SHARE:
Big Apple Challenge
Even more surprising, Holland & Knight was the fastest-growing of the top firms. Adding an impressive 112 lawyers to reach 522, the firm now is 23rd largest in the country, up from 34th in last year's survey. In Top Rank Florida's listing of law firms by the number of lawyers, it ranked No. 1 in Florida with 321 attorneys [FT, Oct. 1996]. Holland & Knight also became the largest firm in the Southeast, passing rival Hunton & Williams of Virginia. Miami-based Greenberg Traurig, the state's second-biggest firm, rose from 107th to 86th on the NLJ top-250 list.
(Other Florida firms in the top 250: Steel Hector & Davis of Miami, ranked 226; Carlton Fields of Tampa, 227; Fowler, White, Gillen, Boggs, Tillareal and Banker of Tampa, 233.)
Much of Holland & Knight's growth resulted from a move last year into Atlanta, where it now employs 55 lawyers, and a big expansion of its Washington office to more than 100. Managing partner Bill McBride of Tampa says he expects the firm to keep climbing up the list ? and up the East Coast. He's spent much of the last year planning for a new office in New York City.
That's got even some Holland & Knight admirers wondering: Can a firm with roots in the phosphate pits and orange groves of rural Central Florida really make it on the national stage?
"We're a state that doesn't have Fortune 500 companies to the extent that other states do," explains Orlando lawyer Frederick W. Leonhardt. He ran against McBride in the firm's 1992 election for managing partner and later jumped to Gray, Harris & Robinson. "So they (Holland & Knight) are really taking on the national firms that have a Fortune 500 base in their home states. It's very exciting."
McBride clearly thinks the firm's success at the national level is not only possible, it's almost inevitable. "My personal feeling is that our destiny is to become a dominant eastern seaboard firm, from Boston to the Caribbean and Latin America," says McBride, whose soft-spoken friendliness belies a single-minded zeal about his mission. "To do that my feeling is that we need a strong presence in New York City." Not mentioned is the fact that arch rival Greenberg Traurig already is in New York.
Many outside observers agree that the move to a larger arena is a logical one for the firm. With nine well-established offices in Florida, the firm doesn't have much room to grow here before it starts tripping over clients' conflicts of interest, according to some lawyers.
In addition, they say, if the firm really sees its future in Latin America, it probably needs to establish itself in New York in order to offer finance-related services. Besides, as partner W. Reeder Glass of Miami puts it, "New York is where every major firm is."
Still, the firm's plans have drawn doubters. For example, a 1994 American Lawyer article openly questioned Holland & Knight's capacity to realize its vision. The article caricatured the firm's mannerly patriarch, 79-year-old Chesterfield Smith, as something out of "a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler commercial." It hinted that McBride's moves in Atlanta and Washington were done more for show than substance. And, it sniffed, "the firm's down-home approach and marketing skills are unlikely to be enough to compete in the sophisticated legal market of New York."
Holland & Knight's successes in Atlanta and Washington appear to answer at least some of those doubts. So far, the expansions have come without a noticeable impact on partner compensation, which has increased by an average of 7.3% per year since McBride took over as managing partner in 1992 and began his aggressive expansion. Per-partner compensation in South Florida was $328,441 according to Miami's Daily Business Review, a bit modest by national standards but second to Greenberg Traurig in the region. In addition, only a handful of the lawyers brought into the firm through mergers subsequently have left, McBride says.
"My hat's off to them," says Leonhardt, who ran against McBride on a slower-growth platform. Leonhardt says McBride has been "a good leader in terms of figuring out what cities might have some synergy with Florida."
But McBride and other firm members make no secret of the fact that even their own partners continue to fret about New York. After all, Holland & Knight grew from its roots in Polk County by serving the Florida needs of national corporations, including Pepsico and IBM. Few of those clients are likely to need Holland & Knight's services in New York.
To answer that objection, a committee that includes Smith, a well-connected former American Bar Association president, has been searching for a 50- to 100-lawyer merger partner in New York, one with an established client base as well as a firm culture that can mesh well with Holland & Knight's.
But the firm faces problems finding a proper mate. Holland & Knight's culture includes a heavy emphasis on pro bono work. It also features strongly centralized leadership in which no office is allowed to dominate and McBride sets compensation individually. Independent-minded New Yorkers might chafe under such restrictions, just as the firm's Miami office did during the 1980s. Back then, the firm even switched briefly to a triumvirate leadership that gave Miami more of a voice. But the arrangement proved divisive, and Holland & Knight switched back to a single managing partner in 1992.
"I've been kissing a lot of frogs," McBride says of his New York search. "I haven't found a prince yet."
Legal Briefs
The state Supreme Court upheld a former Tampa doctor's suit against a real estate agent in a case that was closely watched by realtors, home builders, manufacturers and insurers.
The case, highlighted in Florida Trend ("Limiting Liability," March 1996) pitted Dr. Kirk Woodson against a real estate agent he accused of concealing defects in a $475,000 house he bought.
In a startling decision last year, the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Tampa threw out Woodson's case, based on the emerging new "economic loss" rule. The rule is designed to rein in the kinds of tort cases that have proliferated in recent years, particularly products liability and professional malpractice. Now in many states when a business dispute arises, the rule limits plaintiffs to the damages available under the contract, unless some extraordinary injury is involved. Contract damages are typically much lower than the damages that would be available through a tort case like products liability.
In Woodson's case, the district court figured that the problems in his house didn't hurt anyone. So Woodson was limited to his contract remedies. What was really remarkable was that Woodson was alleging fraud, one of the most serious torts. Some lawyers and judges said the decision showed how the economic-loss rule had gotten out of hand.
In mid October, the state Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Woodson decision. While preserving Florida's economic-loss rule, the court made it clear that wrongdoing occurring independent of a contract can be pursued through a tort action.
Mallory E. Horne, the former state Senate president who helped Gov. Chiles head off challenges to the state's tobacco-related lawsuit, has joined Pittsburgh's Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott in its Tallahassee office. He will handle public policy issues.
Miami's Greenberg Traurig has made its South Florida governmental and administrative law practice into a new department. Miguel De Grandy, a former state representative from Miami, will head the South Florida department. Former state Labor Secretary Frank Scruggs will head the department in Fort Lauderdale.
Hot new Florida practice area for 1997: state-law "qui tam" actions. Florida's two-year-old qui tam statute allows private whistleblowers to sue companies that defraud state government. Successful plaintiffs collect a big chunk of the damages, with the rest going to the state.
So far, about a dozen such cases have been filed, some reportedly against major corporations. But they haven't gotten attention yet, because of a provision that keeps them secret until the state decides whether to join in. "Qui tam" comes from a Latin phrase that means "one who sues on behalf of the state." The law "was enacted to be a deadly weapon against government fraud and it's turning out to be just that," says Mark Schlein, a special counsel to the state attorney general.
