Taking the reins

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”I’ve been able to give business to our real estate group, IP group, business litigation, and to several of our offices,” Ocrant said. ”People with horses could be people with money, and people with money could have legal needs beyond their ownership with horses. The more I can tap into the horse industry, the more opportunity there is to get clients for other practice groups.”

That cross-marketing aspect of her practice is what Hinshaw’s Vincent said he likes to showcase to new associates.

”Someone who is a client of hers that she’s developed has a need that she can’t service herself, and she’s able to tap into another lawyer in the firm who does concentrate in that area to help her client,” Vincent said. ”Sometimes there’s a fear factor that if they do that they’ll lose the client. What Yvonne makes clear to them is, ‘No. This is how you work as a team to develop business.”’

Speaking the client’s language

Ocrant’s intimate knowledge of the subject matter is what gives her an edge, particularly in court, said lawyers who have worked with her.

”She speaks the client’s language. She doesn’t have to get up to speed on the subject matter like I would have to do in any ordinary case,” said Bonanno, her fellow Hinshaw partner. ”In taking depositions, it gives her a decided advantage over her opponent.”

David D. Johnson, a longtime litigation consultant based in Phoenix, Ariz., who provides expert witness testimony in the U.S. and Canada, has worked on several cases with Ocrant.

”The depositions she does are probably some of the best I’ve ever read. She does not miss a trick. She’s so thorough, there’s no stone left unturned,” he said. ”She actually shows, she actually participates — that’s very important. She knows what it is to haul a trailer 800 miles, she knows what it is to have a flat, she knows what it is to have a horse go down. It gives her a perception of what the client is saying,” Johnson said.

”Instinctively, she knows the problems a horse can have. She’s been through it, she’s lived it. Instinctively, she knows if a trainer is doing a good or a not-so-good job.”

There are other advantages that can come from being an equine practitioner who also participates in the industry.

Just as being a presenter in the National Equine Law Conference in Kentucky helps to get her name out to other lawyers as a source for referrals, Ocrant said, her target client base are the same people she trains with and competes against.

”You kind of establish this rapport with them right off the bat,” she said.

In recent years, Ocrant said, she has been spending the month of January in Wellington, Fla., ”the hot spot in the winter for equestrians.”

”It’s the very well-to-do — it’s the Bruce Springsteens, it’s the Marshall Fields. These are the clients I’d love to get,” she said. ”I’ve convinced the firm that I need to be where these clients are.”

With her horse in tow, Ocrant said she drives the 25 hours to Florida and sets up shop in the firm’s Ft. Lauderdale office.

”I ride every day, I pay for my own condo there, I pay for his stall. It’s ridiculously expensive, but it’s worth it,” Ocrant said. ”I go barn to barn and I introduce myself, but not in an annoying way. I’ll go and take a lesson with the head trainer at the barn and, after my lesson, ‘Here’s my card. It was great to meet you.’

”How else could I do that if I didn’t ride? … If I showed up in a suit and heels they’d throw me out so fast, they’d think I was trouble.”

For Ocrant, her passion and her practice go hand-in-hand.

”I don’t think I would be as well-rounded and grounded and successful at this practice as I am if I didn’t also ride,” she said. ”For any industry, knowledge is power. In what industry can I be more powerful and effective than in an industry I’m most passionate about?”

Back at the stables in Elgin on that recent early evening after work, the 5-foot Ocrant, in britches and boots, makes herself at home with Otis, who stands at 16.1 hands (5 feet 3 inches tall from the ground to the base of his neck) and weighs about 1,200 pounds.

”What’s up? I’m so excited you’re clean again,” she tells him, offering a few hearty pats on his backside.

Without hesitation, she grabs the horse’s upper lip and flips it up to show the tattoo number he had been branded with as a racehorse.

Ocrant, who purchases and trains horses whose time at the racetrack is up, likes to say that she takes older Thoroughbreds off the track and gives them that ‘’second life” as show horses.

She proceeded with her routine of brushing the horse, cleaning his hooves with a metal tool and saddling up. She fed him a sugar cube before placing the bit of the bridle in his mouth, grabbed her gloves and helmet and led Otis outside for a round of dressage practice — a discipline often referred to as ”horse ballet.”

”A golf club isn’t going to breathe hot air on you, or reach into your pocket and lean up against you,” she said. ”Horses, they give you that sense of companionship.”

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