In 1996, Wood Smith Henning & Berman LLP formed because its four name partners had worked together for years and felt like stepping out on their own.
They launched with just four attorneys, with ideations of growing to maybe two dozen attorneys doing litigation work in L.A.
“Primarily, we wanted to start something from scratch that we could design and really influence the type of work we did,” said Daniel Berman, one of the founders and now chair of the firm. “We started it really on a bootstring.”
To say they overachieved might undersell it. The Westwood-based firm this month opened its 42nd location, in Florida. It has offices in 22 states and in the U.K., and it employs about 475 attorneys, of whom 160 are at partner level.
Strictly in terms of real estate, the only other comparable L.A.-based firm is Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, which has more offices and boasts all of the hallmark Big Law bona fides. That’s about where the comparison ends, Berman contends.
“While we are national, we’re still L.A.-focused,” he insisted. “Our management is here. Our admin and IT, all of our back office for the most part, is here.
“We’re really a middle-market firm. We consider ourselves a strong litigation firm that services the middle market,” Berman continued.
In a similar vein, Bruce Albert sought to chart his own path when he formed what is now Albert & Mackenzie in Agoura Hills. Prior to that, Albert was an associate at a workers’ compensation defense firm who sought – but did not receive – an opportunity to make partner.
“At some point, I was bringing in the most files. I was billing the most. I was pretty much doing everything I was supposed to to elevate to partnership, so I approached them to move to partner. They said no,” Albert explained. “After some back and forth, I said I knew what I had to do. They said to go with their blessing.”
Albert launched his own workers’ compensation defense firm in 2000, brought in a couple of other lawyers and got to work. Two years later, Pete Mackenzie – who attended law school with Albert and previously worked with him – joined and added his name to the firm. They now manage 12 offices in every major California market – and not as a result of “such grandiose plans” to build a wide-reaching operation.
“At the end of the day, it really was one day at a time. It was natural growth, not anything that was planned. It was simply an outreach of what was necessary at the particular time,” Albert said. “We have a lot of files coming in? We need more attorneys. We have a need for additional attorneys in Fresno? Let’s hire attorneys in Fresno.”
Humble starts that paid off
Getting a brand-new law firm off the ground is typically dependent on what clients are sticking with you in the move and how well you can support their needs. It also helps to have a pot of money to jump-start the operation.
Berman admitted that he and his founding colleagues – Stephen Henning, Kevin Smith and David Wood – lacked the latter.
“We were not Big Law lawyers with a lot of capital. We were younger lawyers,” he recalled. “We couldn’t afford a law library at the time. Our broker told us there’s a firm down the street that just went out of business and threw out all of their books. We literally went in the dumpster and took them out and put them in our library.”
What they didn’t lack were clients, some of which – Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and the city of L.A. – have deep pockets with lots of work and have stuck around since doors opened. Of the firm’s top 25 clients, Berman estimated that 90% have been around for at least 10 years.
WSHB’s first expansion came in 1998, when it set up shop in Northern California. Of the firm’s 42 locations, 10 are in California. On top of its Westwood headquarters, it also has outposts in Glendale and Thousand Oaks to represent the L.A. region.
Expansions are typically driven by client demand, Berman said, and the firm mostly seeks out talent to start a fresh office, as opposed to acquisitions. That said, the most recent addition, in Orlando, came by way of a merger that brought 18 attorneys in. Before that, the firm’s biggest addition by merger had added six attorneys to the headcount.
“Primarily it starts with client requests, and we will then use our internal resources and referral network to find talent,” Berman added. “The team we just hired in Orlando, we’ve known the two partners heading that office for 20 years. They run in the same circle as us and represent many of the same clients. We rarely take a plunge with an unknown talent.”
At Albert & Mackenzie, the first expansion to Walnut Creek presented itself when a former colleague of Albert’s moved up there and was willing to start the outpost. Orange County wasn’t far behind.
“At that point, we were traveling all over the state for our clients, so it made a lot of sense. I actually got a U-Haul and drove up about a hundred files myself. We unpacked and started our Walnut Creek office. It just kind of blossomed from there,” Albert said. “We just kind of filled in the gaps after that. The workers’ compensation courthouses are in all of the major cities, so we just kind of opened offices near them as much as possible.”
