Understanding Mechanics Liens and Construction Law with Mark Grzymala

Good morning, Laura. It’s great to be here today.

So, journey into law kind of started in high school when I was kind of going back and forth on what I wanted to do. Um, my parents were a little bit of a, not a little bit, but they were a pretty big influence on me. Um, I knew also, I, my decision to go into law also comes from a deep, um, Desire to help people, help people solve their problems. I’ve always been a helpful person, so to speak. Um, but my parents, they were always, um, they were successful, small business owners. They own different businesses. And I kind of liked the whole concept of, you know, being in control of like your own destiny and things. Um, and again, combined that with helping people.

And also working with my parents in their small business, I was able to learn kind of the intricacies of how small business works, even though I was still like in high school, college, relatively, you know, still young and naive. Um, I, I did learn how, you know, what they need to do with respect, like marketing and how to do, how to manage employees, how to just generally manage the businesses itself.

So it was a really good experience for me. Um, so then when I went to college, I went to University of Illinois in Champaign Urbana. I went on what’s called like a prelaw track, and I basically majored in, um, political science with a minor in, um, business real estate in the school of business at UIUC.

Right. It did. It definitely did. Um, and then plus my father was, he dabbled a little bit in construction. He was a general contractor, just minor things but also even as silly as it sounds, even helping him like fixing things around the house or like helping other people fix things kind of got me. And I learned a lot about just the basics of construction, I guess, and how things work. And that kind of helped me in my future path when I ended up being a construction or developed into a construction attorney.

Sure. So, I’ve been licensed to practice since, since 2001. I had been working for a couple of different law firms, but the focus on those firms was in construction litigation, basically ultimately helping contractors get paid for their hard work.

That was sort of our tagline throughout the whole thing process. So we worked with a lot of subcontractors, material suppliers, Ranging from like Fortune 500 companies down to small businesses, they come to us when they have payment issues or if there’s accusations of like delay or design issues or defect issues and would help resolve them, so that was my, um, experience up until 2015 when I decided I wanted to go off on my own and I started my law firm, Grzymala Law Offices, EC. We’re a small law firm based in Skokie. I’ve got two other attorneys working with me. It’s a great practice. And again, our focus is we are a commercial litigation firm, but our focus again, is on construction, construction law, um, representing clients and matters, not just on the litigation end, but we also help with contract drafting and negotiation, um, mechanics, things, um, private and public projects, um, foreclosure actions, municipal code violations.

Sometimes collections for contractors just straight up without any lien work or just Straight up reach a contract actions And then if anything comes up in bankruptcy or we we assist our clients with that as well and again with my current practice our clients do range from the Small business owner to the fortune 500 company and you know, we treat you know Our goal is to you know Get the best results we can for our clients and that our clients receive value for the work That we do.

Again, I think it’s our drive to give clients value for our services, plus I’m crazy experienced with mechanics lien work and mechanics scene is basically let me just go into that briefly so you understand what we’re talking about. Um, when a contractor is not paid on a project, Um, they have rights against the pro and they’ve done improvements and they’re not being paid by the owner or by the general contractor, they have a right against the property and what they can do is file what’s called mechanics lien against the property that details the work performed, the balance due, um, who owes them the money and it goes against that property’s title.

So if it’s in the property’s title, the owner cannot then sell the property, for instance, or refinance their property or otherwise convey it. Without resolving that lien claim. Um, the owner can do something like bonding over it for instance, but that’s rare. And in most cases the you know, the lien claim has to be resolved once it once push comes to shove Um, if there is no closing or anything or conveyance then the contractor has a right to foreclose on the property So like with a mortgage, you don’t pay a mortgage on time The bank comes and files an action and takes your house away same thing with uh mechanics lien action.

You can go ahead and foreclose on the property have it sold at a share sale and then um And then you get the client would get the proceeds from that sale. So it makes us different is that I, guess I’m very experienced with mechanic’s lien work. I, you know, we, we have a great blog on our website. We blog frequently on mechanics lien issues and construction issues. Um, I’m a frequent speaker on construction law topics. I’m also a published author. I’ve drafted a couple of chapters in the Illinois construction law manual. Um, for West publishing. Um, I also present seminars and do other things too, to not just increase my knowledge of my work, but also to share what I know and to help contractors on every level that I can.

