Missouri’s Top 20 Law Firms 2024: Flanigan, Lasley & Moore

Oldest Law Firm in Outstate Missouri

Flanigan, Lasley & Moore in Carthage was founded 1877 by Samuel McReynolds. For a small firm, it would have an outsized impact on the state.

Allan McReynolds, the founder’s son and later a firm partner, was a state senator, an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1940, and a delegate to the Missouri Constitutional Convention that wrote the 1945 state constitution.

John H. Flanigan joined the firm then known as McReynolds and Halliburton in 1920. Flanigan served on the Board of Governors when The Missouri Bar was unified in 1944, and he went on to serve as the 1946-47 bar president.

Flanigan is also the author of “A Juror’s Creed,” which is used in courts across the country to remind jurors of the importance of their role. According to “A Eulogy of Jurors,” a 1953 article in the University of Miami Law Review, Flanigan submitted the prize-winning creed in a nationwide contest sponsored by the American Bar Association.

The current firm, which includes longtime practitioners Bill Lasley and Judy Moore, has a civil trial and general legal services practice in southwestern Missouri.