Headquarters | Cincinnati, Ohio |
---|---|
No. of offices | 21 |
No. of attorneys | 650+ (2016) |
Major practice areas | General practice |
Key people | George H. Vincent, Managing Partner and Chairman of the Board of Directors |
Date founded | 1908 |
Founder | Frank Dinsmore & Walter Shohl |
Company type | Limited liability partnership |
Website | www.dinsmore.com |
Dinsmore is a large U.S. law firm headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is an AmLaw 200 and National Law Journal 250 firm, and has been named to the U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers Best Law Firm lists. The firm consists of more than 650 attorneys practicing in 23 cities throughout Ohio, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Washington D.C.
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP was founded in 1908 by Frank Dinsmore, a graduate of Cincinnati Law School (now known as University of Cincinnati College of Law). In 1912, he invited Walter Shohl, a graduate of Harvard Law School to join the firm.
The partners took a leading role in two of the most sensational trials in Cincinnati history: the criminal trials of George B. Cox for violation of state banking laws. In the country's notorious era of "bossism," Cox controlled 25,000 votes in Cincinnati, one of America's largest cities at the time. Historians claim that "no one in Cincinnati could hope to hold office without Cox's approval - even presidents vied for his approval." The state of Ohio charged Cox and 10 other former directors and officials of Cox's defunct bank, the Cincinnati Trust Co., with willful misapplication of bank funds and other charges. In two trials during the summer of 1913, Dinsmore and Shohl won acquittals for Cox on all charges.
Ironically, 73 years after the Cox trials, the firm ended up on the other side of Ohio's misapplication of bank funds statute. The firm's lawyers took the lead in prosecuting the criminal trial following the collapse of Home State Savings Bank of Cincinnati in the great savings and loan crisis. Ohio Attorney General Anthony Celebrezze, Jr. appointed Lawrence Kane as Special Prosecutor to convene a grand jury and investigate the Home State collapse. Kane and a team of the firm's lawyers successfully prosecuted the criminal charges in what was, at that time, the longest criminal trial in Hamilton County history, stretching from November 1986 to March 1987. Local financier Marvin Warner, a former Ambassador to Switzerland, was among those found guilty and sent to prison.