Partner & Chairman, Bailey & Glasser, LLP
Photo by PhotoGrafix.
By Brittany McClung
“I’m more focused on doing well tomorrow than fretting about what I could have done better yesterday.”
Ben Bailey is no stranger to a challenge. From dealing with a serious injury following a car accident to leaving an established law firm to begin his own with modest resources and no clients, Bailey has been the epitome of perseverance, which has helped lead him to his current role as partner and chairman of Bailey & Glasser, LLP.
Growing up in Parkersburg, WV, Bailey would stay home from school to watch Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space launches, which inspired him to want to become an astronaut. While this dream never came to fruition, what did was getting to work for himself, something that his father always urged him to do. Bailey credits his father as one of his mentors, not only as a businessman but as a father and husband. Bailey’s parents, Bob and Penny, were happily married for nearly 70 years and instilled a strong sense of love and family in him and his three siblings, Brent, Ann and Matt.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics from Washington and Lee University, Bailey decided to forgo his admission to law school and began working at the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, VA. He found passion in his work there, but after the grant money ran out, he found himself looking for other opportunities. He then decided to reapply to Harvard Law School. The summer following his first year of law school, Bailey suffered injuries from a car accident that left him to spend three months in traction and three years on crutches and a cane. He took a year off and then returned while finishing up physical therapy, graduating in 1980.
While Bailey was faced with trying challenges during his time in law school, he still found moments of joy to cling to—like being in class with intelligent individuals, learning from professors who were geniuses in their own right and making lifelong friends, including Arthur Bryant, who is his law partner in his Oakland, CA, office.
As Bailey was still recuperating from his accident, he worked for a small, two-person law firm, which piqued his interest in coming back to West Virginia. Upon his return to the Mountain State, he clerked for Judge John Copenhaver in Charleston, while wondering if West Virginia had a place for him.
Bailey then took a job in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where he prosecuted federal criminal cases with an emphasis on fraudulent coal tax shelters for two years. It was this job that convinced him to try cases for a living. After his plans to try a long tax case all summer fell flat due to the defendant having a heart attack, his friends urged him to apply to work on Arch Moore’s ongoing campaign for governor, to which he was hired. Following Moore’s victory, Bailey went into state government as his counsel for the next four years. When Moore lost the next election, Bailey was back to the drawing board but gained a better understanding of patience and strength from the experience. He then spent the next 10 years at Bowles Rice in Charleston. It was after his time there that he decided to start his own firm with partner Brian Glasser.
During those unprecedented and explorative opportunities, lessons awaited Bailey that later became the building blocks for the next steps in his career.
In his current role as a trial lawyer, he tries cases for plaintiffs and defendants.
“This has always been the area of the law that has interested me—the combination of the competition, the intellectual challenges and the opportunities to help real people and real clients solve problems that can change their lives,” Bailey says.
Bailey spends time dealing with the operation and management of the firm, including decisions about hiring good lawyers and expanding their offices. While his favorite part of the work he does is appearing in court and working on individual cases, such as the COVID-19 hearings at the beginning of the pandemic, Bailey also enjoys deciding what cases and areas of practice they are going to develop and working with their younger lawyers to make them better at what they do.
He also spends time as a member of the advisory committee to the new West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals; a West Virginia Bar Foundation Fellow; and board member for the Public Justice Foundation, a national public interest firm.
His impact on the legal industry has been inspiring and promising. What started out as two lawyers and partners in 1999 has grown to 90 lawyers today, with offices across the country. The firm’s reputation has spread across the country due to its work on cases such as the Volkswagen emissions scandal and the Johnson & Johnson Talc bankruptcy. The firm is also well-known throughout West Virginia for its work on the mountaintop removal cases of 20 years ago and for every governor since 1999 and other high-profile businesses and individuals.
However, as a firm, Bailey believes their biggest impact has been on the lives of their clients and their businesses, which was always the goal.
“We’ve been a part of their successes, which is all a lawyer can really ask. Our firm’s work has made it possible for me, and us, to try to make our communities better places to live and work,” he says.
Bailey serves on the Public Justice Foundation board as well as serving as chairman of the board of Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s nonprofit and non-partisan news source. He says this work is important to him because the organizations fill huge gaps in the public-interest legal space and the local news gathering landscape, respectively.
“The things that keep me going are the competition and the strategy that goes into making the best case you can for your client, the art and precision of writing a convincing argument for a court, the incredible variety of the issues I get involved in and the satisfaction I get out of doing a good job for people who’ve put their trust in us to handle their most consequential problems,” he says.
Through the challenges, learning opportunities and moments of growth, each experience shapes Bailey’s judgment.
“All of my experiences have convinced me that you have to keep moving ahead and not spend an inordinate amount of time looking back and second guessing the decisions you made,” he says.
Bailey still lives in Charleston today with his wife, Sarah, and their daughters. He enjoys being able to work on fascinating cases across the country, while being six minutes from the office and able to get to his kids’ soccer games or gymnastics meets.
“The Charleston community has been kind and generous and open to me since I first came here, and I’m grateful for that,” he says.
