When a child follows in a parent’s footsteps, it can be an enormous point of pride for both.
Case in point: Paul and Thomas Whitcombe. The father and son come from two different generations, but when it comes to a passion for their profession, they’re both on the same page — in a law book. The Dixon partners in law have not only made a name for themselves in courthouses and case records, they’ve formed a bond that’s both professional and personal.
A case in point indeed — and a winning one.
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Paul is the senior partner of The Law Offices of Paul T. Whitcombe in downtown Dixon, where Thomas has been a presence in the office for most of his life, from the pitter patter of his feet as a toddler to the rustling of papers as a clerk learning the ropes in high school and college, to ultimately becoming a full partner in the family law firm.
Paul’s nearly 30 years as a Dixon attorney has put him in front of the bench in many criminal law, family law and civil litigation cases, as well as time spent as Lee County Public Defender and Lee County State’s Attorney. As impressive as that resumé is though, it’s his accomplishment outside of court that he’s most proud of: Watching Thomas come into his own as a lawyer himself, knowing that they’ve both helped each other become better lawyers
The downtown Dixon law office is like a second home for the Whitcombes, where it’s not just Paul and Thomas behind the desks: Paul’s son and Thomas’s brother David is business manager and Paul’s wife Maureen is office manager. While Thomas could have set his sights on big cities and larger firms, staying home and close to Dad is important to him, he said.
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“He set a great example going forward, not only for working hard at work in helping the individuals he represented and the community as a prosecutor, but also having a nice balance between work and home life,” Thomas said. “He had a very good work-life balance, which I know, stereotypically isn’t something lawyers very often have. Small-town law was very appealing. Not only did I always plan on going into law, I never considered going into the city or getting a federal clerkship — as fun as that would have been, it wasn’t the kind of lifestyle I was looking for.”
Thomas has taken his father’s workload of transactional law and made it his strength at the firm, dealing with estate planning, probate, real estate, business law and contracts. Both also work with civil and criminal litigation.
Thomas’ journey from school books to law books came as little surprise to people who knew the family.
Judges, bailiffs and others at the Lee County Courthouse could see it coming when a young Thomas tagged along with dad to his job, and was dressed to impress.
“Not a lot of people have a 3-year-old who has a coat and tie when they go with you, and it softens everybody,” Paul said. “There have been lots of fun stories. It’s difficult to be angry with someone who has a 3-year-old dressed like that” — though Thomas could make it a little easier at times.
The courthouse became a fascinating place for Thomas to explore, and like other kids his age, a childlike curiosity was always close at hand — along with a panic button, and that meant he could get the answer to that favorite of kid questions: “What happens if I push this button?”
“When I was public defender, we had a panic button; once we got into any trouble, we had the panic button to call in the bailiffs,” Paul said. “Tom discovered that and thought it was great to go press that button, and then guards would come running in with their guns drawn, and then go ‘It’s Tommy again.’ He’d just be laughing, but they all loved him.”
Having a child in court could just as easily ease tensions, too.
One of Paul’s favorite stories of his son being in the courtroom came during a hotly contested divorce case where tensions were on the rise — until Thomas got tired. Seems he dozed off and was snoring. When the judge noticed the nap time, he called a halt to the action, remarking about “how sweet” it was to see the tired little trooper, Paul said, and broke the tension.
Young Thomas endeared himself to a lot of people at the courthouse.
“When I was 3, I started going to work with him all of the time at the Courthouse or in private practice,” Thomas said. “I made friends with all of the bailiffs and all of the clerks. Even when I started [as a lawyer], some of them would still call me ‘Little Tommy.’
“Come on, they got to stop doing that,” he continued with a laugh. “I still let the ladies at church do it, but I’m in court.”
Paul grew up in Dixon, and was friends with the son of 15th Judicial Circuit Judge Tomas Magdich, who became an early mentor in Paul’s career. He began in private practice in 1996 after spending a couple of years at the law firm of Jenner and Block in Chicago. Though the Windy City job came with its share of prestige, it also came with its share of stress. Returning to Dixon was a move Paul felt would benefit his family more — and himself, leaving a more taxing job behind, he said.
Both Paul and Thomas attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, and Thomas’ time there became noteworthy when he was the first student to complete the university’s advanced law program — doing so as a presidential scholar and finishing it in five years instead of the typical seven.
Thomas began his career as an intern for longtime Sterling lawyer John Miller, which lasted only a few months before Miller retired. He then joined his father as an associate in 2019.
