| Teaching the Be-Attitudes
A fter trying his hand in corporate America and several entrepreneurial pursuits, attorney Joe F. O’Kelley, Jr. found a good groove at the law firm he and his partner, Diedra L. Sorohan, started in 2001 in Gwinnett County near Atlanta.
 The partners set a goal of 150 closings a month within three years of launching O’Kelley & Sorohan, Attorneys at Law, LLC. They reached that goal in their first year, and continued to grow the business until it was conducting 900 closings per month.
Then the real estate market crashed, and the Duluth, Ga.-based firm saw its closings rapidly dwindle down to 273 per month.
“Most of the staff and the attorneys found new jobs after we told them that we were going to have layoffs in a few months. Ultimately, it was only a handful of people that we were forced to downsize. We went from 85 to 50 people over several months,” recalled 56-year-old Joe, the firm’s managing partner.
The law firm’s challenge suddenly became replacing the business lost from the market-forced plummet in residential closings.
“A couple of my young attorneys (who I call forces of nature) said ‘Let’s go get REO business.’ It was a likely impossible feat to break into that business and take it away from foreclosure firms, but we were closing attorneys and were good, and people found out that we could deliver good results and we got big again,” Joe said.
“The agents helped us get into REO. They kept telling us that the solutions out there were not good, turn times were slow, and the closings were taking too long to get to the table, and that we needed to get into the REO business,” Joe remembered. “We used some of their voices to convince lenders that it would be smart to use a closing firm to get their REO sales to the table much much faster and more efficiently. It was a growth area, and a new division that grew, and then later, that division became the institutional investor division, then that became OS National.”
And along the way O’Kelley & Sorohan reinvented itself. Today, the firm specializes in residential real estate closings including home loan closings, refinances, corporate relocation closing services, real estate contract review and title insurance matters. With 22 offices throughout Georgia and Florida, the firm also has expanded its practice areas to civil litigation, commercial, corporate services, default services, family law, transactional services, wills, trusts and estates, and international law. It employs about 180 people. In addition to being managing partner of the law firm, Joe also is the founder/partner of OS National.
“Our mainstay is residential purchase and sale for the retail market, but we’ve created new divisions such as Builder Services Group, Commercial RE and general investors,” he said. “These divisions allow each of the groups to focus on what is important to the customers of the law firm in that particular area of our closing practice.”
Joe graduated from high school at age 16 and enrolled at the University of Georgia. “I was too young, too unsupervised, and almost got cut out of the school,” he recalled. “But finally I dug in and made it through.”
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“I fully believe in showing people how ‘to be’ in business, not just title, but business.”
Joe F. O'Kelley Jr.
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He went to work for Control Data for a few years and left to go backpacking in Europe for nearly three months before arriving at Emory University, where he earned an MBA in Finance. He received his law degree in 1997 from Georgia State University.
Prior to working in real estate law, Joe did corporate banking with Wachovia Bank; merchant and investment banking with Power Capital Corp.; and international tax consulting with Meridian VAT Reclaim, Inc.
He said he was fortunate to learn something unique (often from someone unique) at each stop.
“My wife, Jill, understood that I ultimately had to be an entrepreneurial and was supportive of my work and ventures after graduate school, and then into law school. We had our daughter, Sarah, during my third year of law school. I got out and worked for a residential real estate law firm,” he said. “Learned a lot, got good, got big, then teamed up fairly soon with Diedra.
“Diedra is great, I learn a lot from her all the time. We think progressively. We will take bets on the future and they mostly all work out,” he pointed out. “We teach people to think. We create stars and pay them while encouraging them to grow bigger. I use a lot of analogies to teach, train, guide. I am good at fixing things, seeing things on a timeline and the facts of the issue and coming up with solutions that are workable, maybe different, but end up all being just common sense and not the same old way we have always done it.”
 Sorohan said one of Joe’s strengths is his ability to teach employees to think “retail” experience, like when ordering a Big Mac and not wanting to wait a long time for it. She said he teaches the Be-Attitudes – “be nice, be forward thinking, thoughtful, knowledgeable, be a coach, be willing, ready, honest and thorough. Be humble and kind and thankful.He is educating them and they don't even realize.”
“I fully believe in showing people how ‘to be’ in business, not just title, but business,” Joe said. “Our law firm is a law firm and we close real estate deals, but we are a business.”
When he is not running the law firm, Joe enjoys spending time with his family and friends, including traveling. He is particularly proud that his daughter is now in her senior year at the University of Alabama and will be pursuing a law degree when she graduates.
“She says she’s doing it her way and not following in my footsteps. Either way, I’m very happy that she’s decided to go into law,” he said.
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