For the first time in its 180-year history, Robinson+Cole has a managing partner based outside Connecticut — and the Boston-based lawyer leading the Hartford-founded firm says the shift signals growth, not retreat.
Law firm Robinson+Cole was founded as a one-lawyer office on Hartford’s State Street in 1845.
In the intervening 180 years, it’s grown to 12 offices across nine states and the District of Columbia, and employs some 274 attorneys and 242 support staff.
Now, for the first time in its history, the firm’s managing partner will be based outside Connecticut; Robinson+Cole no longer calls itself Hartford-based, but instead “Hartford-founded.”
“It’s not going to shift the strategy of the firm at all,” said recently named
Managing Partner J. Michael Wirvin, who is based in Boston and has led Robinson+Cole’s office there since 2014.
“I really don’t feel it matters where the managing partner sits in this firm,” he said. “We’re a one-firm philosophy. We always have been.”
Speaking to the Hartford Business Journal in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford boardroom overlooking the Connecticut River, Wirvin said he will be in the city regularly, as he is in the firm’s other locations. But he insists the firm’s center of gravity will not shift.
“Growth in our bigger markets has always been a strategy of ours. And Boston is one of those. It’s a top five legal market,” he said.
Consensus building
Wirvin was born and raised in Canada. He completed a bachelor’s degree in biology and biochemistry at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, and earned his law degree at the University of New Brunswick. After practicing in Canada for five years, he and his family moved to the U.S. in 2000, when he joined Robinson+Cole’s Boston office as an associate.
He has remained there ever since.
His area of expertise is mergers and acquisitions, and for roughly the past 15 years, he has built a particular specialty in advising international companies on transactions. Many of his clients are U.K. or European companies looking to expand into the U.S.
He does not focus on a single industry, working with companies ranging from food and beverage to manufacturing and media.
Wirvin made partner in 2009, and has been involved in the firm’s governance since then, including about 12 years on its management committee. When previous
Managing Partner Rhonda Tobin decided to step down, he said putting his name forward for the leadership position was an easy decision.
The transition officially occurred on March 1.
“It just seemed, at least to me, to be a natural progression,” he said.
Tobin said Wirvin’s long tenure at the firm and leadership experience made him a natural choice to succeed her.
“I have known and worked closely with Mike for more than two decades, and there is no question that he is the right person to guide us forward,” Tobin said when his election was announced.
Wirvin has worked under three managing partners at Robinson+Cole, including Tobin, and said he benefited from seeing their different leadership styles.
“My approach to leadership is consensus building,” he said. “I do think that top-down leadership like you’d see from a CEO at a corporation is just not a recipe for success at a law firm.”
With 138 partners, however, he concedes perfect agreement is not always possible.
“People elect you to make decisions, they don’t elect you to find everyone to agree with you,” he said. “But I do think that trust is kind of the currency of consensus building.”
Office upgrades
Part of his mandate will be continuing the firm’s geographic expansion. Since opening offices in Boston and New York in the 1990s, Robinson+Cole has steadily broadened its footprint, adding locations in Florida and California in the following decade, then Wilmington and Philadelphia in 2019.
Its most recent expansions have been an office in Washington, D.C., which opened in 2022, and one in Austin, Texas, in 2024.
“We’re not in the market for a merger, that’s not our focus,” Wirvin said. “We’ll move into other jurisdictions, other growth markets if it makes sense for us — what’s best for our clients, what’s best for our people.”
The firm is actively recruiting larger groups of attorneys as part of its growth strategy. Tobin, who led the firm from 2021 until stepping down as managing partner, remains co-chair of the growth committee, which Wirvin said provides continuity.
What is planned, he said, are upgraded offices across the firm’s footprint. The Hartford office moved two years ago from 280 Trumbull St. — where it had been for nearly 40 years — back to its historic roots on State Street. The Boston office relocated last year.
“I have a big focus on branding and marketing for the firm,” he said. “I’m always focused on trying to keep things consistent, so as we move offices, if you were to come to Boston, you’d see the branding looks a lot like it does in Hartford.”
Next in line is the firm’s Stamford office, which will soon move to the city’s Metro Center at 1 Station Place, an eight-story office building adjacent to the Stamford rail station. Wirvin said upgraded space and proximity to train service to Manhattan were key factors in the relocation.
He expects all of the firm’s locations to upgrade their office space within the next three to five years.
Tech focus
As part of those upgrades, Robinson+Cole is investing in technology to support hybrid work environments for its attorneys. That includes a phone app allowing employees to book conference rooms and other spaces.
The Hartford office emphasizes sight lines and natural light, with internal glass walls. Each computer also features a “busy” light visible outside the office that signals when the user should not be disturbed.
The firm’s technology push also includes a significant focus on integrating artificial intelligence into its workflows — something Wirvin, a self-described technophile, said he plans to drive forward.
Robinson+Cole has been partnering with agentic artificial intelligence builder Newcode.ai on a generative AI platform tailored to the legal profession. The firm also deploys Microsoft Copilot. Wirvin said the firm has leaned into the technology over the past year, making a conscious effort to get attorneys and support staff up to speed on its use.
“Before they can access our AI products, whether it’s Newcode or Copilot, they have to go through a training process and a certification process that we control,” he said. “More than 80% of our people are now on that, and we track relatively carefully who’s using AI and for what.”
The firm is also developing a broader strategy for integrating AI across its practices.
In transactional practice, for example, attorneys might be using it to model specific provisions in a contract that they haven’t drafted before. In litigation, AI can be used for an initial review of large documents.
“There’s never a system where we’re going to allow a system to autonomously give an answer without a human in the loop,” Wirvin said. “I don’t think it’s a question of whether we use AI, it’s how we best use it effectively and responsibly.”
