Office: Overland Park
As the leader of the firm’s Employee Benefits Practice Group, Greg Ash helps his clients maximize the value and minimize the risks inherent in their benefit plans. With more than 30 years of experience, Greg translates complicated legal issues under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code into meaningful decision points for employers. He forecasts risk and identifies opportunities to help his clients meet their business objectives.
Nick Badgerow is a trial lawyer with more than 48 years of experience trying complex and difficult cases throughout the Midwest, and has tried more than 50 jury trials in the Kansas City area alone. He also frequently serves as a construction arbitrator and mediator, and a consultant and expert witness on legal ethics.
Shannon Bond is a member of the Spencer Fane Health Care group. She focuses her practice on regulatory, transactional, and business issues impacting health care clients, working primarily with health care providers to find solutions related to internal governance, regulatory compliance, contract structuring, and other issues that they might encounter. She has experience drafting a wide variety of health care and business documents, including nonprofit, governmental, and hybrid hospital bylaws; physician employment agreements; health care software licensing agreements; and EMTALA analysis.
Kim helps her clients by identifying practical and workable solutions for a wide variety of tax issues affecting individual and business clients. Her educational background includes an undergraduate degree in accountancy and Juris Doctor and an advanced Master of Law Degree in Taxation that gives her an excellent depth of knowledge regarding complex tax matters.
Mary Carson assists local government entities with the full scope of work related to issuing municipal bonds, from early-stage planning and document preparation to issue closure. She has served as bond counsel to cities, counties, school districts, rural water districts, other special purpose districts or authorities, and state agencies on virtually every type of debt obligation.
Mark is a first-chair trial lawyer handling complex matters for clients in highly regulated industries, including healthcare and financial services. He has extensive experience with individual, class, and consolidated actions in state and federal courts. Mark also represents clients in arbitration before various administrators, including the AAA, JAMS, and AHLA.
Focusing his practice in health care, real estate, and corporate law, Chad Cook is a transactional attorney providing knowledgeable and straightforward counsel to clients based on their individual needs and business goals.
Joshua Decker is Of Counsel with the firm and focuses his practice on estate planning, tax planning, and trust and estate administration. He helps families navigate all areas of estate planning with special knowledge in special needs planning and charitable giving.
Kris Dekker assists banks, financial institutions, and other lenders of varying sizes close their transactions efficiently. He understands that timely execution is critical to a lender’s ability to compete in its marketplace.
Alexis Denny helps clients navigate complex litigation and mitigate regulatory and administrative risks, achieving outcomes aligned with their unique business goals and objectives. Her practice focuses on the health care sector, where she brings a fresh perspective and stability-oriented approach to current matters challenging health care entities large and small.
Stacy Harper counsels organizations in the health care space on regulatory compliance, health care reimbursement, and data privacy and cybersecurity issues. Stacy’s unique background as a certified professional coder and compliance officer provides her with first-hand knowledge of the legal and practical requirements faced by health care organizations.
Pete Heaven is a partner in the firm’s Real Estate group who helps residential and commercial real estate developers understand the legalese of government in land use by drawing upon his experience as City Attorney of the City of Merriam, Kansas for 18 years.
Dick Hertel’s helps clients identify and manage the risks and opportunities presented in their real estate transactions. He focuses on commercial real estate transactions and development incentives on behalf of sellers, buyers, landlords, tenants, borrowers, lenders, developers, and governmental bodies.
Crystal Howard’s practice resides at the intersection of business transactions and tax efficiency. Regularly counseling clients on a wide range of business and tax matters, she helps clients navigate complex commercial transactions and related tax planning.
Aurora Kammerer provides legal services to clients ranging from large health systems and hospitals to specialty providers and solo physician practices. Her approach to collaborative client service centers on understanding the challenges providers face related to ongoing changes in health care access, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, health information technology, and government fraud investigations. She also regularly facilitates advisement for clients on any type of legal matter a health care operation faces, including litigation and real estate, environmental, and financial matters.
Blane Markley helps clients navigate the complex and evolving legal framework of health care, so they can more efficiently and effectively deliver care and meet operational goals. His experience in this area includes the representation of hospitals, physician groups, physicians, and other health care providers, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), and other enterprises operating in the health care industry.
Hillary Martel combines clinical insight and legal experience which give her an in-depth understanding of the needs of health care clients. She serves as a trusted advisor to health care providers and organizations on a wide range of regulatory and compliance matters and leverages her unique perspective to counsel providers with health care legal issues.
Jessica Merrigan is a partner in the Kansas City and Overland Park offices of Spencer Fane. She counsels clients on environmental matters regarding regulatory requirements and represents them in litigation of environmental claims, including contribution claims under the federal Superfund law.
Beth Miller is a member of the Employee Benefits team. She helps clients by identifying practical solutions to a wide variety of legal matters in the areas of employer-sponsored retirement plans, executive compensation, fiduciary obligations, and advisory services.
