Their interests are about as diverse as a pair of colleagues can have.
One’s an amateur beekeeper. The other is a confessed “tinkerer,” willing to work on anything from cars to remodeled bathrooms.
But for Daniel Smith and Cliff Lee, both relative newcomers to Allen County, joining the world of law carries a singular goal — being able to help people.
Smith, a native of Eldon, Mo., joined Bret Heim’s law office in Iola in October 2021. Lee, a Neodesha native, joined the firm a year later.
“I like helping people solve their problems,” said Lee, 32. “Beyond that, I enjoy being in court. … I enjoy meeting new people, hearing about their lives and what’s going on, and
helping them come up with sometimes very straight forward solutions, sometimes creative solutions, to solving their problems.”
Smith agreed.
“The moments that are most enjoyable are when you can truly help someone and see those results,” Smith said. “But I also enjoy the competitiveness of (being a lawyer), the adversarial system.”
SMITH, 32, grew up fostering a love of the law.
In college, he also fostered aspirations of getting into politics, “but not so much any more,” he chuckled. I graduated a semester early and interned at the Capitol in Missouri. After I saw ‘behind the curtain,’ I wasn’t as inspired.”
But his love of the law remained.
After earning his law degree at Washburn in 2016, Smith worked for the Kansas Court of Appeals in Topeka for two years before taking a job in Chanute in 2018, and then to Heim Law Offices in 2021.
Conversely, Lee wasn’t always intent on a career as an attorney.
In fact, he attended school at Coffeyville Community College on a theater scholarship before moving on to Washburn, both for his undergraduate and then law degrees.
“I’d always had an interest in government and social studies, that sort of thing,” Lee said. “The older I got, the more I became interested in the law.”
