A Childhood Dream Come True

Michael E. Tolbert and Shelice R. Tolbert (then Robinson) first met in their seventh grade health and safety class in 1987 at Tolleston Middle School in Gary. “I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen,” he says.

Shelice was a bit smitten as well. She asked a friend, “Who is that tall boy with pretty eyes?”
The pair realized they had much in common. For one, they both loved hip-hop. They also came from generous families, says Michael: “Both of our families are givers, and we will give you the shirt off of our backs, even if it puts us in a hole.” And they both grew up understanding the value of hard work. Michael’s father was a steelworker who retired from Inland Steel Company after 32 years, while Shelice’s mom worked in health care.

They became fast friends, and eventually best friends. They attended different high schools and colleges, but spoke nearly every day on the phone. On the weekends and in the summer months, Michael and a friend would take two buses and walk 6 blocks to visit Shelice, who lived on the opposite side of town. But, even though Michael in particular was interested in a relationship, they weren’t an item for many years.

“We didn’t date until after law school, just because our lives were kind of,” Shelice begins.

“We could never get on the same page, I think,” Michael concludes.

They were instead focused on their respective educations and career paths—a page that did nearly match. “Our families and their work ethic really pushed us into people- and service-oriented professions,” says Michael.

He chose the law because he wanted to “get into a profession that would allow me in my own little way to be able to touch and help people.” Shelice felt the same and says an early exposure to the legal profession on TV and in real life helped show her it was possible. “Coming up in the age of The Cosby Show—seeing a Black woman on TV portray an attorney—and then by middle school, [I attended] a career fair and [saw] a Black woman in person that looked like me that was an attorney.”

After Shelice earned a degree in business management from Wittenberg University and Michael earned one in criminology from Valparaiso University, they both decided to enroll at Valparaiso University School of Law, where they graduated in 2000.

Finally, in the spring of 2003, the pair took a trip to Cancún, Mexico, as friends. After their trip, they finally became a couple.

“I had never been out of the country,” Shelice says, “so he convinced me to take a trip to celebrate our birthdays, which are 28 days apart. It was the perfect time.”

“It was also the first time since probably middle school where we were both single at the same time,” Michael adds. “And we had such a great time on the trip that we thought, ‘Maybe we could be a couple.’”

They’ve been together ever since.

Married since 2006, the couple has made community the foundational pillar of Tolbert & Tolbert, the faith-based law firm they started in Gary in 2015. Its team of 12 handles complex civil litigation matters which include serious personal injury cases (for both plaintiffs and defendants alike), constitutional litigation, insurance litigation, and wrongful death actions. Shelice handles estate planning, while Michael is a highly respected mediator and was recently inducted into the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals, an invitation-only professional association for mediators.

They started the firm after collectively asking, “Why should you have to go out of your community to get services that you need when you can have them right in your community?” Their goal: to provide civil law services and fuel economic development in their community, and to show young lawyers and business people the power of opening businesses, hiring locally, and controlling the economies of scale in their neighborhoods. “That is the way you turn communities around—through business ownership,” says Michael.

“Their Christianity informs how they practice law,” says Carla Morgan, corporation counsel for the city of Gary. Morgan initially met the Tolberts when they mentored her at Valparaiso University School of Law. She worked with them again when she retained their firm to handle various matters for the city of East Chicago, Indiana. “They’re no-nonsense, but they’re compassionate, not only with their clients, but sometimes the other party as well,” says Morgan. “A lot of times they’ll give us advice that prevents a lawsuit, which means they’re taking money out of their own pocket by helping us resolve things short of a lawsuit. That’s the kind of people they are. They’re here to try to better the community.”

Back when they were new lawyers, the couple relied on each other to navigate their budding careers. “We got through some things by leaning on each other and by teaching each other what we were learning at our respective firms,” Shelice says.

After marrying, the pair wound up working at rival firms. They both excelled and made partner: Michael chaired his firm’s litigation department from 2010 until 2013; while Shelice litigated and supervised attorneys with insurance defense cases. He says being a partner at that firm provided the “training ground for me to ultimately go out and to have the skillset to be able to do what we’re doing now. It was a training ground to understand the business and operational sides of running a law firm.”

In 2013 Michael had an epiphany. “I was driving home,” he says, “and I can just remember hearing an inner voice which I can best describe as the Holy Spirit telling me ‘It is time.’ When I heard it, I felt a certain confidence knowing it was time to start our own law firm.”

