A Gentlemen's Firm

Sidney Davy Miller is best seen as the grandfather of Miller Canfield. His son, Sidney Trowbridge Miller, was the father of the firm we know today. As Detroit rose from a provincial commercial hub to a behemoth of industry, the second Sidney Miller transformed a successful but small law office into a multi-dimensional firm prepared for the full range of practice in a complex industrial society. The younger Miller's life was a bridge from his father's time to our own, from frontier law to the high professionalism that characterized the best American firms of the mid-twentieth century.

"Sidney T.," as family and friends knew him, was the sort of young man who seemed born to succeed in any pursuit he tried. At Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut-where he met his future wife, Lucy Trumbull Robinson-he excelled in football, baseball and track. After Harvard Law, he returned to Detroit, where he was captain of the first Detroit Athletic Club football team. For a year he studied law at his father's side, then joined him in practice in 1888. From that point forward, Sidney T. Miller was the principal force shaping the character and practice of the firm.

As his father spent more time on the bank and less on the law, young Miller reached out to friends and family to build a firm of his own. The first major step came in 1902, when he and James Cosslett Smith, another associate, joined forces with Lewis H. Paddock and Charles T. Alexander. Smith's wife and Paddock's wife were sisters; Alexander was Miller's cousin. Paddock, like Miller, was a Trinity College man, though four years younger. His athletic credentials may have attracted Miller's notice; he was for several years the city's tennis champion. He and Alexander had practiced as partners for a couple of years when Miller drew them into his fold, forming the firm of Miller, Smith, Alexander and Paddock. They were among the first tenants of the new Penobscot Building, which would be the firm's home for some sixty years.

To build the firm's expertise in admiralty law-a major specialty in the Great Lakes cities of that era-Miller turned to a father and son, Frank H. and George L. Canfield, perhaps the foremost admiralty practitioners in the Midwest. The latter became a partner. By 1920, with the hiring of Ferris D. Stone, the firm took the name Miller, Canfield, Paddock, and Stone. The next partner, named in 1926, was a highly capable youngster named Cleveland Thurber. But it was decided-perhaps because several name changes had occured within several years-that the name should remain stable for the time being. Nearly eighty years later, that decision remains unrescinded.

In some firms of the 21st century, the phrase "public service" is regarded either as an anachronism or as a public-relations buzzword. In Sidney T. Miller's world, it defined an approach to legal practice. Surely his good name in the community channeled many clients to Miller Canfield. Yet just as surely, the heroic scope of his work for public institutions and charities suggests a generous spirit and a conception of the lawyer's role that transcended the mere advancement of client, firm and self. He served countless community organizations, including schools and hospitals. These connections, augmenting his father's, built a formidable stable of clients which ranged from the Packard Motor Car Company to the Detroit Free Press to numerous prominent families. In the 1920s, as Detroit expanded in its geographic reach and began to spawn suburbs, the firm's connection with the banking industry led to a signature specialty in the new field of local government bonds. Among the beneficiaries of the firm's expertise in this area were the University of Michigan and Michigan State College, where new dormitories sprang up thanks to Miller Canfield's innovations in financing.

In 1921, Sidney Trowbridge Miller, Jr., joined his father's firm and swiftly established a reputation as one of Detroit's ablest corporation lawyers. When the Great Depression struck Detroit with particular ferocity, precipitating a banking crisis that threatened to spread across the U.S., it was the third Sidney Miller who persuaded state regulators that the Detroit Savings Bank was sound and could remain open for business, even as other banks collapsed around it. By the fall of 1933, it was the largest state bank in Michigan. It seemed clear that the youngest Miller would succeed his father as head of the firm. But in 1936 he died of pleurisy. His father lived on until 1940. In the intervening four years, Sidney T. Miller groomed Cleveland Thurber for the leadership role that would have fallen to his namesake. In fact, many said Thurber became Miller's surrogate son. 

The Thurber Era: 1945-1980 »