As natives, the law firm has been connected to the Peoria community for many decades, guiding often the same families as they encounter different crises over those years. Multiple generations of clients call and find that the continuity is also true of their lawyers. Always small and focused as trial lawyers since the 1970s, the firm continues now as Drew and Rob Parker with the same nimbleness and personal touch. The firm emphasizes nursing home neglect and abuse lawsuits, and it routinely handles personal injury and wrongful death. The firm has been selectively narrowing its divorce work to the largest and more complex cases, while Emerging Lawyer Robert Parker also expands the adoption practice first begun by his mother, Theresa Hardesty, who retired in 2012. He is known as the attorney between I-72 and Chicago to contact for complicated adoption situations. This is reflected by his inclusion among the 470 fellows qualifying for admission to the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys throughout the United States and world. Rob adopts around 100 children into families each year, even if it means working on an interstate adoption while the jury is out to lunch during a felony trial. Showing the law firm’s diversity of trial work, during the last year Rob has worked on murder and nursing home trials, international divorces, school abuse, and insurance bad faith. The law firm also was awarded the PILI and Prairie State Legal Services pro bono law firm of the year award. This is his fifth consecutive year on the Emerging Lawyers list, first beginning in the year that he and another attorney reportedly obtained the highest amount for a nursing home case in Knox County history.