Our lawyers are leaders in the legal industry. Our team includes one of the top-ranked insurance lawyers in the world – an award recipient as the Top Insurance and Reinsurance Lawyer in the United States. One of our partners is an internationally recognized products liability lawyer representing EU clients in the United States. Not to be outdone, another partner is an internationally known litigator representing Chinese and Asian clients in the United States. Our industry leaders span beyond insurance and product liability, as our managing partner is a nationally known information governance, e-discovery, cyber-security and technology lawyer.
Industry Leaders
We are leaders in top legal organizations. By way of example, one of our partners is a member on the Board of Directors for the Defense Research Institute (DRI) – the largest corporate, insurance and legal organization in the United States. Our team consists of noted authors who have written seminal treatises in their field, including Appleman on Insurance and a key treatise on litigation holds. The biographies of our entire team illustrate why clients, industry and trade organizations seek us out across the United States and around the globe.
Our model unshackles clients from the unnecessary costs and resistance to change inherent in many other models. Our client facing objectives include:
Providing industry leading legal services with unparalleled efficiency, value, cost certainty and exceptional client services.
A law firm culture that nurtures creativity, innovation, legal expertise and the highest level of client service.
Championing diversity within our culture and through our actions.
An enhanced legal services business model that encourages cooperation and teamwork through incentives directly aligned with clients’ goals.
An entrepreneurial environment that is flexible and supportive allowing our lawyers and legal services teams to excel as leaders in their chosen area of legal expertise.
Leveraged technology that gives clients 24-7-365 access to case information, reporting, and documents.
A 24-7-365 feedback loop for process improvement to continuously improve client services, matter handling, reduce litigation cycle time, and create greater cost certainty for our clients.
Employing non-lawyer professionals in project management (and other roles) to support the delivery of legal services – driving greater efficiency and creating cost savings for our clients.
Integrating with third-party service providers to reduce costs wherever their skills best serve clients’ need or at client’s request.
Our litigators are battle-tested. We have collectively tried HUNDREDS of cases to verdict – however, even more impressive is that our team consists of MULTIPLE partners who have tried over one hundred cases. This extensive trial experience provides our clients with the knowledge and skill necessary at every stage of litigation, from discovery to closing arguments. Our lawyers understand that in every representation their job is to convey an understanding of our client’s position. We know that this is best accomplished in litigation by looking at how a case will be presented to a jury from day one. In the transactional/regulatory sphere, we look at what the completion goals of the transaction, and develop a plan of action from day one to ascertain those goals.
We want our client community to know that when we discuss fees for service, we have taken every effort to control our costs and to manage our efficiencies. We have created a law firm designed at every step to be efficient, responsive and provide value. This is possible because we engineered an overhead expense structure that is focused on cost-reduction.
The firm utilizes innovative cloud-based technology tools, efficient office space, flexible work policies, and outsourced vendor services to significantly reduce overhead. For example, we utilize a cloud-based phone system that provides each employee a business line and extension on mobile devices. We employ a mail receipt service that scans all mail at a one location and electronically notifies lawyers and staff contemporaneously. Our paperless environment ensures efficiency, reduces mailroom overhead, and saves on space for file storage – all with a reduction in our carbon footprint. It also facilitates flexible staffing throughout our platform. We have purchased, built and deployed technology that makes intuitive decisions, creates dynamic workflows, delivers the correct task to the appropriate person, captures data, and allows for a continuous process improvement feedback loop. In our view, deployment of tech, metrics and artificial intelligence is a difference-maker for our client community.
We have looked at every step to ensure we are focused on client’s needs and allow specialists to focus on administrative issues. We realize that large IT, accounting, human resources, client relations and marketing departments rarely shrink in size, and become additional costs to manage. We also realize that these costs can cause subtle pressure on the bottom line leading to client rate increases, creating pressure on fees earners to produce more or causing pressure to prioritize client relationships. We have vetted and partnered with experienced service providers to handle many of these functions. This provides us (and our client community) with cost certainty, nimbleness, and the ability to alleviate traditional operational pressures.
