The POWER List: John Pratt

Pratt Grisham, Springfield

John Pratt established the firm that would become Pratt Grisham in 1984. Since then, he’s become one of the top family lawyers in southwestern Missouri and a leader in the community.

Pratt earned The Missouri Bar’s Roger P. Krumm Family Law Award in 2010, and he has served three times on a Supreme Court committee that suggests changes to the state’s child support guidelines.

He is a past president of both the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association and the Missouri chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. He now serves as the chair of the latter organization’s admissions committee. Pratt also served a four-year term on the Springfield City Council and as its mayor pro tem.

He was also the husband of the late Virginia Fry, a trailblazer for women in the law in Missouri and Missouri Lawyers Weekly’s 2015 Woman of the Year.

Pratt earned his law degree in 1966 from Washington University in St. Louis.