And these offices are dedicated floorspaces, not coworking or hoteling spaces. All 12 Baker & Mackenzie locations have their own office with the firm’s name in the lobby.
“I think it’s nice that attorneys can come in and see there’s a dedicated space that we’re not sharing,” Albert said. “We’re committed to maintaining our image as a consistent operation, not a fly-by-night outfit. It’s something that we want to make sure people take pride in.”
Similarly, WSHB likes to also have dedicated spaces for all of its outposts, but usually after dabbling in the market for a year or so in shared spaces.
“We believe in brick-and-mortar. We are a hybrid firm, and we have partners we don’t see very often. It wasn’t something we created for Covid, but we do believe in brick and mortar,” Berman said. “At the end of the day, law – especially litigation – is a collaborative effort. We like to work together. Some firms have gone away from that, some are insisting on it. We will always have brick and mortar in every location.”
And, he added, that brick-and-mortar space will be designed to advance the firm’s quality-of-life goals for its attorneys.
“If we’re going to invest in office space,” Berman said, “we’re a big believer in being strategic about it and looking at where people live instead of making them drive for a couple of hours into the office.”
Setting the tone for the future
Albert said workers’ compensation – a topic few law schools even offer courses on – is not a high-octane field of law. Its largely administrative nature – he said about 10% of the firm’s cases involve trials – means the bulk of the work involves direct human interaction and getting down to the bottom of a problem.
So Albert hires accordingly.
“We are a B- or C-level law school firm. I don’t need somebody from Harvard,” he said frankly. “They’re so cerebral in the way they think, and they’re brilliant, but in the way we need them to interact with our clients, they’re not going to be successful. They don’t have the ability to relate to a claims examiner on an equal level. I look for customer service representatives who just happen to practice law. You cannot learn customer service. It’s got to be an innate ability for you to be able to relate to anybody.”
The folks running WSHB hire trial lawyers, and Berman said they know they have to hire trial lawyers who both represent different trains of thought and those representing the communities they work in. The firm says these values are reflected in their stats – according to its website, a quarter of its attorneys are diverse, and 44% are women; among partners, a fifth are diverse and 42% are women; the firm also has recruited attorneys from 26 law schools in nine different states. The firm was ranked No. 9 in American Lawyer’s 2021 diversity scorecard.
“We’re not Big Law, but we offer a really good opportunity and career path for those who want to be in litigation and have a good environment to learn in, where people want to stick around,” Berman said.
In terms of setting up for the future, Albert said his past treatment has informed his management style. He and Mackenzie, “recognizing what I did not get,” have actively rewarded attorneys for their work and positioned a group of partners who have put in years of sweat equity to take the keys once they retire.
Before that time comes, however, the firm is likely to grow even more.
“Our attorney caseloads are way too high, so my main focus is just hiring new talent,” Albert said. “If I could hire 20 new attorneys tomorrow, I would. I hired six in the last month alone. There’s no shortage of work, especially in California. We’ve had to turn down clients, which I hate to do, but it’s a necessity to keep everybody in good mind health.”
Berman said it is likewise his intention to pass off WSHB as an institutional firm when the time comes – not a bad legacy for a law firm shy of three decades old, which still has a couple of those old textbooks from the trash sitting around the main office.
To Berman, that’s part of how he defines what an L.A. law firm is.
“An L.A. firm is a new firm. You’ve got firms going back 150 or 170 years in New York. Just like there’s old money and new money, there’s new firms,” he said. “We started out young. We hustled. We got books out of a recycling bin. And look at us today. We’re successful and we’re proud of it.”
Diversity Stars at this Firm
Downtown-based Nossaman LLP targets policy and law in wide-reaching industries including transportation, health care, water and real estate. Its clientele includes a variety of global corporations, local nonprofits and public agencies. Since forming in 1942, the firm, which now has nine offices, has expanded to Orange County, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and, last year, Tuscon and Phoenix. Managing Partner David Graeler answered questions about Nossaman’s formation and history.
Tell me about the founding of your firm – what were the initial expectations and what served as a challenge for the firm?
