Go big or go small, but don’t go in-between.
Last week’s power move by law firm McCarter & English to snatch seven lawyers from Robinson & Cole bolsters the notion in the legal community that in today’s numbers-based business, mid-sized regional firms will be eaten away by the bigger fish in the market.
“The name of the game in this business is to get big,” said William Crowe, partner at Hartford law firm Mayo Crowe, which has 16 lawyers. “You get bigger by grabbing guys from other firms.”
Law firms and individual lawyers want to retain and attract as many clients as possible to bolsters revenues. Firms want lawyers who can help them grow the client base, and the best hires are those that bring books of clients with them, just like McCarter & English’s latest hires.
In a revenue-focused profession, an individual lawyer’s value to a firm is judged by the scope of the revenue brought in, and the attorney’s compensation is correlated to this.
Lawyers are choosing bigger firms or setting up small niche firms in specialty markets, abandoning the mid-sized firms, Crowe said.
Bigger firms enable lawyers to provide a greater range of services to existing clients, helping to retain them. Inside a bigger firm, a lawyer receives more internal referrals, as well as a larger platform to market new clients.
“If you don’t have a big enough bench, it is hard to go after some of the jobs that require full-service, 24-hour capabilities,” said Richard Vitarelli, one of the seven former Robinson & Cole attorneys now working for McCarter & English.
While having the most attorneys of any firm in Hartford at 135, Robinson & Cole is more a regional, mid-size firm with 223 attorneys throughout nine offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Florida.
With 45 lawyers, McCarter & English’s Hartford office is smaller; but its national size and geographic reach are bigger with more than 400 attorneys in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Of the seven lawyers who left Robinson & Cole, three — Vitarelli, Richard Green and Mitchell Fishberg — join McCarter & English as partners, bringing clients with them and specializing in labor relations, intellectual property, technology and employment.
Three of the other former Robinson & Cole attorneys — Elizabeth Smith, Karen Culton and Catherine Moreton Gray — worked directly under the three partners and will continue this work at McCarter & English. The seventh hire, Evan Rosing, will join McCarter & English’s New York office as an associate specializing in intellectual property and technology.
“They are all coming to a firm that has some capabilities that their old firm didn’t have,” said Eric Grondahl, managing partner of the McCarter & English Hartford office.
With the switch from Robinson & Cole, Fishberg said his clients will get a broader range of services while keeping hourly rates the same and competitive. Clients won’t need to look outside the firm for help with issues such as mergers and acquisitions and patent cases.
Fishberg said this move began when he was watching his child’s Little League game last year and talked shop with a McCarter & English attorney, who also was watching the game. Fishberg realized McCarter & English would be a better place to retain and attract clients, and the large personnel change snowballed from there.
Because of its size, geographic extent and mix of practice groups, McCarter & English weathered the economic storm better than most law firms, Grondahl said.
With strong revenues available, McCarter & English wants to attract attorneys that can grow the firm in smart and profitable ways. Lawyers with strong client books are the ideal hires.
“We’ve got plenty of space here in offices in City Place,” Grondahl said. “We have been approached by several great attorneys who fit into our practice quite well.”
Robinson & Cole didn’t fair quite as well in the recession. After adding 30 attorneys when international law firm Thelen LLP closed down in 2008, the law firm was forced to lay off 30 people less than six months later, including 14 lawyers and support staff from Hartford. The move came just a week after John Lynch took over as managing partner.
Lynch said the loss of the seven attorneys to McCarter & English, including three partners, will hurt short term because clients will be leaving with them. However, Robinson & Cole has depth in the lost partners’ practice areas, so Lynch believes the long-term impact will be minimal.
“We knew it was inevitable that people would leave because the way the marketplace is today,” Lynch said. “We wish our former colleagues well. Hopefully, it will make good sense for them.”
In losing seven lawyers, Robinson & Cole is forced to react, but responsibly, Lynch said. The firm will do some lateral hiring to bring in associates and partners of the same caliber as those who left, but that type of hiring takes a long time.
Six of the seven lawyers who left — the exception is Vitarelli — were former Thelen attorneys and stayed two years before departing Robinson & Cole.
Fishberg said Robinson & Cole was very generous in taking on 30 attorneys from Thelen’s Hartford office, but the fit was better for some than others. Going from a large international firm to a smaller, regional one was difficult in trying to retain a client base, he said.
Fishberg said McCarter & English will be a better fit than Robinson & Cole for the attorneys as they maintain and grow their client books. McCarter & English has great resources all over the Northeast.
“We feel like we’re home,” Fishberg said.
As firms become more competitive for clients and new revenues, medium-sized firms won’t have the finances and the resources to go up against the big firms.
Large institutional clients will choose a bigger firm because it is the safer choice, Crowe said. Firms fight each other to get bigger.
“You’re going to do it by grabbing bodies and grabbing business,” Crowe said. “If you can grab people that have books of business, that really is a great thing.”
