Defeated for re-election, Foraker returned to Cincinnati and the practice of law. Although initially he rejoined his old law partnership, he established his own offices in 1893, the year his son Joseph Jr. became an assistant in his office upon graduation from Cornell. Joseph Benson Foraker Jr. was the first child of a Cornell alumnus to graduate from the university. The senior Foraker, though he accepted a broad array of cases, was a "political lawyer", lobbying the legislature to grant franchises to his clients, and arranging for bills unfavorable to his clients (who included the Edison Electric Company, Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company, and the Cincinnati Street Railway Company) to be quashed.