Walter Nossaman has been the firm’s name partner since 1942, when he partnered with Joseph Brady in the heart of Los Angeles to create the firm Brady & Nossaman, which specialized in tax law. Walter became an authority on trusts, literally writing the book on it in 1953: “Nossaman on Trusts Administration and Taxation.” In 1962, Joseph Brady retired and Nossaman and his colleagues (including Bill Guthner) joined with an accounting and tax law firm, spending the last two years of his life at the new firm – Nossaman, Thompson, Moss, Scott & Riordan.
What drove the firm’s first expansion out of the Los Angeles area?
Growing strategically and opportunistically has always been a hallmark of the firm. So, when Nossaman was presented with the opportunity to grow key practices – such as litigation, infrastructure, environment and land use, pensions, benefits and investments, and government relations and regulations – in San Francisco, Irvine and Sacramento and across the U.S., we decided to seize those opportunities. Our expansion throughout the state and the country continues to serve our attorneys – and more importantly, our clients – very well.
How would you define an “L.A. law firm” and how does management strive to maintain that as the firm grows outward?
The greater Los Angeles metropolitan area is one of the largest in the country, and it has also been one of the fastest growing for decades. The diversity of Los Angeles in terms of its people, economic drivers, demands for ever-changing and growing infrastructure and overall vibrance have enabled Nossaman to flourish as it expanded into new and different practice areas and moved out from Los Angeles. I think one thing that defines Nossaman is its people and its rich firm culture. The people at the firm are genuinely nice and “normal” people, and I think that probably started from our laidback Los Angeles origins. Fortunately, when we expanded into other markets as the firm grew, our culture always remained a constant. We’ve achieved this by ensuring that our leaders come from a diversity of practice groups and offices, and we have tremendous transparency into the firm and its operations.
What is it like to compete with your Big Law colleagues, both those that were founded here and those from elsewhere?
We have many friends at Big Law, and have great respect for those firms. Indeed, many ‘Nossamites’ came from Big Law over the years. We enjoy competing with Big Law because they tend to involve the larger deals and larger cases. But as a mid-sized law firm, we can provide very competitive rates, greater partner-level attention, and still have the resources to go toe-to-toe with Big Law. The beauty of being a mid-sized firm is that we also have the flexibility to take on smaller matters for clients.
What’s next for the firm?
We have been going through a growth initiative over the past couple of years and plan to continue growing a bit more, but we have no intention of growing beyond being a mid-sized firm. We’ve also been focused on growing some of our smaller locations like Austin and Seattle. But mostly, our plan is to stay true to our roots, which is to be a firm that produces the highest quality of legal services while also being a place where our attorneys genuinely enjoy practicing law because of our people and our mix of practices, and our ability to provide services that have a positive impact.
A Firm Built on Innovation
Formed in 1999, Westwood-based Michelman & Robinson LLP has grown from launching with the two founding partners to boasting 73 attorneys today. The firm since then has built a reputation for its litigation practices as well as its transactional and regulatory work.
Initially headquartered in Encino, the firm first expanded into Orange County in 2001, followed by outposts in San Francisco in 2006, New York in 2009, Chicago in 2016 and Dallas and Houston in 2022. It moved its headquarters to Westwood in 2015.
Founding partner and chairman Sanford Michelman discussed the trajectory of his firm with the Business Journal.
Tell me about the founding of your firm – what were the initial expectations, and what were some of the challenges?
Twenty-five-plus years ago, I found myself in a law partnership that adopted a model not uncommon in our industry: build clients, do the work, wait around, and see what happens next. It was a model I didn’t like and an approach I characterized – even back then – as old school. So, I decided to leave that situation and partner with Mark Robinson to launch a firm that was different: an entrepreneurial firm that was proactive in its approach to growth and business development, innovative in terms of client service and operations, and focused on client industries, as opposed to practice-area expertise.
Mark and I embraced a ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality and we sprinted out to the gate. From day one we enjoyed overwhelming support. The loyalty of our clients was off the charts. I was floored after a client gifted us with new computers to start our practice and absolutely shocked when a few other clients insisted on paying us hefty five-figure monthly retainers, even though they didn’t have any matters pending with us at the time.
What drove the firm’s first expansion out of the Los Angeles area?
For us, expansion has always been organic and driven by opportunity. It’s never been about acquiring or merging with other firms.
