It’s been a whirlwind few months for Chase Vaughn, who since this summer has returned to his native Iola, passed the Kansas State Bar Exam and started his new career as an attorney for Johnson and Schowengerdt Law Office.
Vaughn, 30, will be sworn in as an attorney Sept. 30 — “finishing off the last little bit of my temp license,” he said — before he expects his workload to increase exponentially.
“There’s no shortage of work here, that’s for sure,” Vaughn said.
Vaughn’s route to a law degree included working seven years in the banking industry after college.
“With a wife and family, I knew I had to put the law degree on the backburner for a few years,” he explained. “We knew we wanted to be back here, especially once we had kids. But I had to go to school first.”
Vaughn, the son of Angela Henry and Dennis Vaughn, graduated from Iola High School in 2010. From there he attended Allen Community College for one year before transferring to the University of Kansas.
“I always thought I wanted to be an attorney,” he said. “I didn’t really have any ‘a-ha’ moment. It was just something that always interested me.”
After college, he worked in Kansas City for Bank of America from 2015 to 2018, until moving to Little Rock, Ark., where he continued in banking and taking law classes at night at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.
He took the bar exam in July and moved to Iola in August to start with Johnson and Schowengerdt.
Vaughn learned he passed the bar earlier this month.
“It wasn’t a fun exam,” he chuckled. “We didn’t want to buy a house until we knew I passed. I’m glad I don’t have to do it again, for sure.”
(Coincidentally, he hopes to close the deal on a house in early October.)
Vaughn plans to work in all aspects of law. His banking background already gives him a keen familiarity with such things as estate planning,
He credits his bosses Bob Johnson and Daniel Schowengerdt with helping “get my feet wet. They’ve been great with mentoring me and bringing me along.”
“Chase and his wife have many ties to the community,” Johnson said. “When we learned Chase wanted to move home and practice law here, we immediately reached out to him. He has a great background in banking, and we were extremely impressed with him, and ultimately very happy we were able to hire him.”