“As I was going through law school, I started really appreciating the civil side of litigation and the transactional work,” Thomas said. “He [Miller] showed me the ins and out of real estate and estate planning, probate, business formation, and I’ve been able to incorporate that in the practice here.”
David took a different route. After graduating with a business degree from the University of Iowa, he worked in the corporate world until it became too much to bear for him, he said. The solution: Return home and work for the family.
“[The corporate job] had its perks, but you had to sacrifice quite a bit, and it comes down to whether it’s worth it,” David said. “It just became not worth it, especially when I got married and had my kid, you miss out in a lot. For me to go any farther, I would have had to move an hour-plus away and be working more. Yeah, technically it would be more successful, but it’s not how I deem my own success. It was a matter of: Am I going to see my kid, and am I going to have to give another excuse for why I couldn’t go to this thing or that thing, or being late to Christmas? I was tired of it, it wasn’t that fun to me anymore.”
As business manager, David “keeps the books all nice and clean,” Paul said. The change of pace from a corporate job has made David not only made proud of the course he decided to chart, but happy with where it took him.
“I’ve always been people oriented,” David said. “Family’s been very important to me and coming back here has been nice. It’s a healthier life for me, and getting focused in the numbers and helping people is what matters.”
One of the benefits of having different generations in the same office is being able to build on the wisdom of experience while integrating new methods and technology.
While Paul worked with pen and paper and typewriters and floppy discs during his college days, Thomas had a different world more at his fingertips and uses an iPad whenever he’s at court. Elsewhere in the office, David put his tech skills to good use by simplifying processes at the office with template documents.
Matters that would have taken Paul days to do years ago can sometimes be done in a matter of minutes with the tools and tech the younger generation has brought to the table.
“Not too long ago I said that it was time for me to get a new laptop, and I asked him, ‘What do you think?’” Paul said. “He knows exactly what’s going on. If I have a tech issue, one of these guys are my solutions. It’s nice to have that IT all wrapped into one, but I still like pen and paper a little bit, but I’m being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.”
Paul recently had to revisit a divorce case from a couple of decades ago in which someone was ordered to transfer half-interests in five pieces of property, which has since been sold, resold and subdivided. That’s where Thomas comes in: Within a few minutes, he had everything Paul needed laid out for him, and it saved Paul days of research that it would have once taken to figure out.
But on the other hand, Paul makes a pretty good case for the benefits of experience. Thomas often finds Dad helpful in intricate criminal cases and the like.
“The nice thing about having different backgrounds is that, doing the transactional side of things, if he gets a case that has something to do with real estate, he comes to me and I’ll walk him through that,” Thomas said. “If I get a criminal case that has a weird issue that I haven’t dealt with, I can go to him; between his public defender time and state’s attorney time, he can be helpful with that. The hardest part of legal research is finding out where to start, once you get that little bread crumb then you can follow the trail. It’s been real helpful being able to bounce ideas off of each other like that.”
The Whitcombes also use artificial intelligence to help improve efficiency in their processes — but never forgetting one important thing: AI is useful only if you have the background knowledge to know how to implement it, Thomas said.
“Technology is efficiency,” Thomas said. “It’s helped us a lot to be more efficient, and as expensive as lawyers are, the less time we can spend on things, the less expensive it is for our clients. Especially with the transactional side of things, there’s no need to type a document from scratch because a lot of the time 95 percent of the documents are the same, and the key is just knowing what to change and when to change it.”
The generation gap does reveal itself sometimes, however, and it’s not hard to miss: Paul’s office is full of TV, film and pop culture collectibles, while Thomas’ office has a more traditional look.
It’s all part of the family dynamic that’s made the law office like a second home for the Whitcombes — literally and figuratively, and whether it’s a client looking for help to tip the scales of justice in their favor or someone looking for help to navigate a long and winding paper trail, the firm brings a lot of experience to the table, and the bench.
“I guess I can play the father trump card, but I don’t have to,” Paul said. “We discuss everything, and we don’t always agree on everything, but between the three of us and Maureen, we get it done. It’s a great environment. It’s like picking home up and bringing it to work. It’s just great.”
The Law Offices of Paul T. Whitcombe, 223 W. First St., is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and weekends by appointment. Find it on Facebook, go to paulwhitcombelaw.com, email office@paulwhitcombe.com, or call 815-288-7209 for more information.