New Tama City Attorney Thomas Hillers. PHOTO COURTESY OF HILLERS LEGAL WEBSITE

TAMA – It’s been a few months now since he rolled in with his suit and his cowboy boots, but he still wears the adjective of new, where the City of Tama is concerned. Thomas Hillers took the job of Tama city attorney at the end of February and has been working hard ever since.

Hillers hails from New Sharon, and frankly never thought or wanted to be a lawyer. Originally Thomas wanted to be a journalist and pursued his dream at Iowa State, but then life threw him a twist. He recounted the story in a recent interview with the News Chronicle.

“I was a journalism major at Iowa State. I had worked at WHO-TV as the cameraman in Chopper 13. To do that job, I had to cram all of my classes into Tuesdays and Thursdays. By chance, I ended up in a pre-law class. Rather than preaching for an hour, the professor started the class by calling us out by name and asking us questions about our assigned reading. He said that he would teach in the Socratic method just like law school,” he said. “It was terrifying, and for the first time in my life, I really enjoyed studying and going to class. Being from a small town, I did not know any lawyers, but I figured that I would just go to law school and see what happened. Most of my friends in law school all knew that they wanted to be lawyers and it kind of pigeonholed them into what they wanted to be as a lawyer e.g. a district attorney. I have been free to sample from the buffet, so to speak and it has allowed me to see a lot of areas of the practice of law. I never wanted to be a lawyer, but now I love being a lawyer.”

After graduating from Valparaiso University in 2007 with his law degree, Hillers jumped right in working for the Gary, Ind. district attorney’s office. Leaving there, he went to some smaller firms that handled construction defect litigation and a lot of insurance claims. His work on the insurance side led to Thomas receiving an offer to work in the Office of General Counsel at Nationwide Insurance.

“It was a lot of travel, but it was a great experience to see how things were done in all of our 99 courts around the State,” he said.

After that, he went on to work for Hupy & Abraham, or “the William Shatner guys,” as Hillers referred to them. Once he left the Captain Kirk law firm, Hillers went to work for the Hope Law Firm. Again covering all 99 counties, Thomas mainly handled traumatic injuries and wrongful death lawsuits.

All of this led Hillers to one place, starting his own law firm. In 2022, in State Center, Hillers Legal opened its doors as its namesake struck out on his own.

The urge to spend more time at home with his little ones had no small part in the decision to start Hillers Legal. Spending time with his children takes many forms for Thomas.

“We have a little blacksmith forge in the garage. We do rappelling, rock climbing, and camping. We put a fair amount of ammo downrange at Daryl’s Gun Shop. We have also been doing Jiu Jitsu, but I keep getting hurt, so I’m not sure how much longer that hobby will last,” he said.

Now, two years after he began his solo journey, Hillers has put on his cowboy boots and walked into the Tama to become the new City Attorney. What all does that entail, you ask?

Well, Hillers puts it like this.

“The city attorney’s primary duty is to advise the city as to risk. The city is a corporation, and in a corporation, it is the duty of the board of directors (i.e. the city council) to make business decisions. The corporate attorney provides guidance as to the legal or regulatory risk associated with any proposed business decision,” he said. “The risk analysis is focused on the likelihood of the risk occurring (e.g. will the State regulator enforce a regulation) and the magnitude of the risk (e.g. what is the damage that could occur). The city attorney also assists with interpreting laws and ordinances and bringing actions to enforce the city code or defending the city.”

So, if you see a serious looking guy wearing a suit, but also sporting some cowboy boots, walking through Tama, well, that just might be new City Attorney Thomas Hillers.