We have designed our firm to be a reflection of our society, including promoting individuals to leadership positions regardless of race, religion or orientation. Our business model fosters and supports diverse lawyers and legal services, but is equally committed to challenging each of us to be better human beings. We do this by seeking minorities and woman for internal leadership roles, implementing flexible work schedules, and providing generous family leave. We promote a sustainable environment by reducing our carbon “footprint”. Our management is committed to ensuring all of our employees enjoy a healthy work-life balance. We truly believe our clients are best served by ensuring our workplace is not only a reflection of society, but ensuring we each challenge ourselves to promote a better society, built on equality, diversity of views and harmonious pursuit of greater good. We believe that doing the right thing is consistent with providing exceptional client service and the delivery of innovative legal solutions.
Every service business speaks about about its team, culture, experience, flexible rate structure and understanding of client needs. The key is whether it aligns itself with the client’s team and takes the time to truly know the client’s concerns – the things that impact a client’s every day decisions and bottom line.
Our firm is founded in response to clients’ demands for exceptional legal solutions that provide value. We understand that for clients value is not a mere hourly rate comparison. Value means efficient processes for tracking and reporting of matters; creative approaches to reducing legal risk; enhanced cost certainty, and RESULTS.
We have designed a frictionless, self-reinforcing system focused on client service. We have done so by aligning our culture, structure and processes with one goal in mind – CLIENT SATISFACTION.
We have created an environment that encourages every team member to have “ownership” of clients, results and their own careers. Our culture provides clients with responsiveness and personal relationships that allow us to understand their needs and goals. With our experience, offices and technology, we are able to effectively provide clients with the attention and commitment that they expect and deserve. We believe leaders are humble, passionate, internally aware, but externally prescient. We fight arrogance, complacency and hubris. These traits are recognized by every team member through our Mission Statement, Core Values, Business Goals and Promises to Each Other.
We reward our team for being responsive to clients’ needs and have a founding team that understands how to lead and motivate lawyers. We do not reward for billable hours or originations by a lawyer. In other words, we have a business model with that allows us to deliver exceptional value to clients.
We believe that saying there no minimum billable hours requirement, but internally publishing billable hours and “dollars off the desk,” is inconsistent. Our belief is that in such an environment, the internal economic focus of “rate x hours” drives behavior and service. Our drivers are service-focused. We look to ingenuity, contribution to the overall client experience, and contribution to profitability. We believe that by starting and ending with our Mission Statement, Core Values, Business Goals and Promises to Each Other, we are laser-focused on the right drivers of client service, efficiency and results. We do not have a minimum billable hour requirement. We do have a total minimum amount of total time we expect a full-time lawyer to devote to the practice of law and team success each year.
We do not subscribe to the notion that a business must grow or whither on the vine. Edward Abbey adeptly stated that, “growth for growth sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.” We believe that a law firm should be “right-sized” for its clients and grow only to serve its clients. In our view, neither organic growth, nor acquisitions are keys to client service. Instead, client-focused innovation, cultural alignment, and team collaboration all drive successful outcomes. We eschew being a collection of silo practices and geographic locations sharing a logo and letterhead.
Our clients evaluate their employees and outside partners on a diverse set of factors aligned with their business goals. Our founders felt that law firms must evaluate their team the same way. By breaking the traditional law firm business model, we have created an environment of quality control, where the team believes in being “excellence champions.” We find that moving away from traditional production-based rewards frees our lawyers to be more creative, more efficient and aligned with the needs of our clients. It IS that simple.
Carl Sandburg said, “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.” We prefer not to pound table or yell. We focus our entire team at getting successful results on the facts AND the law.
We believe we are the “right-sized” firm to achieve results. It is our philosophy that success is defined by the most qualified, resourced, and efficient team that allows a client to play big. Skill, combined with experience and technology, allows our team to play as big as needed to meet the demands of any engagement. We believe that that several lawyers on a large team devoting a small percentage of time to matters is far less efficient than having a smaller number of committed lawyers devote the majority of their time to completion of client matters.
We believe in service to the communities we live in and our profession. Mark Twain stated that, “A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.” We consider it a client and civic obligation to be active in Federal, State and local bar associations and legal organizations. In our view, it is at these events that lawyers interact with judiciary and counsel – thereby forging bonds of communication and trust. Beyond that, we are a firm that is committed to charity and sustainability. We encourage all of our lawyers to be leaders in their local bar associations and community groups.