A general practice firm at 10 North 4th Street in downtown Lafayette, founded in 1972 and in the Vater Building since 1984. Three attorneys, two long serving staff, and a client list that runs from a trailer manufacturer to a town.
The conference room at 10 North 4th Street. Most of the firm's work happens at this table, not in a courtroom.
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Gambs, Mucker & Bauman was founded in 1972. The firm's own first sentence about itself is not about results or reputation, it is that somebody picks up. That is a strange thing to lead with until you have spent a fortnight trying to get a return call from a practice three times the size, and then it is the only thing you care about.
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In 1984 the firm moved into its current offices in Lafayette's historic Vater Building, which was put up in 1879 and carries a Wabash Valley Trust plaque on the front. The wheel on the sign, and on this website, is the cast-iron rosette in its doors. Forty years at one address in a county seat is worth something practical: the courthouse, the recorder and half the businesses on the square are a walk away.
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The firm's areas are not a menu, they are one subject seen at different moments. A business buys a building. The building ends up in an estate. The estate raises a family question. In a city the size of Lafayette that arc runs through the same families and the same companies for decades, and splitting it across three firms means paying three sets of lawyers to learn the same facts.
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Three attorneys and two staff. Robert Bauman is a founding member. Keith Fafarman joined in 1991 and Pam Hermes in 1999. Beth Watts, a certified legal assistant, has been here since 1978 and Christi Lower since 1980. There is no intake department, no case number, and nobody to be handed off to, because there is nobody else in the building.
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The firm names its representative clients publicly, and the range is the point: the Mike Raisor Auto Group, the Indiana Fire Chiefs Association, the Indiana Independent Funeral Directors Association, Vanguard National Trailer Corp., the Tippecanoe County Public Library, Complete College America, and the Town of Clarks Hill. Alongside them, a great many individuals and families who are not named and should not be.
Downtown Lafayette keeps its dates on the wall. These are the Wabash Valley Trust plaques on the firm's own building and on its neighbour, and they are a fair summary of the street the office sits on.
It is the firm's own first promise about itself, and it is a low bar that a surprising number of practices do not clear. Somebody picks up, and the person who picks up can usually help.
Business, property and estates are the same subject seen at different moments. A firm that handles all three sees the whole arc rather than one frame of it, and the client is not the one carrying context between three offices.
The firm's stated commitment is that when you work with its lawyers, you can be confident they will respect your time. That means being told what a matter needs, what it does not, and when it does not need a lawyer at all.
Many clients arrive for one matter and come back years later for something unrelated. That is the firm's explicit aim, and it changes how advice gets given the first time.
The concrete version of all of this is in the practice areas, where each matter is set out step by step. The people doing it are on the team page, and the organizations the firm acts for are on the clients page.
It was founded in 1972 and moved to its current offices in the Vater Building in 1984. Both dates come from the firm's own account of itself.
Three attorneys and two staff, in one office in downtown Lafayette. So the person who answers the phone can usually help, and the person who reads your documents is the person you spoke to.
10 North 4th Street, Lafayette, Indiana 47901, in the Vater Building, a block off the courthouse square in downtown Lafayette. It is the building with the dark green doors and the wheel cast into them.
From the Lafayette office the firm serves individuals and businesses throughout Indiana. Ask on the first call about your particular county.
It is the ironwork rosette in the doors of the Vater Building, the 1879 building the firm has occupied since 1984. It is a real object photographed rather than a mark somebody designed, which is why it is slightly irregular.
Describe it in order, with the dates. You will get a straight read on whether this needs an attorney, what the work involves, and where to start.
Contacting Gambs, Mucker & Bauman does not create an attorney-client relationship, and nothing on this site is legal advice. Please do not send confidential information until a written engagement is in place.