate and pupil Daniel I. Graham,
Jr., now a partner at Bates Carey Nicolaides
LLP, “Something I learned from working with
Shaun is that the law has layers and that you
have to immerse yourself in a case to
understand what is really going on.”
Graham also found Baldwin’s guidance on
researching the law to be particularly valuable.
She emphasized to him that research required
active analysis, so that they could align their
case with—or, if necessary, distinguish it
from—precedent. Graham learned that “[a]
‘bad case’ isn’t a ‘bad case’ if it can be
distinguished.”
Another important lesson Graham learned
from his mentor was her enthusiasm for having
a strong relationship with her children, which
was equal to her enthusiasm for the law.
He recalls the occasion when he and his
wife stopped by a neighborhood football field
to watch the Baldwin boys play. “Shaun
wasn’t in the bleachers. She was literally up
and down the field, following them as they
were playing. She couldn’t sit still. It was so
Shaun. She’s focused, she’s passionate, she’s
excited, especially when it comes to her
children. She didn’t stop once during the
game. She was jumping, shouting…I didn’t
know which one to watch—Shaun or the
game. I remember thinking to myself, ‘That’s
the kind of parent I want to be.’ I want my kids
to always know how much I support them.”
Raising two children while fulfilling the
demands of a high-profile career hasn’t been
easy. But, according to Baldwin’s sons, Danny
and John, she did a good job. “She stood
behind us,” says Danny, 19, a student at
American University in Washington, D.C. “She
was always at my Cub Scouts when I was a
kid. She was a team gymnastics mom [for
both my team and my brother’s team].”
“My friends love my mom,” John, 17, quips.
“She’s like a saint.”
“All I can say is, you’ve got to get good
daycare, and you’re going to have to pay for it,
and you should pay for any other services that
are going to make your life easier, like
housecleaning,” Baldwin says when asked
to give advice for others who are in the
same situation.
“There’s no silver bullet…it’s not easy, but it
can be done.” Baldwin cites her mother, who
recently passed, as inspiration for much of
what she’s accomplished, both personally and
professionally. “If she had gone into law school
or business school, she would have been so
successful. She pushed me in ways that I had
no knowledge of.” ■
This article originally appeared in Leading Lawyers Network Magazine—Women’s Edition for 2010 and has been reprinted with permission. © 2010 Law Bulletin Publishing Co.