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The Chartwell Law Offices is taking a bite of the Big Apple, opening a new office in Manhattan and adding two New York attorneys.
The firm opened the new location July 17.
Chartwell CEO Clifford A. Goldstein said having a post in New York City makes sense for the type of work the firm has been doing more and more of lately.
"We've started to do a lot of first-party property insurance and subrogation work and New York is a hot spot for that type of work," he said. "It's also pretty much the connection point for the London markets in that arena."
Goldstein said having a physical presence still matters for the type of law his firm does.
"In other sorts of law, where the firm's located is not that important," he said. "But we're still hardcore, heavy duty litigators and you need people on the ground in the local market where the suits are and we're very comfortable marketing ourselves as a regional firm for litigation."
Goldstein also said that his firm currently has a lot of clients that are now national companies looking to consolidate law firms in specific regions.
"We want to make sure we're eligible for regional work," he said.
In Goldstein's estimation, many national companies group together New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia as a single region.
Goldstein said Chartwell is interested in positioning itself to be able to serve clients in all of those markets.
Currently, the Valley Forge, Pa.-based firm has additional offices in Philadelphia, Delaware, New York, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton, Pa., with plans to open up shop in both West Virginia and New Jersey soon.
BIG LAW FRUSTRATIONS ABOUND
Chartwell has opened the New York office with the addition of two new partners, Danielle Sullivan Kaminski, formerly a senior associate at 175-attorney Clausen Miller in New York, and Matthew Gonzalez, formerly an associate with six-lawyer New York-based Bruckmann & Victory.
Kaminski focuses her practice on first-party property, damaged cargo, major casualty, complex subrogation, transportation and construction law.
Gonzalez concentrates on complex commercial litigation, subrogation, insurance defense and first-party property insurance coverage.
Goldstein said the firm was introduced to Kaminski and Gonzalez through a combination of referrals from other candidates it had considered hiring and through client referrals — the latter is what Goldstein calls the firm's "No. 1" recruiting method.Goldstein said the firm has had success following up on leads garnered through conversations with clients.
"[They'll say,] 'I was talking to my buddy at Big Firm A and he doesn't sound happy," he said, explaining that he thinks desperate times have made lawyers more willing to open up to clients about frustrations with their jobs.
And frustrations abound, he said, particularly in Big Law.
"It's been interesting," he said. "We've been getting a lot of calls and e-mails and referrals — there are lot of disgruntled lawyers. There's no shortage of attorneys who feel like they shouldn't be bearing the brunt of their respective firms' shortfalls."
And there's been a "real change" in the types of inquiries Chartwell has been receiving recently, he said, with more attorneys from large, well-known firms showing interest in the 51-lawyer firm than they previously have.
"I think the trend will be attorneys from bigger firms considering smaller firms, which they didn't used to do," he said, adding that many Big Law attorneys are looking for places where they "can have more optimism and confidence in management."
So far, Kaminski and Gonzalez are the only attorneys in the Manhattan office, but Goldstein said he anticipates a need to hire an associate for the new office soon and has been in talks with other attorneys from New York and New Jersey about joining the firm in New York.
Expansion of the office "seems inevitable," he said.
"Once we establish our beachhead, we get calls from friends and colleagues and former associates of people we bring in and they're curious. They want to know why people are picking Chartwell," he said. "I'm pretty confident that that office will expand quickly."
Goldstein said the firm's hope is to eventually grow the New York office to include general liability law, commercial litigation and premises liability law.
For now, however, the firm's focus in Manhattan is property insurance and subrogation, an area of law Goldstein said is fairly durable even in a turbulent economy because of its dependence on the inevitable.
"Insurance and property claims pretty much follow the trend of disasters," he said. "I don't mean to be ghoulish, but I don't see much of a chance that the world will be stripped of disasters."
SMALL FIRM IN THE BIG MARKET
Goldstein said that, despite New York's extremely crowded legal market, his firm has a few advantages that could help it hold its own in the city.
"One is New York is hideously expensive and most of our infrastructure is here in Valley Forge," he said. "We're able to offer much more competitive rates than most of the New York firms even when we're in New York, so our firm is extremely lean. We don't have much fat, we don't carry any dead wood."
Goldstein said he has also recently been "surprised at how many clients have told us they've lost confidence in their New York firms."
"The economic downturn seems to have its epicenter in New York," he said. "The mood's depressing. Firms are projecting to clients an image of spiraling downward."
The economy, he said, has helped a smaller firm like Chartwell by exposing the cracks in the Big Law business model.
For example, he said, the pyramid-style pay structure at many large law firms is "rapidly, rapidly eroding."
"Clients are being exposed to the dirty underside of big firm life that they weren't aware of," he said. •
