South Bend firm has made big additions over the last year

Jones Law Office has seen significant growth over the past year, moving from a primarily solo practice to four acting attorneys. Pictured from left to right are Andrew Jones, Michael Smyth and Ashley Colborn

A small South Bend law firm has seen significant growth over the past year with the addition of two former county magistrates – and its founder looks to keep the practice growing.

Trial attorney Andrew Jones established the Jones Law Office in 2015, and it operated primarily as a solo practice until last year, when Jones brought on three attorneys – two of whom are former judges.

Located at 704 W. Washington St., JLO offers an array of legal services, including personal injury, criminal defense and corporate law. It now provides a more robust family law practice.

“We’re continuing to fill our bench with people who are truly exceptional in their fields,” Jones told The Indiana Lawyer last week.

Early last year, JLO officially welcomed Michael Smyth back to the firm after he spent years of clerking at the Indiana Court of Appeals. Smyth, who went to high school with Jones, served as JLO’s first paralegal before attending law school. As a second-year law student, Smyth successfully argued before the Indiana Supreme Court, according to JLO.

Now back at JLO, Smyth handles appeals and other complex motions for the firm.

Then, in October 2025, former St. Joseph Probate Court Magistrate Ashley Colborne joined the firm.

Jones said he appeared before Colborne on numerous occasions while she was a judge and became impressed with her work ethic and professionalism on the bench.

After Colborne left the court, Jones said he reached out to her almost immediately afterward to recruit her to his practice because of her extensive experience in matters involving family and children.

“We were really, really fortunate to bring her on board,” Jones said.

Colborne’s inclusion led the firm to a “new and really exciting direction,” he added.

“[Smyth] and I together, we were doing a lot of family law, but adding another attorney allowed us to kind of do this stuff even deeper and take even more cases,” Jones.

A few months later, in February 2026, the firm expanded once again with the addition of Graham Polando, who served for 12 years as magistrate of the St. Joseph Probate Court, where he mainly heard juvenile delinquency and Child in Need of Services cases.

Polando is also the author of several volumes of West’s Indiana Practice series on Family Law.

JLO’s family law practice growth is partly a response to a shortage of skilled family law attorneys in the northern Indiana community.

Jones noted that several family law attorneys in St. Joseph County have retired in recent years, and that fewer attorneys are filling their place.

“There’s lots of lawyers out there who have a general practice in small towns; they’re able to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and they make an honest and decent living,” Jones said. “They’re kind of the town lawyer. You don’t really get that in South Bend.”

Instead, Jones said, the community provides many specialized firms, such as those specializing in family law. But with that comes family law attorneys who retired and haven’t been replaced.

“As that attrition rate has grown, more and more great lawyers have retired; it’s just increased the demand for lawyers who are willing to put in the time and the effort to do family law cases,” he said.

But Jones emphasized that family law is not the only legal area his community needs more of: it also needs more appellate and criminal defense attorneys.

South Bend was located about an hour away from the Valparaiso University School of Law, which historically produced a significant number of Indiana lawyers before it closed in 2020.

But the state’s main provider of new lawyers is Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis – about two and a half hours away from South Bend.

For now, Jones says he’s keeping his mind open to finding attorneys committed to offering civil and criminal litigation.

“If that means we add another one to five lawyers in the next few years, I think that would be outstanding,” Jones said. “But more important than anything is finding the right people who can do the work the right way.”