The next step in Tom Barr’s 40-year law career is bringing him back to the beginning, in the same place he has called home for almost four decades.

Barr knows the people in Brown County. He has represented them, worked with them, developed friendships with them and has sought help from them.

This month, he is closing his private practice. Beginning Jan. 1, he will become chief deputy prosecutor under Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams.

The current chief deputy, Andy Szakaly, is leaving the post after one year to focus more on volunteer work and offer legal help out of his own practice.

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Barr came to Brown County in the mid-1970s when he started clerking for former Judge Dave Woods during his second year of law school.

That’s also when he met former Judge Sam Rosen, who would fill in for Woods, along with attorneys James T. Roberts and Szakaly, who were serving as prosecutor and chief deputy prosecutor at the time.

After school, Barr worked the first two years of his career at a small firm in Indianapolis. He moved to Brown County during that time and commuted.

After a court hearing one Saturday, Rosen told him that the prosecutor needed a new chief deputy and he thought he would be perfect for it. So, Barr interviewed for the job, and he got it at 27 years old.

Since the job was part-time, Barr could still establish a private practice.

“That’s how it all started,” Barr said, surrounded by shelves of law books in the upstairs conference room of his office on West Main Street.

Downstairs, a framed quote from Abraham Lincoln hangs above the water cooler: “A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade,” it reads.

When most clients walk into Thomas M. Barr & Associates, they have reached the end of their rope, Barr said. Their lives are in turmoil. They’ve used up all their resources and need help.

“We have been what stands between these people and sometimes utter devastation in their lives,” he said.

“Your freedom, your livelihood, your ability to work, all of those things, that’s a pressure. We’ve always taken it very seriously. We try to approach this like, ‘Walk a mile in your shoes. Try to step into this person’s shoes and really see what they’re going through.’”

“You get attached to people,” said office administrator April Barr, Tom Barr’s wife.

“They’ll come back and visit or say things like, ‘Thank you so much. You helped me.’ … You go through sometimes a couple of years (with them).”

Lucky guy

Not many couples can say that they met during a murder trial.

Tom and April did. “She was not the defendant,” Tom said with a laugh.

The couple met in 1984 in Brown Circuit Court. April was there with her friend, Nancy Woods, who was watching her husband, Dave Woods, try the case.

Nancy was ready to be a matchmaker. During a break, Tom made a beeline for her. “I said, ‘Nancy, who is the blonde?’ She said, ‘I knew you were going to ask and I’ve got her number,” Tom said.

Two weeks later he gave April a call. “I had another date, and I canceled that date to go out with him,” she said.

They’ve been together ever since. Rosen married the couple in 1985.

April was a nurse when they met. When their son, Matt, was born, she began working in Tom’s law office, which was in the Professional Building at Main and Van Buren streets for the first 10 years.

The couple had two children, son Matt and daughter Andrea, and now two grandchildren, 10-year-old Justin and 8-year-old Micah.

“We’re really lucky to be able to live here in Brown County, in this amazing community and to practice law here — just to meet so many neat people, become friends with them over the years,” Tom said.

He’s going to miss that.

“Whenever we go someplace and meet new people, maybe on vacation, they ask you what you do … just to be able to say, ‘I’m a lawyer and I have my own practice in Brown County, Indiana,’” he trailed off, as tears filled his eyes.

Growing up, he never wanted to be anything but a lawyer.

“Lawyers kind of get a bad rap, but the vast majority are just really bright and funny people,” he said.

He knows most of the phone numbers of other local professionals by heart.

“All of those relationships kind of keep you in it,” he said. “I think the other thing is the challenge of it.

“To have a new client come in, get the facts and then start applying the law, plotting a strategy on how you’re going to proceed with this case, what kind of investigation are going to have to do? What kind of discovery are we going to do?” Tom said.

“Then executing the plan, then going through and getting a good result for our client in the end in a settlement or trial … that keeps you going.”

Next chapter

Thomas M. Barr & Associates stopped taking new cases in October.

