IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: A version of article was originally published by ThoroldToday on April 3.
When local lawyer Chris Young at Young McNamara on Albert St. E suddenly passed away last year, his son Morgan Young had to quickly step in to keep the business going.
Now that the dust has settled, Morgan Young has decided to move on and he has sold the practice to another Thorold lawyer: Sandra La Selva.
“I’ve moved in and I’ve hit the ground running,” says La Selva, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “I've always known Chris Young's name. I would just give him a call if I ever had a question. He was sort of like an unofficial mentor to me.”
La Selva specializes in real estate, wills and estates, corporate and family law.
While she has had her office in St. Catharines for the last eight years, the move to Thorold is a homecoming of sorts as La Selva was born and raised here.
“Now I'm just a 30-second drive to the office,” La Selva says. ”Just being in Thorold is a good business starter as well. Because people are like: ‘Oh, she's from Thorold,’ and they kind of like that.”
While La Selva is excited to merge her practice with Young McNamara, it wasn’t an easy decision.
“It's one of those bittersweet situations,” she says. “I'm honoured and I feel blessed. But at the same time, some days I just feel like this isn't right. This isn't how it should have been.”
For Morgan Young, it was also a difficult decision to say goodbye to his father’s firm.
“Ultimately, this was the best for me, just given where I was at in my career,” he tells ThoroldToday. “I wanted to make sure that I didn’t do a disservice to my father and to the firm's name.”
While it hasn’t been an easy year for Morgan Young, he had his father’s staff to depend on. He says it’s them, as well as his late father’s clients, that kept him going.
“They took me in with open arms,” Young says. “They trusted me just based off the family name and not many of them knew me. It just goes to show how much they trusted my father, so I can't thank Thorold enough.”
While he is excited to start his next chapter as a lawyer for the Region, Young is adamant that the business will thrive with La Selva at the helm.
“I feel that everybody's in good hands with Sandra,” he says. “I've worked with her a number of times and my father trusted her as well. It was a perfect fit and the opportunity was there.”
While La Selva is keeping on Young McNamara’s staff and clients, she is making a few changes.
“I've had great consideration what I'm going to do with the name but I've decided to change it,” she says. “I'm going to use my name as I'm practicing right now. Things have stayed the same. We're still running business as usual. We have some trusted faces here, familiar faces, and some new ones, but they're in good hands.”
At the end of the day, La Selva just wants to do her late mentor proud.
“I have big shoes to fill,” she says. “I don't think I'll ever reach the capacity that Chris was at but I will try.”
La Selva Law is located at 18 Albert St. E.
