Welcome to Southeast Takeaways, a weekly look at news of the legal profession that will highlight important developments to help you manage your firms, grow your practices and serve your clients better. We'll bring you the most vital information from around ALM, but we'd love to hear from you too. I'm Jonathan Ringel, and you can reach me at jringel@alm.com.
How Atlanta Remains an Opportunistic (and Competitive) Market for Law Firms Welcome to Southeast Takeaways, which focuses on lawyers, firms and matters well beyond Atlanta, where I’m based, but the first thing I did was to identify these dominant issues in the market (which continues to be in important market for law firms):
• The pandemic hasn’t curbed the appetite for growth, though firms remain choosy about it.
• The most intriguing thing I heard came from one law firm leader commenting on how he doesn’t feel extra competitive pressure when law firms open new offices in Atlanta—a common occurrence in recent years. “They’re rebranding people that are already here,” said Lawrence Nodine, who heads Ballard Spahr’s Atlanta office.
• Firms are proud of how they’ve used technology to keep everyone connected through nearly a year of pandemic legal practice. But most leaders still view law as a relationship business and a collaborative endeavor that flourishes with in-person communication.
Here Are Key Takeaways from the Atlanta Legal Market:
• Landmarks Are Landmarks for a Reason
There are 26 law firms in Atlanta with more than 50 lawyers, according to my colleague Caitlin Kennedy of ALM Intelligence. (You’ll see her work often in these columns, including her chart of these firms below.)
Just as when I started out as a new reporter 26 years ago, King & Spalding and Alston & Bird continue to stand out as the two biggest employers of lawyers in the city, with 344 and 315, respectively. K&S has 22 offices, 11 in the U.S. (including Charlotte) and 11 abroad, while A&B has 13 offices, 10 in the U.S (including Charlotte and Raleigh), and three abroad.
Josh Kamin, who heads King & Spalding’s Atlanta office, started at the firm in 1994, as the city was rushing to get ready for the Summer Olympics two years later. “It had this aura of growth,” said Kamin, and despite the pandemic, he feels optimistic now.
Strategically, the firm has gone global, opening offices around the world in the past five years. But for Kamin, who advises clients on private equity real estate matters, “a laser focus for me and the firm is the Southeast.” He added, “we’re Atlanta homers.”
He said (as many others do) that the firm isn’t interested in increasing the number of lawyers in the Atlanta office just to reach a particular goal. “Growth has many different meanings,” he said, adding the firm is focused on its clients, its people and its community.
Around the corner is Alston & Bird local managing partner Janine Brown, a corporate and finance lawyer. She noted the firm’s recent pickup of BJay Pak, Atlanta’s former U.S. attorney, as example of Alston “boomerangs”—people who leave the firm for government service only to return. • Growers Are Growing, and Adding Space
Lewis Brisbois’ Atlanta office has 56 lawyers now in the same building as King & Spalding, but it’s readying a move down Peachtree Street to the Bank of American building. There the firm will have room for 76 lawyer offices, which the firm hopes to be filled in the next two to five years with attorneys that can offer a full range of services.
Local managing partner Scott Masterson estimated a few partners work all over the country, but 80% of the lawyers work on matters within a day’s drive from Atlanta.
As for how those empty offices will be filled, Masterson said, “We want relationships … being introduced to good people.” Firms or practice groups that get absorbed into the 53-office firm, he said, “need to be profitable without our firm.”
Parker Poe’s Atlanta office has grown from four to 17 lawyers in five years, and just before the pandemic hit, it moved to space at 1075 Peachtree with enough room for 28 attorney offices.
“Atlanta is integral” to the 235-lawyer Charlotte-based firm, said relationship partner Ellen Smith. The Atlanta office handles commercial real estate, corporate law and business litigations, she added.
A real estate lawyer, Smith said she is currently working on matters in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Greenville, South Carolina and Atlanta. She said the relationships built by her local partners in those cities are important to the work she needs to do. • Four of the top 15 fastest-growing firms are headquartered in Atlanta.
• Eight of the 15 firms had over 50 attorneys in 2019.
• Baker Hosteler had the third-fastest-growth percentage and had a sizeable 76 attorneys in Georgia in 2019. Lewis Brisbois also had 19% growth, with more than 50 attorneys in Georgia in 2019 • Take Note of ‘Rebranding’ Competition
Nodine, who heads Ballard Spahr’s Atlanta office, said that when a firm opens a new office in Atlanta, he doesn’t feel threatened because “They’re rebranding people that are already here.”
That is, he’s already competing with lawyers in Atlanta and elsewhere for work. “The competition is felt at the client level,” he explained.
New offices and firm growth through lateral additions help firms through “access to networks,” said Nodine. He started with intellectual property boutique Needle & Rosenberg in 1983, decades before it joined Ballard Spahr, and that deal illustrated his point, he said, because Ballard Spahr’s relationship with Comcast led to IP work for the former Needle & Rosenberg team.
As for his 32-lawyer office, it also moved last year—to the 999 Peachtree building—consolidating one and a half floors into one floor with uniform size offices.
Terry Brantley—who heads the Swift Currie firm, where 151 lawyers are in Atlanta and six are in a relatively new office in Birmingham, Alabama—says he’s not seeing new offices creating a significant influx of new lawyers in town. And there isn’t as much lateral movement in Atlanta as there is in other cities. Of friends in Chicago and California, he said, “I can’t keep up with them.”
Atlanta Law Offices During the Pandemic All conversations about law firm business inevitably turn to COVID-19 these days, and the firm leaders discussed how they’ve approached developing and long-term issues.
Issues to Consider in Law Office Operations During COVID:
• Alston & Bird’s Brown emphasized that the firm’s office has been open since spring, including its child care center. That’s a critical aspect in allowing lawyers to be on site. “There is a human element to the practice of law,” she said. “We want space where we can collaborate.”
• Masterson of Lewis Brisbois, who heads the firm’s asbestos and toxic tort litigation practices, misses in-person encounters (“I really like to sit down with people face to face”) but he noted that the firm has hired four people in Atlanta since the pandemic descended. One interview occurred in a big conference room with everyone sitting far apart, and in masks. He said about 80% of the office’s lawyers are there about once a week, although there are no mandatory requirements.
• “Last year was remarkable,” Ballard Spahr’s Nodine said, noting he’s been in the office just four times since last March. “The firm as a whole is studying” what to do as the pandemic evolves and, optimistically, is defeated. He imagines “some kind of hybrid” arrangement between remote and on-site work.
• Swift Currie’s Brantley said the pandemic “just sped up the timeline” of work the firm was doing to improve its ability for remote work. At the moment, he said, everyone is in the office about three days per week. As for what the future holds, Brantely focused less on whether one person wants to be in the office than on whether the firm as a whole performs better with people together. Considering a hypothetical partner who prefers to work from home, he said, “Maybe a younger associate needs them” in the office.
• King & Spalding’s Kamin said there is “a good concentration” of lawyers at the office, but “it’s not the same.” They’ve been creative with office events—renting out the Atlanta zoo for a Halloween party where families could socially distance, and holding a virtual holiday party with each participant receiving a box of locally-made goodies.
|