Meet Lara Cleary and Jennifer Hansen of Hansen & Cleary in Northbrook

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lara Cleary and Jennifer Hansen.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Lara and Jennifer. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Lara: When I was a little girl, I had a speech articulation issue where I could not pronounce Ls or Rs (which was really hard being named Lara), so I received speech therapy services in elementary school. When I received the speech services, there were always kids from the school’s special education programs in the classroom. At that time, in the late 70s, special education was still generally segregated, so it was the only time I really ever interacted with some of those kids. As my speech improved, the speech therapist had me help the other children in the class and I loved it! Based on this experience, I became a special education teacher, taught in the Chicago Public Schools for a few years and then went to law school with the express purpose of representing individuals with disabilities. I was then incredibly fortunate to meet my mentor, Brooke Whitted, a well known special education attorney, while in law school. Brooke was not only a great mentor but also a wonderful friend and father figure to me. We opened a law firm, Whitted & Cleary in 2001 and practiced together for almost 15 years before his death. Jennifer and I met at Whitted & Cleary in 2005. To this day, I am so grateful I did not hire any of the other job candidates for her position.

Jennifer: My path to my current area of legal practice was very adventurous! One of my passions is and has always been, travel. After law school in Wyoming, I decided to attend the Universiteit Maastrichtin in the Netherlands to obtain an LL.M. (a legal master’s degree) in European and Comparative Law. My ambition at that time was to practice with a big firm, doing international law. After living in the Netherlands for a year, I returned to the Chicago area and landed a job as a public defender in Lake County. I thought I would do it for a few years, obtain litigation experience and then move on to International and Human Rights law. However, I immediately loved the criminal defense practice. I began to realize that many of my clients were adults with special needs/mental health issues and I found that my empathy and understanding of special needs really helped my representation. Growing up, both of my parents worked with children with disabilities (my father as an audiologist, and my mother as a speech-language pathologist), so I think it just might be in my blood. After working as a public defender for many years, I learned that Lara had an opening at her firm with Brooke Whitted for an experienced litigator. I joined Whitted and Cleary in 2005 and helped transform the mostly special education practice to one that also included criminal defense of juveniles and adults with disabilities, guardianship cases, DCFS matters, and I helped to grow the mental health law practice.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
As many of us know, nothing worth doing is without obstacles and challenges. You cannot grow as a person without taking on new challenges and some risks. For both of us to start our new law firm last year, it was hard to leave prior employment that was comfortable, and jump into a new practice! Of course, we worried whether we would have enough clients to keep the lights on. We focused really heavily on marketing for the first few months and are happy to report our practice is thriving. We have found that referral sources seem to appreciate the empathy and attentiveness we bring to our client representation and refer many people to us. We have also enjoyed the journey of opening the new practice – from selecting a new logo, building the website and creating marketing materials, it has been a fun and creative process.

Please tell us about Hansen & Cleary.
Hansen & Cleary, LLC is a boutique law practice focusing on the representation of children and families, individuals with disabilities, medical and mental health professionals, private schools and other non-profit agencies in the greater Chicagoland area and throughout the State of Illinois. Our practice is concentrated in the areas of special education law, school law, mental health law and other disability law.

We started Hansen & Cleary in June 2017 after practicing in other settings for over 30 years collectively, because we really wanted to bring our common philosophy of client-centered representation to a new practice. Our mission at Hansen & Cleary is to offer the highest quality counsel to families, schools and organizations and private clinicians, with the most empathetic, attentive and personalized service possible. We know that it can be highly stressful to engage attorneys to represent your family, your children or your private practice. We are proud to support and guide our clients through the legal process with compassion and resolve.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Well, we just started this new practice about 9 months ago, and we feel that we are constantly looking for the best ways to run our business and support our clients. We have been really lucky to have found amazing people to help us get started, including our marketing, technical, legal and website SEO contractors. It truly does take a village and our village has been incredible.

Contact Info:

• Address: 555 Skokie Blvd.
  Suite 250
  Northbrook, IL 60062
• Website: www.hansencleary.com
• Phone: 8477152801
• Email: lara@hansencleary.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HansenCleary/

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