For Fredda Bisman, a Member in the firm’s Phoenix office, her desire for becoming a lawyer stems from her interactions with her family’s lawyer when she was growing up. She always saw being a lawyer as a helping profession, because she saw lawyers as helpful and respected members of society. Today, she is doing just that, helping protect residents and municipalities during tough economic times.
Before joining Dickinson Wright/Mariscal Weeks, Fredda was the City Attorney for Scottsdale, working for the department for 15 years.
“I was familiar with Mariscal Weeks from my work in Scottsdale, and knew how knowledgeable and dedicated they are to their clients,” says Fredda. “So when I decided to leave the city, I was excited when I had the opportunity to join Mariscal Weeks.”
Fredda has practiced municipal law for over 25 years and one of the things she likes best is the opportunity to work with people who do very different types of work, including police officers, firefighters, and sanitation departments, and who are all really good at what they do. Plus, Fredda says she tells people that she is never bored with her job and that’s really true!
However, working with municipalities brings its own set of challenges since you are dealing with both the political and legal concerns of city councils. The trick, Fredda says, is finding the balance between all those expectations and helping the majority of a city council implement their vision of what’s best for the city.
Over the years, Fredda has worked on many matters. One of her favorite cases deals with a project for Cave Creek in Arizona.
“I worked with Gary Birnbaum and others on a project for Cave Creek in the northern part of the Valley of the Sun,” she says. “There was a beautiful area that the town and the state wanted to preserve, and had tried to preserve for many years, without success. We became attorneys for Cave Creek and under Gary’s leadership helped the State and the Town purchase the property and create a county park. The area of land could have been developed and turned into a resort or housing development, but through our work the area will be there forever untouched.”
When Fredda is not helping municipalities protect residents’ way of living, she can be found cooking, baking or reading. If the weather is nice, as it usually is in Phoenix, she goes out at least once during the weekend hiking.
So the next time you are in a county park or hiking in Phoenix, maybe you will think of Fredda and other attorneys who are like her, working to preserve our way of living.
To read more about Fredda, check out her bio here.
