Elena Marsh

Elena's story

Elena grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, the daughter of a harbour pilot and a high-school chemistry teacher. Dinner-table arguments were a sport in the Marsh house, and she learned early that the person who had read the most usually won. She paid her way through the University of Minnesota working summers on the ore docks, which is where she says she first understood that a contract is only as good as the people who have to live under it.

She came to Chicago for law school at Northwestern and never left. Her first job was as a junior associate at a large downtown firm, where she spent three years in document review before a senior partner noticed she was the only one who had actually read the exhibits. She was second chair in a federal jury trial at twenty-nine and first chair at thirty-two.

The case that shaped her was a 2011 breach-of-contract dispute for a family-owned trucking company that had been cut off by its only customer. Everyone told the owners to settle. Elena took it to trial, won a verdict that kept 140 drivers employed, and still gets a Christmas card from the dispatcher. She joined Hale & Mercer the following year and became Managing Partner in 2019.

Elena lives in Evanston with her husband Mark, a hospital administrator, and their two teenagers. She is a trustee of the Chicago Legal Clinic and chairs the firm's pro bono committee, which she describes as the part of the job she would do for free.