This is the last week the office will be open.

“Now the phone has been ringing still, and now we’re turning away criminal cases,” Tom said earlier this month.

“It’s so against what I have been doing for 31 years,” April added.

“People come in here and crying, ‘No! You’ve been my lawyer all of these years. You can’t! What am I going to do? Will you please just do this one thing?’ That’s hard.”

April said the firm has been doing mediation to wrap up existing cases. The firm is referring clients in cases that won’t wrap before the end of the year to other attorneys in Brown and surrounding counties.

At the firm’s “peak,” Thomas M. Barr & Associates had three full-time lawyers working out of the office — including his son, Matt Barr, and Dave Grupenhoff.

“It was buzzing. We had people coming and going all the time,” he said.

To his knowledge, it was the largest law firm in Brown County.

During the last month, April and legal assistant Rita Lane were all that remained. Matt Barr left the practice in August and now works for a firm in Indianapolis.

Tom’s main area of practice is litigation: criminal, family and personal injury law. Grupenhoff and Matt Barr had been doing wills, estates, trusts and real estate.

The couple plan to hold onto the building for the foreseeable future. They also plan to keep their email address, post office box and phone number the same for clients who may need files.

April said she looks forward to taking a break, getting a new Boston Terrier puppy, remodeling rooms in their home and getting back to painting. She also has a long list of books she wants to read.

She said she may return to work a few days a week using her nursing experience.

Tom said he’s been thinking about his next chapter for a long time. It started to take shape when Adams was elected prosecutor.

“It has been my goal to appoint chief deputies with not only a tremendous amount of experience, but also folks who are known commodities to our Brown County community,” Adams said in an email.

Adams and Tom Barr are both from Ossian, Indiana. They even attended the same high school, Norwell High School, and have some common childhood experiences though they graduated decades apart.

Adams remembers when his church bought a Barr family house and moved it near the high school. “Seeing Mr. Barr’s home transported on huge trailers and traveling very slowly down the road was met with great fanfare in the community,” Adams said.

“Who knew that our paths would cross later on in life?” he said.

The move to chief deputy prosecutor brings Barr’s career full circle.

After working defense for many years, sitting on the other side will take some getting used to. He was reminded of that when attending a prosecutor’s conference recently.

“They were telling us how a case came out and, ‘In this case, the motion to suppress was denied.’ Then you realize, ‘Oh that’s supposed to be a good thing,’” he joked.

“I am not going to change the degree of my advocacy. I am just representing the state now instead of the defendant.”

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Current chief deputy prosecutor Andy Szakaly will leave his position at the beginning of next year when local attorney Tom Barr will take over.

“I want to thank Prosecutor Ted Adams for giving me the opportunity to again serve in the prosecutor’s office. I also want to thank my friends and clients for supporting me in the practice of law for the past 42 years,” Szakaly said in an email statement Dec. 18.

“I look forward to continuing to help them solve their legal problems and to spending more time giving back to our community through volunteer work.”

Szakaly said he has spent the majority of his 42 years practicing law in Brown County. He first came to the county as a work study student/intern in Jim Roberts’ law office while he was a law student.

Szakaly said he has not yet determined where his physical law office will be next year. He said he does have ownership interest in the Abbey Inn, the Sweetheart cabin and the Hickory Shades Motel.

He is also the registered agent for the Maple Leaf Building Corporation. He said he will be the person who will receive mail for the organization.

After leaving the prosecutor’s office, Szakaly said he hopes to spend time volunteering with Mother’s Cupboard food pantry and soup kitchen. He said he also plans to provide “free legal advice” in cooperation with the Brown County Bar Association.

Adams said that it is with “mixed emotions” that he announces Szakaly’s retirement from his office.

“Mr. Szakaly served as both chief deputy in this office in the 1970s, and as the elected prosecuting attorney from 1987-1990. It was an honor and a privilege to serve with him at the end of his prominent career,” Adams said.

“I wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

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