McDonald Hopkins is a midsize Midwest firm with 140 attorneys working out of offices in Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan, plus one in South Florida. The firm advises startups, family-owned businesses, public companies, hospitals, universities, and other business clients—including Ohio’s own Vitamix—in a wide variety of practices, including business counseling, restructuring, IP, tax, employment, litigation, and real estate.

Farm Boys Making Good

McDonald Hopkins traces its history back to Tim McDonald—who grew up on a farm and was educated in a one-room school house—opening his law practice in Cleveland, Ohio in 1930. Sixteen years later, he was joined by fellow former farm boy W. Dean Hopkins, a tax law specialist. In 1990, the firm merged with Burke, Haber & Berick, a firm founded by former Cleveland mayor Tom Burke. The mid 2000s was a period of rapid expansion for the firm, when it opened its other four offices in a three-year period.

Restructuring Wizards and Health Care Pioneers

As a full-service firm, McDonald Hopkins offers dozens of practice specialties. One notable strength is its Business Restructuring group, which the firm touts as one of the largest and most active in the Midwest. The group serves clients including private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies, family-owned businesses, private and commercial lenders, directors and officers, and high-net-worth individuals. The group’s restructuring experience runs deep across industries, especially those that are cyclical or frequently changing, such as the automotive, metals/steel, energy, and health care industries.

Speaking of health care, this is another area where the firm shines. Name partner Dean Hopkins won a landmark appellate decision in 1969 allowing professionals to incorporate and be taxed as a corporation. This decision led to a robust business of helping physicians to incorporate, the beginnings of the firm’s successful Healthcare practice group. Hopkins himself would become a lobbyist a decade later to protect the tax status granted to professional corporations by statute. Today, the Healthcare group is one of the largest in the firm and advises private practices, hospitals, laboratories, physicians networks, and other healthcare businesses in transactional, restructuring, corporate, compliance, regulatory, licensure, reimbursement, contractual, strategic planning, and venture matters.

Technologically Forward

McDonald Hopkins has always been on the forefront of adopting new technologies, being one of the first Midwest firms to adopt the IBM “power typing system” in the late 1950s. So it’s no surprise that the firm boasts one of the most well-regarded Data Privacy practices in the region. McDonald Hopkins lawyers have helped their clients respond to more than 5,000 data breach incidents in nearly every industry and around the world. The data privacy team also focuses on proactively protecting organizations' confidential data by conducting breach response workshops and training sessions for organizations and helping clients with their information security programs and incident response plans.