Hrovat proves a ‘quick fit’ at Milwaukee firm

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An attorney comfortable with mixing up the look of a community, the makeup of her own firm and tunes on the radio, Jacqueline G. Hrovat fits right in with her real estate clientele.

Hrovat, a shareholder at Milwaukee boutique business firm Mallery & Zimmerman SC, said there’s “never a dull moment” with her real estate clients, a “different breed” who let their interests and investments shake up the face of the city.

She lets her affinity for variety guide her work as the lone female shareholder of the approximately two-dozen attorneys at Mallery & Zimmerman. After mentoring a female summer associate, Hrovat successfully lobbied to bring her on as a new hire. And Hrovat’s extended that interest in diversity through Legal Action of Wisconsin and to the wider real estate community as the state’s representative in the Commercial Real Estate Women organization.

“We have to take more of a long-view on it,” she said. “Not to say you hire people just because they’re a woman. But part of having good, quality people is having a mixture.”

Among her pro bono work, Hrovat has backed a personal interest that switches it up by the minute: independent radio station, Radio Milwaukee. Hrovat worked with the firm on landing the station’s new headquarters in the city’s Fifth Ward.

A Cincinnati native, Hrovat followed through on a partial scholarship at Chicago’s John Marshall Law School in 2001, later working at DLA Piper. A change of pace brought her on as in-house as counsel at Menomonee Falls-based Continental Properties Co. Inc. until the housing market bust brought her back into private practice at Mallery & Zimmerman.

Jon Herreman, the managing shareholder at Mallery & Zimmerman, said Hrovat has been a quick fit into its real estate practice area, known for taking a business-minded approach to projects rather than ruminating on risk. And she’s done so with eagerness, even when the unknown lurks.

For example, when a tax credit provision stipulated that the deal for the Marriott hotel project in downtown Milwaukee had to close by the end of 2011, Hrovat “rolled up her sleeves” to negotiate the complicated construction monitoring, dispersal and taxation agreement between lenders and borrowers.

“We were all in here between Christmas and New Year’s, working extremely long hours under pressure,” Herreman said. “Jackie came in and did a fabulous job of picking up parts of that transaction that were critical to us getting it closed in a timely basis.”