Return to Virginia Business - December 2001

Family Law - Andrea R. Stiles
Williams Mullen
Richmond

by Marjolijn Bijlefeld

Andrea R. Stiles starts each day with a personal challenge: do something positive to change someone’s life. That’s not always easy in her line of work – the emotionally charged and often acrimonious field of family law. Mindful that she can put out small fires quickly, she gives clients her direct number and answers her own phone at the Richmond-based firm of Williams Mullen. She counsels divorcing parents not to use their children as weapons in their fight. They should instead be made to feel secure during the gut-wrenching time of upheaval. "My goal is to rebuild and salvage a dysfunctional family and turn it into a workable family that doesn’t live together."

Photo by Joe Mahoney

Part of her motivation for negotiating the most practical plan for a divorcing family comes from watching her own parents go through an impractical divorce when she was 10. Her father was required to pay only minimal child support while her mother kept the huge waterfront house. At that time, her mother had four children and, despite a college education, no work experience. "We went from upper middle class to not having enough money to put food on the table. I’ve looked back on it and wondered if my mother’s attorney was driving with his eyes open. She relied on his guidance," says Stiles.

That’s when Stiles became determined to develop a career, which would provide her financial independence. She now has that and more. The stability of her own household — she and her husband have two young children — provides a needed respite from the bitterness she sees around her every day, she says. That’s tremendously important because family law "is a hard practice area. It’s all consuming and it never leaves you alone. You have to acquire a temperament for family law. So many attorneys either get burned out or so exasperated they can’t function."

Stiles grew up in Florida but sought a place to start the new chapter of her life, beginning with law school. She chose Richmond. She graduated the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond in 1986. She joined the firm immediately after and was assigned to partner Bob Eicher and his general civil litigation practice. Through him, Stiles gained exposure to wills, trusts, estates and other areas that have come in handy. Eicher recalls a time when he started practicing in 1965 that divorce lawyers drew more criticism than compliments. "But divorce lawyers in this time have to know about equitable distribution, wills, trust, estates, qualified pension plans. It’s sophisticated stuff and requires real expertise," he says.

It also requires a certain kind of personality, says Eicher, who has stopped doing domestic cases. "The nature of the work takes an emotional toll. In a garden-variety breach of contract case, if you’re representing corporations, you don’t have the same level of emotional context. In my mind, it’s an added burden on practicing law," he says.

What makes Stiles such a good family lawyer, he adds, is her "holistic process. It’s not just a case, but also a human being. She worries about those people, not just that they’re taken care of from a legal perspective, but how they’re coping and how the children are coping."

Retired Judge Robert Harris, who has mediated 1,100 cases since he retired from Circuit Court in Richmond in 1995, says Stiles "does as well for her clients as any lawyer that mediates with me — and better than most." He says that’s because "she’s more than an advocate; she’s a counselor. She tries to advise her client on what is in that client’s best interest. Sometimes it’s best to settle a case rather than go full steam ahead and litigate. The better lawyers like Andrea will help a client weigh the cost, risk and stress of litigation," he says. Whether they settle or go to litigation, "They feel that they’re well represented. She’s a savvy lawyer," he says.

Stiles has sought another outlet for her energy by recently joining the advisory board of the Massey Cancer Center. While the tragic events of September 11 are still on everyone’s mind, "cancer is much more pervasive. There’s a far greater likelihood that you or someone you know will develop cancer than that they’ll receive a letter with anthrax," she says. "We can cure cancer if we put our energies to it, and that’s why I’m picking up all my extra marbles and putting them in that bag," she says.