Rooted in Chicago history, Vrdolyak law firm celebrates 50th anniversary

May 22, 2013 – It has been 50 years since a 25-year-old lawyer, fresh from the University of Chicago Law School, started his own one-man law firm. Over the next five decades, he would be a powerful Chicago alderman, an unsuccessful candidate for mayor, and an inmate for ten months at a federal prison.

Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak is now 75 years old and has been out of prison for more than a year. His three sons are partners in the firm, based in River North and now known as Vrdolyak Law Group. The firm has 13 lawyers and 50 employees at three locations, including 741 North Dearborn Street. Reportedly, Vrdolyak is no longer an owner of the firm.

Specializing in personal injury, medical malpractice, and workers’ compensation cases, Vrdolyak Law Group has not been shy in recent years about promoting its winning cases. They claim their legal and consulting work has earned their clients more than nine billion dollars. On Wednesday, the firm sent out a news release, noting its golden anniversary.

1963 was also the year Vrdolyak’s oldest son, Peter, was born. He and his brothers, John and Edward J., currently manage the firm their father founded.

’My sons have done a great job in taking what I left for them and bringing it to the next level,” said Vrdolyak (left, in a photo from the late 1970s) in the news release. “It’s great to see them build upon that foundation of family values and helping those in need. Those virtues never go out of style, not even 50 years later.”

In the 1970s Vrdolyak was alderman of Chicago’s 10th Ward. He earned the nickname “Fast Eddie” for his ability to get programs pushed through the city council. In 1979, he managed the re-election campaign of Mayor Bilandic, who lost in a landslide to Jane Byrne. Three years later, with Byrne’s help, Vrdolyak was elected chairman of the Cook County Democratic Committee. He quit that job in 1987 to run for mayor but was defeated by Harold Washington.

By 1988, Vrdolyak had turned Republican to run for Clerk of the Circuit Court but lost to the Democratic candidate. Undaunted, he ran for mayor the next year in a special election to complete the term of Washington, who had died, but this time lost to Richard M. Daley. That ended his political career, allowing him to focus on his law firm. But on May 10, 2007, Vrdolyak was indicted by a federal grand jury on eight counts of bribery, mail fraud, and wire fraud, over a real estate deal in the Gold Coast neighborhood. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and did ten months at a prison camp in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was released on November 17, 2011.