Eric Miller guides clients through all aspects of employee benefits law, prioritizing tailored business objectives geared toward long-term success and profitability as he strategizes plans, guidance, and best practices which adhere to evolving legal and regulatory landscapes.
Natalie Miller advises benefit plan providers, administrators, and employers on matters related to ERISA and the tax code that impact employer sponsored benefit plans. She proactively helps clients navigate the complex regulatory requirements governing employee benefit plans by partnering on an array of matters including day-to-day plan administration, plan governance, and correction of operational issues. Natalie also regularly assists clients in drafting governing plan documents and communications, and negotiating service provider agreements.
Caleb Phillips draws on over ten years of litigation and counseling experience to help businesses and individuals navigate complex legal issues and disputes. His practice focuses on securities litigation and compliance, employment law, and white-collar defense. Above all, Caleb prioritizes providing communicative and comprehensive client service so his clients can focus on their goals and business objectives.
Barry Pickens is a civil litigator with a focus on appellate litigation, insurance coverage, and other commercial litigation matters. In his appellate work, Barry helps defend results obtained at the trial court level that were favorable for his clients on appeal. Where clients received unfavorable results at the trial level, he helps them develop strategies to obtain appellate relief from those results.
Jackie Pringle focuses her practice on providing clients with legal counsel on complex tax matters including estate planning; probate administration; tax controversy; state and local tax issues; and international withholding taxes, U.S. compliance issues, and entity formation. Her clients include businesses of all sizes as well as high net worth individuals.
Andy Ramirez is a corporate attorney who helps directors, trustees, and administrators of health systems navigate a wide range of complex transactional and regulatory issues challenging the health care industry. He serves as independent general counsel to his clients advising them on strategic planning, clinical integration, governance, and compliance with day-to-day legal operational requirements.
Julie Roth-Ramirez helps health care providers through a variety of transactional and regulatory matters. Julie represents large health systems, hospitals, and physician practices, and counsels clients on the sale, acquisition, and development of complex joint ventures. With more than 15 years of experience, Julie regularly helps her clients by negotiating and drafting hospital-physician affiliation documents, such as employment agreements, professional services agreements, physician recruitment agreements, and clinical co-management agreements.
Anna Schuler is a member of the Spencer Fane Litigation and Dispute Resolution group. Her experience includes defending companies in disputes arising from an assortment of state and federal laws. She also gained valuable litigation experience while clerking for the Honorable Sarah L. Cave of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Melissa Sherman helps businesses in an array of industries resolve their legal issues successfully and efficiently. Her practice focuses on business litigation, eminent domain, and outside general counsel services. During her more than 15 years in law, she has gained extensive trial and appellate experience while effectively arguing her clients’ cases in state and federal courts. Whether presenting a case to a jury or facing opposing counsel at the negotiation table, Melissa is a passionate and powerful advocate for her clients.
John Utz utilizes a deep understanding of his clients’ business models to build and implement effective and legally compliant employee benefit programs and executive compensation packages. He provides services critical to success, profitability, and employee recruitment and retention. He has vast experience with more than four decades handling matters affecting pension, profit sharing, and 401(k) plans, health and welfare programs, as well as ESOPs, Section 403(b) tax-sheltered annuities, Section 457 plans, stock options, nonqualified deferred compensation, incentive pay, and severance pay.
Melinda (Mindy) Ward provides clients with a high level of efficient service and expertise in complex estate, business, and gift and tax planning issues. She is well-versed in handling wills and trusts, family limited partnerships, limited liability companies, S-corporations, irrevocable trusts, charitable trusts, and other sophisticated estate and business planning devices. In addition, Mindy advises clients in all types of fiduciary controversies, administers estates and trusts, and prepares federal and state individual, estate, gift, corporate, and generation-skipping tax returns, as well as fiduciary income tax returns for estates and trusts.
David Waters helps a diverse network of clients in the governmental, business, and health care industries successfully handle the full range of legal needs related to successful real estate transactions, ensuring projects stay on time and on budget. His broad experience includes development, transactional, contractual, planning and zoning, legislative and administrative, and health care licensing projects.
Matthew Wine is an Of Counsel in the firm’s Real Estate group. Matthew focuses his practice on commercial and residential real estate development as well as tax credit incentive financing related to commercial and affordable housing developments, state and federal regulatory counseling, financial services, and general construction and development matters.
A Fellow with the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, Dave Wing solves difficult employment problems for employers in the areas of traditional labor, human resource counseling and training, and employment litigation.
Based in the firm’s Kansas City office, Dave is a partner with the corporate practice group. Honored with his selection to Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers, Dave brings a wealth of knowledge to the firm, including experience in taxation, corporate, estates and trust, non-profit organizations, and real estate.
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