Our first foray out of Los Angeles was in Orange County. It made a lot of sense for us to expand into that market, because several of our clients were based in OC. Also, Todd Stitt, who joined M&R as partner in late 1999, lived down there, and by having an office within 75 miles of the courthouse in San Diego we could strategically position the firm to have coverage all the way to the Southern border.
The move came together when Mona Hanna joined us as partner. She and Todd formed a powerhouse duo, and together they opened an M&R office in Anaheim in 2000, before moving to Santa Ana and then Irvine in 2011. OC remains our complex and class action litigation hub.
How would you define an “L.A. law firm,” and how does management strive to maintain that as the firm grows outward?
Los Angeles is my home – I was born and raised here – and the birthplace of M&R. The city is where our core clients are based, and its culture and diversity, in many ways, inform who we are as an organization. You can literally see that as you walk through the halls of our headquarters, which sits at the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood Boulevards, with conference rooms named Westwood, Santa Monica, Culver City, Venice and Malibu.
In L.A., we celebrate the city, but we’re not just an L.A. law firm. With offices in Irvine, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Chicago and New York, we’re very much a national operation, and we champion the local culture in each of our cities. What we don’t do is export an L.A. sensibility outward; instead, we embrace the vibe of our seven localities.
What’s next for the firm?
We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and grow, and we’ll continue to focus on our next generation of leadership. Over the years, younger associates have become partners and younger partners have risen in the ranks. We’re committed to transition many of these fantastic lawyers into leadership positions to ensure the firm’s ongoing viability and success.
LA Firm, NY Roots
Litigation boutique Yukevich Cavanaugh was formed in 1995 as a breakaway from a New York practice. Based downtown, the firm expanded outward to San Diego in 2001, Irvine in 2022 and Walnut Creek this year (replacing San Francisco, which launched in 2011) – and looks to continue that growth. Yukevich Cavanaugh’s attorneys handle trials and appeals, along with settlement coordination and crisis management. Founding and managing partner Jim Yukevich took questions about his firm for this special report.
Tell me about the founding of your firm – what were the initial expectations, and what served as a challenge for the firm?
I was with a New York law firm and tried to convince them to open in Los Angeles. They opened a small office that I did not think would attract major clients. I went to a partnership meeting to present opening offices in Downtown L.A. They opposed, so I opened our firm, which gave me the opportunity to create the law firm I thought was new and better, and better than the others. We founded the firm because I truly believed that we could be better lawyers and better counselors and be more cost-effective and efficient. The challenges at the time were the economic downturn, and there wasn’t a lot of litigation in Los Angeles. Another challenge was establishing a firm with a low amount of capital that we could market to Fortune 100 clients and meet immediate expenses. Another big challenge was finding the right people to help us grow and prosper. But within 60 days we knew we were going to be fine. Clients and staff came to us, and within six months we were making more money than we had been working with the New York firm.
What drove the firm’s first expansion out of the Los Angeles area?
California is a country of its own, and we always had our eyes on San Francisco as the next market, but it’s 300 miles away. It seemed more feasible to open in areas closer to Downtown L.A. It used to be easier to go to and from San Diego, so we looked there first, and then Orange County, and then San Francisco so we could try cases in different jurisdictions. We wanted to have a strong footprint in California. It took a while to find the right people in those offices, too, but we did, and now we have four great offices in California.
How would you define an “L.A. law firm,” and how does management strive to maintain that as the firm grows outward?
There are a lot of specialists that exist in L.A. There are entertainment law firms. There are many law firms that represent people in the entertainment industry, the music industry; firms that specialize in corporate, tax, labor law, etc. So, there’s that, and then there are litigation firms that do general and specific work like we do. I would define an L.A. law firm as bigger than a boutique, but certainly smaller than a 1,000-lawyer, full-service firm. I think that the hallmark of a good L.A. firm is controlled, focused aggression and modern out-of-the-box thinking. Los Angeles lawyers are fashionable, progressive, hardworking, good litigators, smart people, exciting, and hopefully provide a level of service that the people think is greater than what it is they anticipated. To me, that is an “L.A. law firm.” If you walk into our L.A. office you will see we have our own courtrooms, and the facilities are beautiful in a nice building. We are an L.A. law firm with a little N.Y. sprinkled in.
