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Mentor: Michele M. O’Malley
Staff Report//April 9, 2026//
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Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard
Kansas City
Michele O’Malley brings a background as a trained educator to nine years of legal practice, approaching mentorship and client counsel with the patience and clarity of a teacher. A member of the Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma bars, O’Malley co-chairs her firm’s Mentoring Committee, designing structured initiatives for attorneys at all stages of practice, and chairs the Women’s Legal Forum Retreat, a firmwide program focused on leadership development, business building and career sustainability for women attorneys.
As a court-appointed pro bono attorney in Jackson County Family Court, O’Malley represents indigent parents in child abuse, neglect and termination of parental rights proceedings. She co-founded the Topeka chapter of Project Linus in 2008, organizing volunteers to create and distribute handmade blankets to children in crisis and served as president of Shawnee Mission Northwest Orchestra Foundation from 2023 to 2025.
She noted that effective lawyering means meeting clients where they are and working forward from the facts as they exist.
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