Shelice jumped onboard without hesitation. “We’d always talked about this. I knew that the firm I was at was not my last place anyway: he last place would be what we own,” she says. They dove into planning mode, cutting their personal expenses, pausing contributions to their savings and investment accounts, and replacing date nights with business planning meetings. “Now mind you, we’re still working as partners at our respective firms, still responsible for however many billable hours,” Shelice says. “And then on Saturday evenings, instead of us going out to eat, we’d either cook and be talking about this business plan, or if we went and got something to eat, we’d be driving around looking at locations. We had meetings with realtors, and we were leading a ministry at church.”

Two years worth of hard work and missed date nights paid off when Shelice and Michael resigned from their respective firms on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2015, “We had a dream,” Shelice says.

The firm grew to include multiple companies, political figures, cities and an airport on its client list. For years Carla Morgan watched the Tolberts handle complicated legal matters such as their representation of Gary/Chicago International Airport. “Michael and Shelice provide great legal work to an airport that has unique operational and environmental needs,” says Morgan. “To have lawyers like Michael and Shelice, with ‘big city expertise,’ right in our own backyard has been such a plus for the Northwest Indiana community.”

Frank Rivera, the executive director for the Department of Redevelopment for the city of East Chicago, Indiana, has known the Tolberts for 15 years. “Every single case that I’ve had to go to court—they’ve won every single one,” he says. Rivera has worked with Shelice in her position as board attorney for the city’s Redevelopment Commission. He says her legal counsel is essential for his department to serve its constituents and do so legally. “Essentially, you have to get Shelice at the beginning so you don’t have to get her in the end.”

When asked about their firm’s biggest accomplishments, the Tolberts don’t mention the huge settlement payouts or the high-profile wins that graced the pages of newspapers. Instead they speak about people they’ve tried to help, some of whom weren’t their clients. Like the woman who walked into their office distraught because she was on the brink of being evicted. Michael stopped his work, assembled the appropriate forms for her, filled them out, and told her exactly where to go to process them. “She gave me a hug, cried, and it was a very touching, powerful moment,” he says. “We have been sent here [by God]. My dad used to always tell me, ‘You don’t know when you’re entertaining an angel, so you should treat everybody the way you would want to be treated.’ Sometimes it’s not about retainers, it’s just about doing what’s right.”

Michael served as president of the Indiana State Bar Association during the COVID-19 pandemic, trying to assist lawyers with advice and protocol updates to run their practices virtually. “A lot of lawyers didn’t know what to do, courts were shutting down, it was just a mess during that time,” he says. Meanwhile, Shelice served as president of the James C. Kimbrough Bar Association from 2010-2011, “in the midst of transforming it into a state-known minority bar,” she says.

Beyond their clients, the Tolberts are committed to providing educational opportunities for members of the legal community and the community at large. “We know what gifts and talents God has blessed us with,” says Shelice. “So if we’re called upon to use those, whether it’s in the church ministry or outside of that, in other ways outside of our business, we do it.” Michael agrees: “Our talent is law and legal.”

When Michael and Shelice offered to gift their church’s congregants with free legal advice in 2014, their pastors redirected their service toward employment ministry. The Tolberts led the ministry for a decade, working with experts in their community to help the church’s members secure jobs in various industries. Human resource directors taught congregants how to craft their résumés while clothing store managers showed them how to dress for success. The employment ministry hosted entrepreneurship seminars that taught attendees how to create a business plan and apply for business funding.

The couple has also mentored law students at their alma mater, Valparaiso University School of Law, where they both taught trial practice as adjunct professors. They’re committed to educating the next generation, and have volunteered with the United Negro College Fund Northwest Indiana Leadership Council, for which Shelice served as chair. “We get a lot of calls for money and donations. We talked to our bookkeeper and noticed a pattern,” Michael says. “I would say over 90% of our annual donations are geared towards education, scholarships that help kids go to school.” The couple—especially Shelice—is grateful to be able to provide educational support because they helped her get through college. “I don’t know if I would’ve been able to matriculate otherwise,” she says.

The two are in it for the long haul. “We’re 11 years young and we plan on being here for the next 150 scores. We want to build a legacy firm,” Michael says. They’re hoping to eventually open Tolbert & Tolbert offices in East Chicago and Birmingham, and even in Africa.

“I would hope that part of our legacy is that we’re remembered for doing the right thing, which comes from our faith, and that we treated people with respect,” says Shelice.

Michael adds, “We hope our legacy shows that you can be a good lawyer, be honorable, follow Christ, and blaze a path and a trail for people.”