Editor’s note:?With the upcoming primary election, the Times-Union is running a story each day about a Republican candidate for judge of Kosciusko Superior Court III, in alphabetical order. This is the second in the four stories.

Lindsey Grossnickle, 45, announced her candidacy for Kosciusko Superior Court III judge earlier this year.

She’s up against Republicans Rob Bishop, Karin McGrath and Chad Miner. Judge Joe Sutton is leaving the bench after more than 20 years. Superior III’s docket ranges from felony criminal cases to civil litigation.

Grossnickle began her legal career clerking for Judge Patricia A. Riley in the Indiana Court of Appeals. She then had a private practice focusing on family law in Columbia City. She is also a registered family law mediator and has argued before the Indiana Supreme Court and the Indiana Court of Appeals. Grossnickle was the deputy city attorney and city attorney for Columbia City from 2004 to 2012.

Since 2004, she has worked as a part-time deputy prosecutor in Whitley County, responsible for the child support division for 16 years, including both civil and criminal cases. Additionally, she has been in charge of all juvenile matters in Whitley County for 14 years and in 2016 became a representative for the Whitley Superior Court Veterans Treatment Court program.

She is co-coordinator for Whitley County and Kosciusko County’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI).

“I wanted to be an attorney since I was 8 years old,” Grossnickle said. “There was a show on in the ‘80s called ‘LA Law,’ and I loved it. I never wanted to do anything different. From that day on, I knew I was going to be a lawyer when I graduated high school and college.”

Grossnickle recalls her experience clerking in the Court of Appeals and working under two women judges who she called mentors. If elected, Grossnickle would be the first woman to take the bench in Kosciusko County courts.

“Being a female attorney, you know in today’s society we’ve got maybe half of all law students are women, but it’s still not the easiest role. There have been plenty of qualified female attorneys in Kosciusko County, and I don’t know why, but I want to get it over with so that way it’s not a thing. It shouldn’t be a question, ‘Well, she’s a woman or she’s gonna rule this way because she’s a woman.’ I’m going to make decisions based on the law because I’m a good lawyer and I’ll be a good judge, but that needs to be gotten over in Kosciusko County.”

Does she want to be the first woman judge? “Heck yeah. I’d get to say I’m the first woman judge in Kosciusko County.” Grossnickle said she teaches her 8-year-old daughter she can be anything she wants to be in life.

Grossnickle’s husband, Andrew, is an attorney with the law firm Beers Mallers Backs & Salin. Their daughter attends Wawasee schools. Because Grossnickle has spent her law career based in Whitley County, she wants to clear up any confusion that she shouldn’t be running for a Kosciusko County judge position.

“I think I may have been cast as an outsider,” she said. “That’s incorrect. But for someone not in the law, me being an attorney in general no matter what county I practice in, there are rules we all follow. We all follow the laws and the cases that are statewide, it doesn’t matter whether I practice that in Kosciusko or Whitley County. There is obviously local ordinances but those are things that we’re taught as lawyers to decipher and it really makes zero percent difference in that context.”

Grossnickle says her diverse experience sets her apart from the rest.

“I’ve always diversified my practice and what I’ve done, and so we’ve got people who worked in the prosecutor’s office currently and in private practice,” she said of her competition. “I did both of those things for 12 years, and I did them well and I think I have good perspective. I take the role of judge very seriously. I absolutely want to do a good job because I want people to respect what I do, but the idea that me being in a different county that that somehow makes a difference whatsoever is false.”

Grossnickle said she has put herself on committees, whether they’re local or statewide, professionally or privately, to become better at her job and involved in her community.

She also said her work with the Veterans Treatment Court in Whitley County gives her experience with problem solving courts – experience none of the other three candidates have, she said.

If elected, Grossnickle said she would make it a priority to sit down with Justice Building staff in the prosecutor’s office, defense attorneys and Superior Court III staff to see how the caseload could move along more efficiently. Grossnickle isn’t afraid of working long hours.

Speaking to serving as a judge pro tem, Grossnickle wanted to make it clear that she is not able to serve as one because she works in the prosecutor’s office.

“Prosecutors cannot be appointed a pro tem for a minute or for a day,” she said. “That role as pro tem and sitting in those courts, I can tell you as a private practicing attorney, I don’t want the pro tem. I want the judge. Pro tems sit there for a stipend and a courtesy to the judge to make sure the judge can not be worried their court is going to be completely empty but the judge’s make it a point to clear their calenders and give very little work. If I was a sitting judge, I would make a point to clear my calender so I wasn’t overloading these nice attorneys who agreed for a very low dollar amount to clear their day to sit in for me. I want to make it a point that I’m not allowed to be a pro tem. Would I do it? Would I love to do it just because I think it would be fun? Yes. Do I think it is something that is substantive? Absolutely not. I guess I’ve just done so much in my career, serving as a pro tem isn’t one of them.”