The Edman family has been providing legal services to the people of Martin county for over 85 years.
Four generations of lawyers in the family have practiced with the family law firm. Harold A. Edman graduated from the Saint Paul College of law in 1930. Future Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger was a classmate. After graduation Harold first opened an office in Truman, Minnesota then in 1931 he opened the Edman Law Office in downtown Fairmont.
Harold’s younger brother Arthur T. Edman joined him in 1940 after he graduated from the Saint Paul College of Law. Art joined the Navy in the winter of 1940-41 and left for 3 months for training. He then returned to practice law with Harold until the fall of 1941 when he received orders to report to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Luckily for the family, Art was still in California waiting for a troop transport when the attack on Pearl Harbor happened. Harold continued to practice law during WWII as he was too old to join the fight. Art returned to the family practice when the war was over in 1946.
In 1950, Art successfully ran for Martin County Attorney, an office he held until 1962. Harold had purchased the Iowa Road Builders company and by the end of the 1950s was dedicating more of his time to running that company than practicing law and in the early 1960s Harold moved to Des Moines, Iowa, leaving Art alone at the family law firm until Art’s son John A. Edman joined the firm after graduating from Johh Marshall law school in Chicago, Illinois in 1976.
Harold’s grandson Paul C. Edman joined Art and John in 1983. Paul graduated from Drake Law School in 1979, and had worked as an attorney with the Phillips Petroleum Corporation in Oklahoma before moving back to his childhood hometown.
Art, John and Paul practiced together until Art’s death in December, 1985.
John and Paul moved the office from their longtime Downtown Plaza address a block away to the newly renovated Old Post Office Building in 2002, where the office is currently located.
Paul’s son Michael P. Edman became the 4th generation of his family to join the firm when he moved back to his hometown to join John and Paul in 2015. Michael had previously been practicing law in Saint Paul, Minnesota after graduating from the William Mitchell College of Law (formerly known as the Saint Paul College of Law) in 2006.
The Edman family is proud of the legal practice tradition in their family, there are many other relatives in the family who are attorneys, but John, Paul and Michael are proud to be carrying on the family law firm tradition in Fairmont, Minnesota.
