Our people · Partners & practice heads

Thomas Lindqvist

Partner, Head of Real Estate

Has closed more than a thousand property transactions and still walks every site.

“Every piece of land has a story. My job is to make sure yours is the one that's written down.”

Email: [email protected]
Direct line: +1 (312) 555-0174
Office: Chicago
With the firm since: 2010

Thomas's story

Thomas was raised on a dairy farm outside Stillwater, Minnesota, the youngest of five. His family lost sixty acres in a boundary dispute when he was fourteen because nobody had read the 1920s plat correctly. He says he has been reading plats carefully ever since.

He studied agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin and went to law school at Marquette at night while working as a title examiner. By the time he graduated he had reviewed more chains of title than most lawyers see in a career, which turned out to be the most useful thing he ever did.

The matter he is proudest of is the 2014 assembly of eleven parcels in Pilsen for a community health centre, which took two years, forty-one closings, and one very difficult conversation with a holdout owner who ultimately became the centre's first volunteer. Thomas joined Hale & Mercer in 2010 and has led the real estate group since 2015.

Thomas and his wife Karin live in Oak Park in a 1908 four-square they restored themselves over eleven summers. They have two grown daughters, one of whom is a surveyor, which he considers a personal victory.

Off duty

When Thomas isn't at the office

Fly-fishing

Fishes the Driftless streams of southwest Wisconsin, especially Timber Coulee Creek, most weekends from May to September. Ties his own flies at the kitchen table and insists a size-18 blue-winged olive solves most problems.

Restoring old houses

Has rebuilt every window sash in his 1908 home by hand and keeps a running count of removed layers of paint (currently nine). His weekend uniform is a tool belt.

Nordic skiing

Skis the American Birkebeiner every February and finished his twentieth in 2026. He trains on the Oak Park streets with roller skis, which the neighbours have stopped finding strange.

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