Robert R. Parker

Overview

While in law school, Rob worked at the Missouri Attorney General helping prosecute child sex crimes. He worried that continuing on such a career path would change him as a person. In 2009, he returned to Peoria and joined his father’s law firm, Parker & Halliday, to gain trial experience. Right away, Drew Parker had Rob doing divorce trials for CAT executives and Doc Halliday had Rob writing wrongful death cases. Then his mother, Theresa Hardesty, convinced Rob to also learn how to do adoptions when she retired. 

It’s true that there are not many adoption lawyers in the country who do injury cases, or vice-versa. Rob continued each path and found that they work pretty well together in Central Illinois.

In 2012 Rob began handling a case involving wrongful death in a nursing home due to extreme neglect. The case concerned the parent of Drew Parker’s neighbor and was sent over by another law firm who wanted a second opinion on the nursing home’s $40,000 offer to settle. The case’s statute of limitations was about to expire. Rob worked through the day and all night writing the lawsuit, and the case was filed with one day to spare. It later settled for $600,000 – a record in Knox County for nursing home injury cases. This began the firm’s nursing home work, and it began broader recognition of Rob’s work. 

Starting in 2015, Rob’s adoption work met the criteria for inclusion as a Fellow of the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys, now numbering 470 in total around the world. According to their website, members are experts in the complexities of adoption law and the variety of interstate and international regulations surrounding adoption*, and must maintain their practice according to the highest standards of ethics, competence and professionalism. Rob has also helped author the legal guide for Illinois attorneys in the area of adoption, called Illinois Continuing Legal Education (ICLE). 

Rob has been recognized by Super Lawyers as a Rising Star since 2015, which recognizes no more than 2.5% of lawyers in Illinois. Also in 2015 Leading Lawyers profiled Rob and Drew Parker’s law practice as a father-son duo. Rob has been named an Emerging Lawyer by the Leading Lawyers Network, being featured in 2016 as “Peoria’s Savvy Adoption and Family Law Counselor.” That year he was one of six attorneys in Peoria under 40 to be named to both Super Lawyers’ and Leading Lawyers’ lists. In 2020 Leading Lawyers ranked him #9 among all under-40 downstate attorneys. He’s not under 40 anymore, but he remains listed with both Super Lawyers and Leading Lawyers. 

Rob is involved with the Peoria County Bar Association, chairing and assisting in a number of committees; the American Bar Association; a Master in the American Inns of Court; and a licensed DCFS Panel Attorney, which means he handles adoptions of children out of foster care and helps adoptive parents complete state monetary subsidies for those adoption placements. Rob has handled trials in both federal and state court, and appeals in the Third District Appellate Court. These trials have included seven-figure divorces, contested adoptions, murder appeals and trials, and international child abduction under the Hague Convention.

(*The Supreme Court of Illinois does not recognize certifications of specialties in the practice of law, and the recognition is not required to practice law in Illinois.)