Kemp, Schaeffer & Rowe

Focus and practice areas

Kemp, Schaeffer & Rowe covers a wide span of civil legal work from one office in Columbus, Ohio. The firm dates to 1977. Its clients come from Columbus, Central Ohio and Franklin County.

Five groupings organize the work: family law, estate planning, employment and personal injury, commercial and business law, and mediation. Family law here includes divorce, child custody, alimony and prenuptial agreements. The estate planning side handles wills, trusts, living wills, probate administration and probate litigation.

The commercial list runs deeper than most general practices of this size. It includes banking law, business and corporate law, business debt restructuring, commercial real estate, construction law, creditors' rights and litigation. Personal injury and insurance matters sit alongside that. Employment and labor law rounds it out.

How the team is built

The firm publishes a roster with partner and associate titles. Steven D. Rowe is a founder and partner. He co-founded the firm with the late Harold R. Kemp. The site notes that Rowe grew up as the son of a preacher. Michael N. Schaeffer is listed as a founder and retired partner.

Partners and their fields

Erica Ann Probst is a partner whose practice covers labor and employment, appeals, litigation, education law, banking, bankruptcy, commercial law, civil rights and construction matters. She earned a B.A. from Indiana University in 1996 and a J.D. from Indiana University in 1999.

Julia L. Leveridge is a partner working in family law. Her matters involve spousal support, property distribution, custody and shared parenting, child support and other domestic relations questions. She earned a B.A. from the University of Kentucky in 1997 and a J.D. from Capital University Law School in 2000.

Michael P. Ferguson is a partner handling personal injury, litigation, estate planning, insurance, and trust and probate matters. He earned his J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law and attended Miami University before that. Scott N. Schaeffer is a partner who earned a Bachelor of Science from Miami University in 1999 and a J.D. from the Ohio State Moritz College of Law in 2006. He worked as a senior consultant with Hitachi Consulting, formerly Experio Solutions, advising businesses on sales, business process and customer service questions before he went to law school.

The associate bench

Andrea L. Salvino focuses on employment and labor matters and civil litigation. Daniel A. Yarmesch handles general litigation, civil litigation and business litigation. Justin Kennedy works on mergers and acquisitions, estate planning and probate, business and corporate law, and closely held business matters.

Juliana Harris, Victoria Heard and Sydney Bradley are also listed as associates. The site gives their titles without describing their practice fields. Legal staff support the attorney roster.

In my opinion, the useful signal in this roster is the match between named attorneys and named practice areas. A reader with a custody question can see who does custody. A reader with an employment claim can see two names, one partner and one associate, working that field. Many firm websites list practice areas and attorneys on separate pages with no connection drawn between them.

What Ohio practice in these areas involves

Some general context helps readers judge whether a firm's mix fits their situation. The notes below describe how these matters usually proceed in Ohio. They are not claims about outcomes at this firm.

Divorce and custody

Ohio divorces and dissolutions go through the domestic relations division of the county common pleas court. In Franklin County that division sits in Columbus. Parties file financial affidavits early. Property distribution, spousal support and child support each follow their own statutory framework, and child support runs off a state worksheet with income inputs from both parents.

Shared parenting plans get filed and approved by the court. A contested custody case can involve a guardian ad litem, a custody evaluation, or both. Prenuptial agreements come up before any of this and get tested later if a marriage ends. A firm that handles prenuptial drafting and divorce litigation sees both ends of that arc.

Probate and estate administration

Ohio probate runs through a separate probate court in each county. An executor or administrator files the will, inventories assets, notifies creditors and files accountings. Trusts drafted during life can keep assets out of that process. Living wills and healthcare directives cover a different problem: medical decisions while a person is alive and unable to speak for themselves.

Probate litigation is its own category. Will contests, fiduciary disputes and claims against an estate follow adversarial procedure inside the probate court. KSR lists both probate administration and probate litigation, so the firm handles the uncontested filings and the fights.

Employment and commercial matters

Ohio employment claims often start with an administrative charge before a lawsuit is possible. Discrimination claims typically go to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission or the federal EEOC first. Wage and hour claims follow a different route. Deadlines in this area are short and vary by claim type.

Commercial disputes turn on documents. Loan agreements, construction contracts, operating agreements and purchase agreements set the terms a court will apply. Creditors' rights work and business debt restructuring both deal with a company under financial pressure, from opposite sides of the table.

What the record shows

The firm has operated under the Kemp, Schaeffer & Rowe name since 1977, with the KSR shorthand used across its own pages. That is close to five decades of continuous practice in the same city. Both founders appear on the site, one of them as a current partner and one as the late Harold R. Kemp.

The site publishes education details for four of its partners. Degree years, schools and prior careers appear where the firm chose to include them. Several associates are listed by name and title without further detail. As a reviewer, I treat published credentials as verifiable and treat their absence as silence, nothing more.

Geographic scope

KSR describes its service area as Columbus, Central Ohio and Franklin County. One office, one metropolitan area. For domestic relations and probate work, that concentration has practical value: the courts, the magistrates and the local procedure stay the same across cases.

Who this firm suits

The practice mix points toward individuals and small to mid-sized businesses in Central Ohio. Someone facing a divorce, drafting a will, dealing with an estate after a death, bringing an employment claim, or restructuring business debt will find a named attorney at KSR working in that area.

Mediation appears as its own listed service. That matters for parties who want a resolution without a full trial, particularly in family matters where an ongoing relationship between the parties survives the case.

What the site does not publish is worth stating plainly. There are no case results, no client counts, no rankings and no bar admission dates. In my opinion, a firm listing its attorneys with their actual degrees and practice fields gives a reader more usable information than a page of superlatives would. Kemp, Schaeffer & Rowe has twelve attorneys named on its roster, including one retired founder, working across five practice groupings from a single Columbus office.