Profession Gains National Visibility

Lawyers who’ve been around the Valley for a few decades can still remember when it was a sure bet that an attorney with a Ventura Boulevard address would turn out to be a personal injury lawyer. But traffic got worse, the rents in Century City rose, and, little by little, a law community representing just about every practice imaginable migrated over the hill. When the Business Journal put out the call for attorneys worthy of its Top Lawyers mention, only a sprinkling of the nominees were involved in personal injury practices. The vast majority were engaged in corporate and business transactional law and litigation. And clusters of practices specializing in employment law, consumer-related law, creditor’s rights, intellectual property, liability defense and insurance, family law, probate and estate planning, workers compensation, escrow, real estate and land use, social advocacy and criminal law were well represented. Many of the firms that relocated north from downtown L.A. and Century City initially did so to be closer to home and to lower their office rental costs, but as the Valley attracted more businesses, the opportunities to practice law locally grew as well. Then came the Internet and today the Valley houses firms whose specialties have won them a national client base. Barry Pearlman, founding partner of Pearlman, Borska & Wax LLP, is a case in point. Pearlman worked at a downtown law firm when he first began representing employers in Workers Comp issues. He set up his own firm with one client at the time, Vons, in 1984 and made his headquarters the Valley because he lived there and because, at the time, downtown rents were far more expensive than the prices in the Valley. As the contacts that he made in human resources and in the insurance industry changed jobs, they often took Pearlman with them and he picked up relationships with new firms. “That’s how I built the practice,” Pearlman said. Today, the Encino-based law firm’s clients span the country, from Delta Air Lines in Atlanta to Medtronic in Minneapolis and Electric Insurance Co. in Massachusetts. Others, like Alan M. Mirman, a partner with Horgan, Rosen, Beckham & Coren LLP, found their practices grew as the industries they worked with changed. Mirman joined the firm in 1992, moving his practice from the Westside and hooking up with a firm that, like him, specialized in creditor’s rights. “What we all had in common is we represented community banks,” Mirman recalled. “Then so many of the community banks got bought, and very often we would wind up representing the survivor bank. Smaller banks of mine got swallowed up and now I’m representing the parent, Comerica Bank.” Many attorneys were able to develop their Valley practices because their services were previously only available in L.A.’s traditional law firm hubs downtown and in Century City. Other attorneys practicing here didn’t choose their specialties; their specialties chose them. That’s how it was with Bradley Gage, who started his own firm after affiliations with several others in 1989 and merged it with Terry Goldberg in 1991. “What happened is I started handling personal injury matters and insurance bad faith cases 20 years ago, and it kind of evolved from there,” said Gage, who now enjoys a very high profile because of the nature of his specialty representing police and other city and state workers in discrimination, harassment, wage and other employment matters. Gage has participated in over 14 cases resolved, either by settlement or litigation with awards in excess of $1 million. And he counts among his cases, the representation of individuals who claim they were falsely accused and arrested by the police involved in what became the Rampart scandal; as well as the defense of a police officer accused of causing the wrongful death of one of the North Hollywood bank robbers in the infamous 1997 Bank of America shootout. “When you try one of these cases, and you get media coverage saying it’s the largest verdict in the county, people take notice and come to you,” said Gage. “So you get four or five of those trial verdicts and all of a sudden the phone rings and the opportunities are there.” The growth in the practices of a number of Valley lawyers, particularly those whose specialties are in the business and corporate law arena, has also been aided by the nature of the business community. These attorneys started out as associates in very large firms relegated to working with the lower level executives at those firms. But as time passed, those managers achieved senior levels. “When I was an associate a long time ago, a lot of the people I was dealing with were down on the food chain,” Mirman said. “They’ve moved up and I’ve moved up and you cultivate that relationship. Things really develop organically.” Then too, as the geography of the Valley changes, it has also provided opportunities for law firms to start up and for small firms to grow larger. Most of the law firms that opened in the Valley in the 1980s and 1990s tended to center around the Sherman Oaks and Encino communities, locations that were central not just to the Valley but also to the Westside. But as the business community has grown and expanded in the Valley, a number of law firms are prospering to the west in Westlake Village as well. More recently as the geography of the Valley continues to evolve, it is creating opportunities for other firms like Poole & Shaffery LLP, which five years ago opened a practice in Valencia. “We initially started a little outpost office to put our toes in the water and see how things were,” said David Poole of his and partner John Shaffery’s early entry into the market. “It became apparent to us that the business community is dynamic and growing and maturing, and a lot of the businesses were going down the hill to the (San Fernando) valley or the Westside to get legal services.” Poole and Shaffery, who both specialize in complex business disputes and other business matters, figured that, with their downtown L.A. law practice they could provide to Santa Clarita businesses what the sole practitioners already in the area could not: the kind of full-service business counsel that they could not get locally. Two- and one-half years ago the partners set up shop in Valencia “We do have a roster of some large clients, but we saw that there was a need for sophisticated legal advice for a lot of companies that are not necessarily national power house firms,” said Poole. Since then, the firm has grown to five attorneys with practices in employment law, litigation, environmental law, real property and construction defect work. If a company has a case in the courts downtown, Poole & Shaffery’s office there can walk documents over to the courthouse. But just as important, the lawyers, most of whom also live in Santa Clarita, can also provide the kind of counsel that only comes from knowing the community. “If our clients are dealing with other businesses in the area, because it’s a smaller community, they want to be able to walk into the Starbucks and have a conversation with somebody they had a dispute with. So we have attempted to be a problem solving law firm,” Poole said. “We do an awful lot of dispute resolution at the outset.”