Clark Campbell Law Firm Celebrates 35 Years Focused on Growth
With 35 years under their belts, the Lakeland law firm of Clark, Campbell, Lancaster, Workman & Airth keeps its eye laser focused on the future, adapting to ever-changing trends and updating its strategic plan to stay relevant.
The law firm continuously works hard “to provide timely, high quality legal services to clients and to serve our community. Additionally, we work hard to continue hiring great employees for our team so we can maintain a high level of service for our clients,” said shareholder Tim Campbell.
Jacksonville native Ron Clark founded the law firm in 1988. In the last 35 years, it has grown to 30 employees. This includes eight attorneys who are shareholders and three who are associates.
It has two offices – its main office in downtown Lakeland and a satellite office in downtown Winter Haven, Campbell said.
Growth was based on finding lawyers who fit in, said Clark, who has called Lakeland home since 1980 and raised his family here. He retired about three years ago, followed shortly thereafter by shareholder Peter Munson.
“The thing that every person who ever came to the firm knew and understood was that we were going to work the hardest and be the best on the professional side,” he said. “We pushed our lawyers to be board certified in a field as soon as possible. We wanted them to be the best you could be in that field.”
Clark also believed more in giving back (more on that below). “All we wanted was to do great work, have satisfied clients and help people who need help.”
He’s proud of the firm and the direction it’s headed. “Leadership is good at the firm. The same sort of things that we started 35 years ago are still going on. Our lawyers are good; we work them quickly to work directly with clients.”
There’s a testament to the team, he said: “In the transition after Peter and I retired, all those clients we developed and helped through the years stuck with the firm. They knew what we were about.”
Continued Growth
The company’s growth, according to the firm’s website, is “a result of our commitment to recruiting and retaining talented, hard-working, and caring attorneys and staff, to being dedicated to giving back to our community, to providing our clients with professional, timely, and quality legal services, and, generally, to provide excellent, responsive, and result-oriented services to our clients.”
The firm handles everything from real estate and corporate law to commercial litigation and estate planning.
“We have been fortunate to remain busy in all aspects of our various practice areas,” Campbell said. “Our real estate and land-use clients have been extremely busy in this market. Given the influx of new residents to the state of Florida, Polk County and the city of Lakeland, real estate and development transactions have grown substantially.”
Polk County’s population has grown substantially. According to the Census bureau, it went from 725,046 in the 2020 Census to an estimated 787,404 in July 2022.
Other areas are experiencing growth also, he said. “The needs of our corporate and estate planning clients have also grown.”
The future looks bright for the company.
“We are excited about the future for our clients, the communities that we serve and our firm,” Campbell said. “We have experienced significant growth in the last several years, and we expect to continue to grow as a firm and continue to update our strategic plan to allow us to honor our firm’s legacy and sustain an excellent team of personable and extremely talented attorneys and support staff who are dedicated to providing legal services to our existing and new clients throughout Central Florida.”
Giving Back
When Clark started the firm, he made sure everyone who worked there believed in giving back. “We all earned and continue to earn a living off this community. Our belief when we interviewed attorneys was, they must be involved.”
Most attorneys joined a couple of boards or got involved with Guardian Ad Litem, he said. Few were involved in the same thing. “When they found their passion, the firm always make donations if one of our lawyers was on the board.”
Personally, he and his wife, Denise, have created a private foundation to ensure their work helping the homeless continues. “Our desire is to help first children, then women and men who are poor because God told us a long time ago there would always be the poor. We want to help the poor, and if they are capable and are moving themselves out of this situation, we want, through agencies we support, to help them move out of that situation.”