What would you consider to be a signature win for your firm? What case or deal defines what the firm is all about?
Probably Rico vs. Mitsubishi, which I argued before the Supreme Court of California. There was an issue as to whether or not another lawyer had obtained notes that I took in a meeting with clients and then used what they found on those notes in trial. The Supreme Court of California focused on what is acceptable behavior for attorneys when they acquire a document that they know is the work product of another attorney. What is it that an attorney should do when that happens? The trial court held a hearing and determined that the attorney received the notes inadvertently – but acted unethically in examining my attorney work product – and granted my client Mitsubishi’s motion to disqualify.
Or one that we just did: Gardner v. American Honda Motor Co., Inc. Last week, an Orange County jury denied personal injury claims totaling $32,500,000 in a verdict for Honda that demonstrates vehicle manufacturers can prevail under the consumer-expectations test in product liability cases involving seatback defects.
What is it like to compete with your Big Law colleagues, both those that were founded here and those from elsewhere?
We compete with so many good and intelligent lawyers, and we always respect the people around us, but we know we can always do a better job if we work harder. We can outwork almost anyone. And when you’re able to do that, even though that law firm may have 1,000 lawyers and a litigation department with a couple of hundred attorneys, we’ve always felt that we had a more practical and reasonable and rational approach to the cases that we work on, and that we could beat any of them at trial.
Some of the larger firms and Big Law firms get down into the weeds of discussing legal concepts and trying to defend the cases based on legal technicalities. And that never really gets to the point of what happened and why it happened, and which experts we can retain to help us get to the truth. We need to dig deep and find the facts. The only way to try a case is to understand it.
What’s your approach to return-to-office?
We encourage our attorneys to be in the office every day because we feel very strongly that we need to preserve our culture, and collegiality cannot be fostered with people working from home all day every day. If people want to work one or two days remotely that is OK, but people need to be able to walk into a senior attorney’s office and say, “Hey I’ve got this problem, can you assist me?” We work as a team, and for the most part you just cannot phone it in.
What’s next for the firm?
We are in an expansion mode because we have a lot of new clients and we have a lot of new cases, as well as many established and loyal clients. And so it is natural for us to continue to grow in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Orange County. We are always looking for really good people to work at the firm. And it wasn’t like that during the pandemic, since there weren’t a lot of trials. Right now our clients are all back in business, defending their cases, and we have many more clients and cases than we did when trials came to a halt in the pandemic, and that trend is only accelerating.
Serving the Public Sector
Formed in 1980 with just four attorneys, Westchester-based Liebert Cassidy Whitmore is now in five California cities with a headcount of 111. After growing to around 20 attorneys, the firm grew with a merger in 2000, which brought it to the Bay Area. After that, it added offices in Fresno in 2006, San Diego in 2011 and Sacramento in 2014. The firm posits itself as an advisory and management side firm for public agencies, educational institutions and nonprofits and as the largest such firm in California. Managing Partner Scott Tiedemann answered questions about LCW for this special report.
Tell me about the founding of your firm – what were the initial expectations?
The firm was founded in 1980 with the express purpose of serving public entities in labor, employment and education law throughout the state of California. We built our practice with a commitment to serving the unique needs and requirements of the state’s public and non-profit sectors.
In addition to providing legal representation, we were founded with a greater expectation – to not just provide technical answers and legal services, but to serve our clients as trusted advisors and educators on the practical application of law. We are pioneers in the preventative education space, providing extensive training and support to help our clients institutionalize best practices and comply with the law in more practical and meaningful ways.
Our training programs initially began with a single consortium, where we offered ongoing training, reference materials and complimentary telephone consultations to 13 clients. Since then, our reach has expanded significantly. We now serve more than 900 training clients across the state.
What drove the firm’s first expansion out of the Los Angeles area?
We’ve always had a statewide presence, but when the opportunity to join forces with the Whitmore Johnson and Bolanos law firm arose in 2000, we seized it. The two firms were closely aligned in values and practice areas. WJB had offices in Mountain View, and shortly after merging we relocated to the San Francisco area. The merger allowed us to better serve our clients statewide.
How would you define an “L.A. law firm,” and how does management strive to maintain that as the firm grows outward?
