Recognizing the shifting winds of the real estate market, Vincent A. Liberti Jr., an attorney with a practice in Cheshire and Orange, went back to his alma mater, Western New England School of Law, to obtain a master of laws in estate planning and elder law. It’s fortuitous he did because it opened up a whole new career as a partner at Pepe & Hazard in Hartford.
A professor at Western New England encouraged him to meet with the firm to discuss an opening. Liberti is glad he did. The new position has challenged him more than his former practice ever did. “I’m really being challenged and my life won’t be so boring,” he said.
Part of his initial challenge, he joked during a phone interview, was finding his way to Pepe & Hazard’s offices on Asylum Street. “It’s all new to me,” Liberti, 43, said. “I was a New Haven lawyer. At first, I knew how to drive to the parking garage and that’s about it.”
Liberti admits there was some trepidation to starting at a new firm after being firmly entrenched in the New Haven bar since 1993 when he first started practicing in Connecticut. (He is also admitted in New York, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.) “If I was 10 years older I probably wouldn’t have done it, but nothing ventured, nothing gained,” said Liberti, a married father of an 11-year old daughter.
There is one thing he likes about Hartford that he doesn’t miss about New Haven: the absence of traffic. “The traffic is nowhere near as bad as it is in New Haven,” Liberti said. “It seems like after 6 p.m. everybody is gone, unless there’s a Bruce Springsteen concert downtown. That surprised me.”
Liberti has an unusual way of winding down after hours. Along with other attorneys, he shoots skeet at Blue Trail Range in Wallingford. He learned the sport while studying in Bath, England. His instruction came from the coach of the 1980 United Kingdom Olympics team. “It was really cool to learn that way. You never forget. It’s a good way to burn off steam, smoke some cigars and be a guy,” he said.
