Corporate: René Calabrese

Of Counsel, Seigfreid Bingham

Kansas City

René Calabrese did not plan on becoming a lawyer.

She earned bachelor’s degrees in geology and chemistry and intended to become a chemical engineer. Then she decided she wanted to do environmental consulting, which led her to graduate school to study urban planning, during which she took three legal courses taught by attorneys.

“Every one of them said, ‘You should really think about going to law school,’” said Calabrese, who attended Missouri State for her undergraduate and graduate degrees and University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. “So I blame them.”

That winding career path led her to a successful career in realms such as environmental due diligence, affordable housing development and title insurance underwriting. She is now of counsel at Seigfreid Bingham, a Kansas City law firm, and focuses on real estate and corporate law.

For Calabrese, a constant among work in those different industries has been her belief in the importance of education. She taught while in graduate school and said that if she had not become an attorney, she would have become an educator.

As such, she serves on the continuing legal education advisory committee for the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association.

“In an industry that is changing constantly and rapidly, it’s very important to be able to provide to [bar members] in particular, but to all attorneys, the educational material to help them better serve their clients, because at the end of the day, that is what is important to all of us,” Calabrese said.

As an in-house attorney for title companies, Calabrese managed underwriting, claims mitigation, and business management and strategy, among other responsibilities. 

“Working in-house, ideally, you’re not going to be working on a ton of cases if you do your job correctly,” she said. “That was probably the thing that I was most proud of accomplishing, was building a better system for the company so that they could avoid the legal costs and the legal issues in the first place.”