Bruce Gaynor was convinced he was headed for a long career in academia. He’d graduated law school at Cleveland State then spent time teaching at Ohio University and working as an assistant dean and lecturer at Syracuse University School of Law. He’d even been accepted into a graduate fellowship program at Yale Law School. But a year into the program, Gaynor came back to Cleveland for the holidays and ran into an old law school friend, who invited him to a Christmas party. A few beers later, Gaynor decided to drop his entire academic career plans and instead join his friend in private practice. “It was one of the few times in my life that I made a sudden life-changing decision on a whim,” he says. In Cleveland, Gaynor was instrumental in the development of Legacy Village and represented the city of Cleveland in its dealings with Forest City over a planned downtown convention center.
“The youthful environment. College campuses are an exciting place to be.”
“The pay.”
Gaynor’s mother had no problem with his decision to leave Yale. “She was delighted to have me come home. Even more so when I moved back in with her.”
He counts his work on Legacy Village as one of his favorite accomplishments. “Oftentimes real estate lawyers do transactions but never get to see the actual development built because they’re in different states or a different part of town. To be a part of something that is part of my lifestyle — I shop at Legacy, I eat at Legacy — is incredibly fulfilling.”
Gaynor has his wife, fellow Leading Lawyer Patricia O’Donnell , to thank for his career as a real estate lawyer. “When I came back to Cleveland, I worked in a small practice. We had a good time, but it wasn’t very successful financially.” O’Donnell encouraged him to look into real estate law. “It’s profitable, and you’d be good at it,” she told him. So he sent a résumé to Developers Diversified. “They were silly enough to hire me.”
“Patty does,” he says. “Definitely.”
“Don’t bring your work home. One time Patty and I were on different sides on a matter. She was acting as a bond counsel on a transaction, and I was the developer’s counsel. We had different agendas. We didn’t talk for a day or two.”
“We will never be on the same case ever again.”
her love for animals.
“She doesn’t have any. Absolutely nothing.”
Civil rights attorney Avery Friedman set them up. When he heard the couple was getting married, “he looked at us knowingly, like, ‘I knew it!’ ”
They like to go on adventure travel trips. “We’ve been to four or five safaris in Africa,” he says. “We’ve been to Nepal.”
An elephant charged their Land Rover, sending everyone ducking under their seats. “We later learned that it was a ‘mock charge,’ ” he says. “Our tour guide told us that if an elephant’s ears are flapping back, it’s not a real charge … though I wonder if he was telling the truth.”