Lotharius helps Quarles keep up with clients during difficult times

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Never one to settle, Amy Lotharius has eagerly taken on new duties in her position of business development manager at Quarles & Brady.

When she came to the firm 4 ½ years ago, she had spent most of her career working with the lawyers in the field of labor and employment law. At Quarles, she was asked to take on two additional practice groups – intellectual property and energy, environment and natural resources law – and two industry teams dealing with research institutions and higher education and data privacy and security.

Lotharius thrived on the variety.

“I really enjoy working with the attorneys and love learning the differences in their personalities and learning how each approaches things differently and the things I have to do to support specific practice groups,” she said.

Lotharius said much of her work involves staying in touch with Quarles’ clients to learn what they like about the firm’s services and what might be done to serve them even better. She takes part in scheduling webinars, lunch-and-learns and training sessions, and virtual roundtables with clients. She also recently helped conduct a survey of 300 of the firm’s clients.

Lotharius said an ever-fertile area of law in the past year and a half has been labor and employment. Quarles’ clients have had a never-ending series of questions on everything from policies over returning to the office to vaccine mandates and related exemptions.

Another big project has been her work to help Quarles & Brady develop a strategic plan looking five years into the future. This new plan, first tried out in individual practice groups before being extended to the firm as a whole, takes into account everything from billing and research software to staff recruitment and retention.

Having formally adopted the plan on Oct. 1, Lotharius said, the firm is now “knee deep in execution.”

“It’s been a lot of work,” she said. “But it’s totally changed how the firm operates.”