Growing organically | Long Island Business News

When Harris Beach, a 165-year-old law firm with offices across the state, opened its first Long Island office some 10 years ago, there were five attorneys. Today there are 26 – 10 of whom joined the firm in the last 19 months.

The law firm has taken an organic approach, keeping an ear to the ground to identify need and recruiting talent in those areas. On Long Island, those growth sectors include healthcare, real estate, sustainable energy, pharmaceutical and other areas where Harris Beach is positioned to offer its legal expertise.

In adding talent, “we cast a wide net,” said Tom Garry, Harris Beach Long Island’s office managing partner.  He said the firm is “very proud” of its recent growth especially “while we’re just coming out of the pandemic.”

There are a host of reasons why firms like Harris Beach can cultivate a presence on Long Island, and a variety of strategies in doing so. For starters, this is a heavily populated region and the demand for services, including legal expertise, is palpable.

“The Long Island legal marketplace has become more sophisticated, and firms are looking at new models to grow their business,” said Judge Gail Prudenti, the dean of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University.

JUDGE GAIL PRUDENTI: ‘The Long Island legal marketplace has become more sophisticated, and firms are looking at new models to grow their business.’ Courtesy of Hofstra University

While many firms grow through mergers, “traditionally, law firms recruit graduates out of law school or hire experienced attorneys from another firm [in a strategy] called lateral hiring,” she said.

Garry says lateral opportunites have enabled Harris Beach to continue its growth curve, and the office is undergoing its third expansion at The Omni, an RXR building in Uniondale.  He’s a big believer in encouraging the firm’s attorneys to “promote the idea that” the firm is “open to speaking to other attorneys.”

And while not every subsequent conversation will lead to retaining new talent, Harris Beach recently announced that Glenn Jones, a former New York State special assistant attorney general in Medicaid fraud, had joined the firm.

“We’re really focused on expanding our own healthcare presence,” Garry said. “We’ve done a lot of work in the development side of healthcare,” including $450 million expansions at both Catholic Health’s Good Samaritan and Mount Sinai South Nassau, “but now we’re really morphing into the regulatory and investigation side of healthcare.”

And, he said, “it’s no secret that healthcare, in a region of 3 million people, is a critical driver economically.” Garry pointed to Northwell Health, the state’s largest healthcare provider and private employer, along with Catholic Health, Mount Sinai, NYU, Memorial Sloan Kettering and others that now have a presence on Long Island. “They’re all here for a variety of reasons.”

An additional area of growth for the firm is energy. It’s a sector in which Harris Beach is established, representing wind farm developers and other leaders in the field as organizations strive to help New York State reach its 70% renewable energy goal by 2030, along with other sustainability measures.

“We need to harden our infrastructure – just look at what happened on the west coast of Florida” from Hurricane Ian, Garry said. “We’ve gotten through something like that in Sandy, so we’re really bullish on our ability to serve clients in the energy world. Noting that the firm does “a lot of work” with Nextera Energy and Key Capture Energy, he added, “we’re well-situated throughout the area.”

Meanwhile, mergers are gaining momentum as firms seek growth opportunities.

“Like the medical profession over the last decade – practices merging together with healthcare systems due to changing community needs – we are seeing the same in the legal profession,” Prudenti said. “Firms with different areas of expertise are merging to better serve clients or potential clients. Smaller firms with legal talent and a client base might merge. This creates better economies of scale.”

And when two firms combine, they may achieve a previously untapped synergy.

In September, for example, Forchelli Deegan Terrana, a law firm in Uniondale, announced that the attorneys and staff of Mineola-based Koeppel Martone & Leistman had joined the firm. The move bolsters FDT’s position in the real estate tax law space and marked the “largest expansion in FDT’s history,” according to a press release about the combined firms. And KML, it was reported, had previously secured more than $1 billion dollars in real estate tax refunds and savings for commercial real estate clients.

Announcing the newly combined firms, Jeffrey Forchelli, FDT’s chairman and co-managing partner, said: “We will make each other better, and all of our clients will benefit greatly as a result. The future is bright.”

And, the firm continues to pursue lateral growth. This week FDT announced that Thomas Cantinella had joined the firm’s construction group as an associate, who had served previously as an associate at Morici & Morici.

Now, demand for new attorneys continues, Prudenti said.

“At Hofstra Law, we have seen great demand for our recent graduates,” she said.

“For the class of 2021, the law school reported its highest job placement numbers in the last decade for jobs where a JD is required or advantaged,” she said.  “And for our most recent class in 2022, the law school has already reported 67% job placement at graduation, a nearly double-digit improvement over prior years.”

Certainly, there are firms with offices on Long Island that want to bring attorneys into their fold. Just ask Matthew Kasindorf, a partner at Meister Seelig & Fein, This week, the law firm announced new offices in Jericho, adding to its existing locations in Manhattan, Stamford, Conn. and East Brunswick, N.J.

MATTHEW KASINDORF: ‘We have the ability with our base in New York City to work on deals up and down the eastern seaboard and all over the United States.’ Courtesy of Meister Seelig & Fein

After commuting into Manhattan for 38 years, the idea of working on Long Island several days a week is “unbelievably attractive,” said Kasindorf, a chair of the firm’s Commercial Real Estate Group.

And Long Island’s educated workforce is a welcome plus for firms that are hiring.

“There is a massive amount of skilled lawyers who live on Long Island,” Kasindorf said.  “Why not tap into that amazing resource?”

In a competitive market, it makes sense for firms to tout their resources to other attorneys.

“We have the ability with our base in New York City to work on deals up and down the eastern seaboard and all over the United States,” Kasindorf said.

For Jones, Harris Beach’s people and its 12 offices – most of which are across New York State, but there are others, including in Washington D.C. – were strong reasons to join the firm.

“I felt really comfortable with the fit,” he said, adding that he appreciated the firm’s presence upstate and in DC, as well as the flexibility he has to build his practice.

Also recently joining the firm is Jessica Molinares Kalpakis, an associate whose focus has included high-exposure liability actions, as well as defending medical, dental and podiatric malpractice actions. Most recently, she served as acting county attorney and chief deputy county attorney of Nassau County.

All of this makes Garry bullish about the future.

“We’re working on big exciting areas,” he said. “And we’re putting the word out that if you’re interested in talking to a firm with statewide platform – we’re all ears.”

AGENN@LIBN.COM