I’m also active in the construction community whereas there was an organisation called the American, I’m sorry, the association of subcontractors and affiliates, which is the largest commercial subcontractor organisation in the Chicagoland area. Uh, And I probably serve on the board of directors on that organisation. So again, that I continue to develop my, I get to hear what’s going on on the ground, in the business and on different projects, what’s happening and it helps me work better with my clients.

That’s a great question because I think ultimately you want to work up to that referral and repeat business. Um, and that takes some time though, right? It’s not instant. Even though I had a good reputation when I started my firm, I was still pretty fresh. So at that time I, you know, I, and I still do this sometimes.

I, well, I definitely went to a lot of marketing events. I, uh, networking events rather. I joined different organisations, got on boards. Again, we kept a really good, have a really good website that has a wealth of information on it. Um, and just, you know, obviously meeting other people for lunches and things and just, you know, either the prospective clients or other attorneys. Because with my practice, we’re very specialised with this construction area, construction law, rather than mechanics liens, most other attorneys don’t handle this. So when they have an issue, I’ve got enough reputation. They contact us either for helpful or they refer their clients to us. Um, we kind of stand out where like, we just focus just on that.

We don’t focus on any of the practice areas. We don’t do like, you know, criminal defence or divorce law, which those are very important practices, but we just focus on our construction and we just try to be the best that we can at that. And as opposed to other marketing things, again, like blog posts, social media, but that kind of gets less and less as the firm grows, right? Cause then we’re. First, you start off with all that stuff, the networking that becomes very important and all that, and then as you get your reputation, build a reputation, there’s less of that and more of the referral source. At the same time, though, you still need to keep in contact with people, you still need to go to networking events, just to, because you still, there’s still a lot of work that I put in and I don’t want to lose those connections.

Another great marketing tool that we’ve launched recently in the past year is a monthly newsletter that we send to like existing or former or prospective clients and other attorneys and other friends and which is basically links to our articles on the, um, on our website. And it’s a good way to keep us top of mind to people because it goes out once a month, which I think is enough.

It’s not too obnoxious. I know sometimes people get sick of being bombarded with things so we try to do it once a month. I get a lot of compliments. I’m really surprised that people really like it.

Well, the biggest challenge is obviously taking that first jump and starting to hire people to work for you because you have to make sure you have enough work, you have enough capital, you know, enough work to keep them busy, enough capital to actually want to pay the people that work for you.

Um, so that’s always like a scary first step. Um, and then also finding quality people that you work well with and that you have a good relationship with, you have good camaraderie within the office because it’s still a small firm. It’s just right now, it’s just the two of us in the office today. You know, we have to, you know, we, we get along really well and everything. And that’s always important. Um, but yeah, that’s always a big, that was like my biggest hurdle. Um, you know, another challenge too, is just trying to keep things balanced where we’re not overwhelmed with work. And cause you know, if we have too much work, then we’re not giving all the clients the proper attention.

So, There’s always a, uh, a challenge of keeping a balance in the firm where we have, you know, certain cases get resolved, get settled, or we go to trial, then we’re finished with them. We also want to make sure we have new things coming in too, right? But then we can’t just take everything because then we get too overwhelmed so that keeping that balance of things coming in and out is always an ongoing challenge.

So speaking of balance, I think I’ve finally kind of found that balance. I’m doing pretty good with it, but I think eventually we might want to, you know, expand a little bit, maybe bring on another attorney in the next two, three years, but I’m not sure yet right now. We’re pretty successful. Our clients are happy. We’re getting good results. And again, we have a good balance with what’s going on right now and taking that other next step might, I just right now I want to keep the status quo.

Thank you, Laura. I appreciate the kind words. And it was a pleasure speaking with you this morning.

Thank you. You too.