Sept. 29, 2022

It should have been one of the happiest days of Shari Langner’s life, a day when her typical exuberance soared to fireworks heights.

Instead, she doesn’t remember her younger son, Gabe, announcing he had passed the bar exam and was now a full-fledged lawyer with all the rights and responsibilities.

Almost the only thing that could wipe that memory from Shari Langner’s memory was a near-death experience, and that’s exactly what had happened to her only days before. A routine surgery had uncovered many more issues, and an overnight stay — at the most — turned into intensive care for more than a week.

What the experience left Shari Langner with was a newly reaffirmed knowledge of how lightning-quick life can change. That’s why when new-lawyer son Gabe Langner suggested they go into practice together, she was willing to listen.

And then willing to work quickly to make it happen.

Langner Law opened Feb. 1 on the third floor of North Dakota Avenue’s 300 Building. Mother and son spend a little more than 50 percent of their time practicing family law, with the remainder a mixture of other types of law. Gabe Langner also handles criminal law and personal injury cases.

The partnership actually began when Gabe joined the home of Jeff and Shari Langner and their 7-year-old first child, Nick.

“Twenty-eight years ago,” Shari Langner said.

“And three days,” Gabe Langner added, making note of his Sept. 9 birthday.

Jeff and Shari Langner were high school sweethearts growing up in Brandon. They remained in that community after Shari Langner began attending the University of South Dakota law school. Classes began in August, and Nick arrived in November.

It still was unusual to be a woman law student — even more rare to be a pregnant law student.

Shari Langner was in line at the bookstore behind another student, Jeff Hurd, buying the same books. He turned around, took one startled look at her belly and said, “Oh, my god, you’re pregnant,” Shari Langner said. “I said, ‘WHAT?  You can’t be serious.’ I got a lot of that my first year.”

Shari Langner had taken the LSAT but passed up her first chance to enroll in law school. Three years later, when her LSAT score was close to expiring, she took the leap. In 1987, she graduated.

On the other hand, Gabe has known since early middle school that he wanted to be a lawyer.

“I don’t remember any bright, shining moment; I just knew,” Gabe Langner said. “It was a way to give an even playing field to people that had no voice. If they couldn’t get a fair fight anywhere else, that was the place they could get one, in the courtroom.”

Her son’s career choice surprised Shari Langner not a whit.

“Not even a little bit. Both of my boys are slathering do-gooders. I ended up surprised that he wanted to practice with me but not that he wanted to be a lawyer.”

She expected Gabe would put in his resume at the “big corner firms” and follow the traditional approach. That never was her choice, though. Shari Langner practiced family law almost exclusively for her first 20-plus years as a lawyer. She interned with the late Lee Burd and then practice with Burd, noted for her family law expertise, for eight years. After that, Shari Langner partnered with Eva Cheney until she moved away and then operated a solo practice.

Family law with its personal complexities and drama can take a toll, so she learned to branch out in other areas and take periodic breaks.

“Family law cases trigger other needs: new wills, new estate plans, if you own a business what are we going to do about it,” Shari Langner said. “It impacts so many areas of your life you didn’t consider. Divorce is a finite process, but there will be an end to it. The results that stream out after it will continue quite a while after the divorce is final.”

Gabe Langner, who is engaged to Janae Paul and will marry on Dec. 3, interned twice during his law school years at USD. Those attorneys continue to mentor him as his first year as a lawyer runs out. He learned personal-injury law from Renee Christensen and family law and criminal defense from Angel Runnels and Melissa Fiksdal at Resolute Law.

He found family law to be a good fit.

“I’ve tried a variety of things, and I’ve actually found it to be nonpainful like some other lawyers in the bar feel it is,” Gabe Langner said. “I think it’s really a good way to help folks. Everybody likes their own thing. Some really like complex estate planning, some like criminal law, I personally like family law.”

Six years ago, Shari Langner began taking longer breaks. Her husband is a travel nurse who works in emergency rooms, and they would spend half the year in Tucson, Arizona. He worked, she said, while she sunned herself at the pool.

That was the plan for last winter. Then, a simple hiatal hernia uncovered abscesses on either side of Shari Langner’s esophagus with holes in it and in her stomach and “a piece of mesh floating around.” Surgery was Aug. 25, 2021. Her final piece of treatment was a blood transfusion in November. In between, she spent five weeks on a feeding tube. She left the hospital after nine days only because her husband could administer the medications and medical care necessary.

That’s why September of last year, the month she should have planned a celebration for Gabe’s successful passing of the bar, is a blur. Gabe Langner had been waiting for the right time to propose a partnership. The loss of that dream mattered little when he thought he might lose his mother.

“I was just hoping she would make a full recovery,” he said. “You can always find someplace else to work. You can’t find a new mother.”

When it came time to put together the partnership, Shari Langner promised a three-week turnaround. She was successful, she said. Plus a few days, her son quibbled. That affectionate yet professional relationship and the new partnership has pleased and delighted fellow lawyers, the judges they go before and clients.

“I did not see that coming,” Shari Langner said. “We have had tremendous feedback from people who think it’s so great, the mother-son thing.”

The mother-and-son lawyers laugh every day when they are both in the office, Shari Langner said. It’s a reconnection at a level that doesn’t happen to many adult parents and children.

“He’s gotten to see parts of me he never otherwise would have seen,” she said. To Gabe, she said: “You spent the first 60 days saying, do you know how to do that? Dude, it’s been 33 years. If I don’t know how to do that, I know where to look. He’s been far and above better at this than I expected. I don’t know if it’s the law school doing this or just him.”

How long Shari and Gabe Langner will practice together is unknown. She wants to reduce her three days a week to two before jumping both feet into retirement. Her son needs to look ahead, Shari Langner said.

“It’s an ongoing conversation,” she said. “My two-cents worth is he should get another lawyer with him at the same climbing position he’s in rather than the coasting position I’m in.”

“I definitely recognize that this isn’t going to exist as it does, this being the law firm, forever,” Gabe Langner said. “I’m at the start of my career; she’s at the end of her career. I fully recognize nobody works that hard all these years to continue to work. She’s ready to slow down and maybe do the next thing.”

Motherly wisdom concludes the conversation. “The one thing we know for sure is that everything changes,” Shari Langner said. “It turns out that’s the one immutable rule: Everything changes.”