Steve Richey has worn several hats.
“I’m kind of a late bloomer,” he says. “I keep feeling like I’m getting to be more and more myself as I go, with every evolution. And mediation seems to be the culmination of the teacher person and the lawyer person.”
A Montessori teacher and school founder turned litigator turned mediator, and now the Cincinnati Bar Association’s 2022-2023 president, Richey has a knack for digging into whichever profession he’s currently pursuing.
Act One
A Cincinnati native, Richey grew up in Anderson Township and graduated from McNicholas High School.
“I was a really bad football player and a good student,” he says. “I went to Xavier, and I was headed in the direction of teaching English literature, so I was in grad school in Buffalo, working on a PhD.”
The world intervened with those plans: Richey graduated from Xavier in 1968, and his deferment from participating in the Vietnam War was up. Opposed to the war, Richey opted to become a Latin teacher at Walnut Hills High School. The experience was less than optimal for Richey, who, because of his original collegiate teaching plans, had never taken a childhood education class. He transferred to a small, private school in the West End, where he was introduced to a Montessori classroom.
“That’s why I really got excited about education, and about early childhood education,” said Richey. “I went to Xavier again and got a master’s degree in early childhood education and then I got involved in starting schools. I got hired as one of the first teachers at the New School in North Avondale. And then from there my friends and I started the Children’s Meeting House Montessori in Loveland.”
Richey enjoyed the emphasis on child-centered learning, the hallmark of Montessori education. Both schools are still thriving, for the record. And in a stroke of serendipity, Montessori education also brought Richey together with his now-wife, Sharon. “Sharon and I connected when she came to observe my classroom. That tipped me off that she was interested in children.”
A few years after their marriage, Sharon went back to college, to earn a degree in marketing. Richey was eager for a change of pace, too.
“I looked around and when I looked at all the opportunities to reinvent myself in midlife, there weren’t a lot,” he said. “Becoming a child psychologist seemed like a possible transition…I was ready for a big change.”
Act Two
To supplement his teacher income, Richey had acquired his real estate license. Licensure required taking two courses; one was on real estate law.
“That’s really where the connection came,” he said. “The teacher there taught it just like a law school class and I thought, ‘Yeah, this is interesting. I like this.’ This is going to be another mindblower: when I later hired on at Thompson Hine, I found out he was one of the partners there in the real estate department. I told him he had inspired me to go to law school.”
(The teacher was Bill Martin, and yes, Richey did sell a few homes.)
Richey entered the evening program at Salmon P. Chase College of Law, continuing to teach during the day. Summers off allowed Richey to apply for coveted summer clerkships but offers were scarce.
“I couldn’t get any traction at the big firms, maybe because I was 46 and a nursery school teacher,” said Richey. “If I was 46 and had been a banker, maybe. I didn’t get any offers from any of the big firms.”
Again, fate intervened. The late Greg Mohar, a parent of one of Richey’s students, was an attorney with Aronoff, Rosen and Hunt. He found out Richey was looking for a clerkship and brought him to the firm for three summers.
Richey’s biggest career break came when he was selected by the Hon. S. Arthur Spiegel as a law clerk. Spiegel was an admirer of The New School, where Richey had taught.
He has a favorite anecdote to share from his two years clerking with Spiegel.
“The first day I arrived, in the morning you’re signing up for health care and all that stuff. In the late morning, he called me and said, ‘So, there’s a hearing this afternoon on a consent decree in this case, big case. It’s at 2:00. Here are the briefs. I’d like to know your thoughts.’ I didn’t even know what a consent decree was!”
Richey clerked for Judge Spiegel from 1993 to 1995.
“The clerkship was the honor of a lifetime,” said Richey. “It was awesome witnessing the power of the District Court to do good. It was really great working for Judge Spiegel. He really was very great to his clerks in that he gave us a lot of responsibility. To this day, several of us former clerks still gather in his memory on his birthday.”
After his clerkship ended, Richey was again looking for a job, and again, another student’s parent, Pete Tamborski, made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Tamborski was hiring partner at Thompson Hine, which has been Richey’s legal home ever since.
“I have tried to be a practical litigator,” said Richey. “Most of my work was counseling employers on compliance with the law and also, hopefully, how to be a great employer.”
A favorite case was for a client operating a large sorting facility near CVG airport. The workforce included a large population of Somali Muslims. One morning, virtually all of them walked out, in protest for not being allowed to pray at the times required by their religion. The client had allowed prayer breaks, but not all at the exact same time, in accordance with Islamic law. In mediation with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the client found a way to accommodate the required schedule and create a prayer room.
Act Three
After 20 years as a litigator, Richey turned to mediation in 2019.
“Thompson Hine graciously allowed me to pivot my entire practice,” he said, “and devote a lot of time to the bar association.”
His first introduction to the CBA came in 1995, when Judge Spiegel brought Richey to an Inn of Court meeting.
“
Judge Rubin and Judge Spiegel would occasionally spar and in later years, Judges Black and Barrett carried on the tradition,” said Richey. “That was the place I was most active. I joined the bar association and have been a bar member ever since.”
He has served as chair of the ADR committee and as a mediator affiliated with the Cincinnati Bar Alternative Dispute Resolution service, which rebranded in 2020.
“Steve was instrumental in the relaunch of the Cincinnati Bar Association’s arbitration service,” said John Pinney, also a mediator/arbitrator with CBADR and a former ADR committee chair. “Importantly, with Steve’s leadership, CBADR also added its new mediation service, making CBADR a full-service alternative dispute resolution facility.”
In May 2019, Richey became secretary of the board of trustees, sending him down the path to eventual presidency.
“I felt that I was ready to give back to the bar association, which has supported me for these many years,” said Richey.
When Richey is sworn in as bar president on May 18, he will be taking the reins of an organization in the thick of celebrating 150 years of existence. Top of mind for Richey is the CBA’s focus, formed under immediate past president Sara Cooperrider, to community service in its sesquicentennial year. Richey is of the same opine, as he regularly volunteers in the community — and believes all lawyers should do the same.
“I believe every attorney has an obligation to contribute to the betterment of the community,” said Richey. “Because of our training and the exclusive powers bestowed upon us by the government and the courts, lawyers are in a unique position to leverage our power.”
Shokoohe is the director of communications at the CBA.