In essence, being an “L.A. law firm” is about honoring our roots while embracing growth opportunities that align with our core values. It’s about combining professionalism with a genuine commitment to community, ensuring that our presence across California remains both impactful and inclusive.
What would you consider to be a signature win for your firm? What case or deal defines what the firm is all about?
We’re fortunate to have many wins for our clients – whether it be in the courtroom, at the negotiation table or through our everyday advice and counsel practice. We’ve helped avert labor strikes, assisted municipalities to ensure that they maintain the highest-quality police departments and have won unanimous decisions before the California Supreme Court.
But the biggest matter that impacted every client and every area of our practice across the state was Covid-19. Our response to this crisis is best indicative of what LCW is all about.
During the onset of the pandemic, LCW quickly realized the need for adaptable legal solutions to tackle the complex challenges faced by our clients.
What’s next for the firm?
We keep attracting new clients and legal talent. We are proud to work with more than 80% of California’s cities, counties and community college districts. Our largest growth is coming from California’s non-profit organizations, who appreciate the firm’s commitment to public service and expertise in employment and governance. Another area of growth is private-sector investigations. We’ve brought our expertise to private companies who value that we do not seek to represent or advise these companies – we are strictly impartial thorough investigators. The need for legally sound investigations is high and our bench of investigators have been busy providing these services to Los Angeles-area businesses as well as around the state.
A Focus on Labor Issues
Cerritos-based Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo first came together in 1979 as an upstart Long Beach-founded firm handling labor and employment issues, as well as education clients. From there, it has grown to include a wide variety of business management and advisory services and now has 244 attorneys, with offices in Pasadena, Fresno, Irvine, Marin, Pleasanton, Riverside, Sacramento and San Diego. Founding partner Steve Atkinson and managing partner Jim Baca discussed the firm for this report.
Tell me about the founding of your firm – what were the initial expectations, and what served as challenges for the firm?
The firm was founded to specialize in traditional labor law primarily representing employers in dealing with union issues. Our initial client base was almost exclusively the construction industry and school districts. We had no idea we would be so successful, but have always had more work than we could do. The biggest challenge has always been finding excellent lawyers willing to provide the best in client service. We continue to focus on specialized practice areas.
What drove the firm’s first expansion out of the Los Angeles area?
AALRR was formed in 1979 in Long Beach with just five attorneys. We quickly opened our Riverside office in 1980, and our Pleasanton office in 1981, as a result of client demand. Our expansion model has been the same for all nine offices. As soon as we developed a large enough client base to sustain a local office we moved forward with expanding. The branch offices save our clients time and money by having attorneys avoid travel expenses and be readily available.
How would you define an “L.A. law firm,” and how does management strive to maintain that as the firm grows outward?
You cannot talk about an “L.A. law firm” without having a discussion on diversity. Los Angeles is a sprawling metropolis with incredible diversity. Los Angeles is the breeding ground and leader for many diverse industries. We think of ourselves in a similar vein, in that we strive to promote diversity in our business model by structuring ourselves to successfully serve a very diverse client base focused on both public and private industries, with multiple practice areas. We are a recognized leader for our commitment to building and maintaining diversity among our workforce. As the firm continues to grow, whether it is in new marketplaces, new practice areas, or by bringing on new attorneys, we will continue to focus on diversity.
What would you consider to be a signature win for your firm? What case or deal defines what the firm is all about?
AALRR is not a transactional firm; we don’t look for a singular case or matter to define us. We focus on developing long-term relationships with our clients and partnering with them as business advisors. A “win” for us is when a new client calls us to talk through a decision before it is made, because it is then that we know that we are truly partnering.
What is it like to compete with your Big Law colleagues, both those that were founded here and those from elsewhere?
We prefer to compete with firms that are larger than AALRR. We hire attorneys from the top law schools and are experts in our practice areas. We often exceed big firms on talent and quality of representation in our practice areas. Because of our business model, we can provide superior service and results at a reasonable price point. The only area where we cannot compete with larger firms is by not having offices outside of California.
What’s next for the firm?
We recently expanded our offices in Pasadena, Marin, and San Diego to accommodate growth. We are considering expansion at one or two additional locations. We have a couple of new practice areas that we think are good growth opportunities for us – we hope to share more information on them soon.
