by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Kelly Mathis certainly expects to be remembered for more than running a marathon in a suit.
His smile at the memory, though, is unmistakable. It says he got a kick out of doing it.
“I did that as publicity for the Law Day Run,” he said. “I was chairman of the Run, probably eight, nine years ago, and somebody said, ‘I dare you to run in a suit.’
“I said OK.”
The get-up may have been a stunt; running is not.
“As a lawyer, you sit so much, you’ve got to do something. I’ve got to exercise. If I go too long, I start to get antsy.”
He also needs to compete in the courtroom.
“You’ve got to give 100 percent,” said Mathis. “It’s not just you that’s at stake. It’s the reputation of the client. It’s the money of the client, their faith in the system.
“There’s a lot riding on each decision.”
Mathis was born in Tampa and grew up in Brooksville. Going away to school broadened his horizons considerably.
“I went to college (at Florida State) and said, ‘Wow, there’s a great big world out here,’ ” he said. “That’s something you don’t experience as a small-town resident growing up. You’re very limited.
“It was a great place to grow up. But when I got away to college, it kind of opened my eyes.”
As a young fellow, Mathis wasn’t given to visions of himself walking point down to the OK Corral or playing golf on the moon.
“In elementary school, I decided I wanted to be a doctor or lawyer. And I didn’t like blood,” he said. “Now, of course, I do a lot of medical malpractice defense.”
Mathis is a descendent of people who farmed in the mountains of Alabama. He learned the value of a good education from his father.
“My dad was one of the older boys in the family, and he had to drop out of school in eighth grade to work on a farm,” said Mathis. “He always emphasized education, although he didn’t have that background. I guess that’s why he recognized the importance of it.”
Mathis majored in political science at FSU and went to law school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
“At that point, I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay in Florida,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I went to Vanderbilt. Somebody suggested that if I was going to look outside the state for jobs it wouldn’t be real good to go to a Florida law school.”
He decided to come back to Florida after graduation and narrowed the choices to Orlando and Jacksonville. An offer from Gallagher, Balmer, Bradford, Cannon and Walters brought him here.
After five years, he went with Gobelman and Love, which became Gobelman, Love, Gavin, Blazs and Mathis. Late last year, he made the decision to go solo.
He recognized that it could be a risky proposition, but one that was well worth the risk.
“It is a leap of faith,” said Mathis, too relaxed to have suffered much anxiety. “You’ve got to kind of hold your nose, close your eyes and jump. And hope for the best.
“Somebody once told me if you want to hit a home run, you‘ve got to swing hard. I talked to several solo practitioners and people in smaller firms, and it seemed like a good idea.
“I figured I was young enough to build my own firm up, yet experienced enough to do the work.”
What difficulties there are have come from an unexpected quarter.
“Now I’ve got to focus on things like administration and writing checks and paying bills,” he said. “I’ve got to be the strategic planner, the marketing expert and decide what to do when the copier breaks. And practice law, too.”
Mathis does a lot of business litigation (what used to be called commercial litigation) and medical malpractice defense. But that’s not quite the whole story.
When he was a young lawyer, he asked an older practitioner what kind of law he focused on:
“He said, ‘I practice door law,’ ” Mathis recalled. “I had no idea what he meant, and I was too embarrassed to ask him. I found out later that ‘door law’ means doing anything that comes through the door.
“I’m not down to doing door law yet, but I probably could name five cases that I’ve turned down.”
Mathis and a legal assistant work out of his office on the 12th floor of the Wachovia Building. His hope is to build a medium-sized firm, adding another attorney from time to time.
He knows the competitiveness of it all is what made the law a magnet. But that’s not the only reason.
“Part of it is can you outwork and outsmart the other attorney,” he said. “It’s also . . . like being a sherpa, guiding clients through an intricate process.
“But, most important, you want to prevail for a just cause. If you have a client that has a problem that needs a resolution, you want to give them a favorable resolution.
“If you can’t, they don’t need you.”