Lisa Marie Vari | Managing Partner

Lisa Marie Vari, founder of the firm, has focused her legal efforts in the family law field for the past twelve years. From 1996 to the present, Ms. Vari has been in private practice and has operated her family law practice. Attorney Vari handles the most complicated aspects of the firm's divorce, equitable distribution, support and child custody matters. Ms. Vari is a member of the Allegheny County Bar Association and the Pennsylvania Bar Association, including the family law and military affairs sections of both organizations. Ms. Vari has conducted seminars on family law topics for other attorneys, various police departments, schools, and for the general public. Ms. Vari has been quoted in several newspaper articles, law journals, and during television interviews relating to family law issues.

Prior to establishing her private practice, Attorney Vari received valuable experience working with various members of the judiciary. From 1993 until 1995, she was a Staff Attorney for the Honorable Judge Max Baer when he was the Administrative Judge of Adult and Juvenile Sections of the Family Division, Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. In that capacity, Ms. Vari was able to expand her research and writing skills to the family law area. In this capacity, she was occasionally assigned to act as a Support Hearing Officer as well as a Juvenile Delinquency Hearing Officer. The opportunity to observe and assist Judge Baer with trials and pre-trial conferences provided her with insight to the inner workings of the judiciary. In November of 2003, Judge Max Baer was elected a Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Prior to her employment with Judge Baer, Attorney Vari had the privilege of interning with the Honorable Justice Ralph Cappy of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court where she spent many hours in the library researching issues and writing draft opinions for the Justice. Attorney Vari is licensed to practice law in the trial courts in every county in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania and the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Vari successfully passed the Florida Bar Examination in February 2006 and is in the process of applying for admission to the Florida Bar.

At Duquesne Law School, Ms. Vari was a member of the Duquesne University Law Review, an honor bestowed only upon the top twenty percent of each law school class. She also was a research assistant for one of the Law School's professors, won the intraschool appellate tax moot court competition, was a member of the appellate moot court board, acted as a teaching assistant for the legal research and writing class offered to first year law students, was awarded a scholarship during her tenure at Duquesne, and worked in the law library for all four years of her graduate education. Ms. Vari also worked part-time for several Pittsburgh law firms during her graduate education at Duquesne University.

Ms. Vari obtained her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh. Ms. Vari was on the Dean's List every semester while attending Pitt and was a member of the Golden Key National Honor Society. While studying at the University of Pittsburgh, Ms. Vari served as an academic tutor for several student-athletes through the Athletic Department at Pitt. Ms. Vari attended most of her classes in the evening while working part-time or full-time during the day.  Ms. Vari is a 1983 graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School. During high school she was known by her maiden name, Lisa Pasqualini.

In addition to her legal training, Ms.Vari attended classes and was awarded an Instructor's rating in scuba diving by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) after an intensive exam taken in Orlando, Florida. Ms. Vari also attended classes and was certified as an Emergency Medical Technician.

Ms. Vari was divorced from her former husband in 1998. In 2003, she married her current husband, Brad Nevin. Brad completed twenty years of active duty military service in January 2004 and retired with an Honorable Discharge from the Army in September 2004. He had the distinction of being a member of the Army's Special Forces (known informally as the Green Beret) and is a Gulf War veteran.  Recently, Brad joined the Allegheny County Sheriff's Department as a Deputy Sheriff and Firearms Instructor. In their spare time, Brad and Lisa enjoy traveling to their home in the Homestead area of Miami-Dade County, FL; riding their Fat Boy Harley Davidson motorcycle (especially through the back roads of Monroe County; Card Sound Road from Florida City to Key Largo is their favorite ride!); scuba diving in the Florida Keys particularly the shipwrecks in Pennecamp State Park in Key Largo, FL, Biscayne Bay National Park near Miami in Homestead, Florida, and on the shipwrecks near Key West, FL;  and playing with their three Labrador Retrievers, Largo (a yellow lab named after Key Largo Florida), Maui (a reddish colored labrador named after the Hawaiian island and its red colored volcanic dirt), and Harley (a black lab named after their Harley motorcycle).