Linda Bluso always looks at the big picture.
As a business and corporate attorney, Bluso spent her 25-year career not only navigating clients through the law, but also working closely with businesses on every aspect of their operations.
As a legal adviser, she guided local businesses and organizations through everything from growth and loss to acquisition and scandal. Today, Bluso serves as partner-in-charge of Brouse McDowell LPA's Cleveland office, where she continues to serve clients armed with a sharp business sense and a passion for seeing her clients succeed.
For Bluso, her work doesn't start and stop on a case-by-case basis.
"Being a business lawyer, you really do look at more the totality of the circumstances," she says. "The business issues, the competition, things going on in the industry. You try and help your clients wade through the waters to achieve their goals."
A native of the Cleveland area and a graduate of Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School, Bluso became interested in law after her first year at Cleveland State University. Bluso was involved in a work-study program at NASA Lewis Research Center (now called John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field) when she was assigned to help out in the law office.
"I worked in the law department, and I was typing some legal memos and I just found the questions rather fascinating," she says. So after graduation, she entered the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.
Bluso's first position was with Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff. "I got some great training in my first associate role," she says. Initially working in real estate law, Bluso found that property issues often came to involve business elements. In no time, the young lawyer became involved in both aspects of the law. In 2002, she accepted her current position at Brouse, where she continued to focus on business and entrepreneurial clients.
Throughout her career, Bluso has worked with many of the same companies.
"I look back at how they've evolved and it's been an interesting journey," Bluso says. "It's gratifying to know I've been there to help them and make them into the businesses they have been."
Bluso has always enjoyed helping an entrepreneur take an idea and turn it into a working business. The right business advice might be all it takes to turn entrepreneurial aspirations into success, Bluso says.
"They might be great entrepre-neurs, but they're great because they are focusing on that business idea, and sometimes they need a little help on how to structure it and get the business going," she adds.
Bluso favors work that is complex and involves special attention to all areas of a business. One of her most satisfying cases centered around a client that fell victim to embezzlement. Bluso worked carefully with the company's officers and was able to resolve the matter quickly in nine months.
"It took a lot of strategizing and counseling," she says. "There were a lot of moving pieces and parts to that business, and it was very important to the future of the business that they had a good plan on how they were going to handle all these issues."
Bluso is aided by an innate sense of business, says Patricia Vajda, chair of Brouse's Corporate Practice.
"What Linda brings to the table is she cares deeply about her clients and her clients' interests," Vajda says. "She's got a great deal of experience and is adept at counseling clients on a general basis."
Bluso is also proud of the work she has done outside of the office. She was vice chair of In Council With Women, an invitation-only organization comprised of women who have achieved the highest level of accomplishment within their professional and community lives, and is active on the board of the American Red Cross.
Bluso has recently applied her keen business and managing skills to public service. This year, she served on an efficiency task force for the City of Cleveland. Bluso also was active with a COSE scenario-planning project looking at the future of health care in the United States.
"We addressed [things like] what will health care look like in 2015 and how will it affect access to health care, quality of health care and affordability," she says. The group's work will soon be presented to the public.
In the meantime, Bluso continues with her duties at Brouse, where she strives to take a daily role in the businesses she counsels. "I enjoy the business side of deals and consulting clients on the whole picture," she says.