March 12, 2001
THE CALIFORNIA LAW BUSINESS JOURNAL
By Diane Taylor
SAN DIEGO – The attorneys at Procopio Cory refuse to be driven out by the Los Angeles and Bay Area firms flooding the San Diego legal market.
One big, happy family. Those are hardly the words used to describe most law firms today. Yet, that is precisely what the attorneys at San Diego’s Procopio Cory Hargreaves & Savitch say of their firm.
“We have a culture of nice people here,” managing partner Thomas Turner Jr. says. “There are lots of people who have been here for a long, long time; we have a very low level of attrition. We’re fortunate to have a congenial, humane atmosphere with all of the advantages of a small firm but not many of the disadvantages of a big firm.”
Since its inception in 1946 as the two-man shop of Cory & Savitch, the firm has grown exponentially. Now 71 attorneys strong, Procopio has ignored the new law firm mantra to plant thy seed here, there and everywhere. Instead, the firm has only one office in California and has no plans to expand outside the San Diego border.
In its market, however, Procopio has survived – even flourished – despite the wave of large San Francisco, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley firms that have flooded San Diego, arguably precipitating the demise of other old-time indigenous firms. Among those, 82-year-old Hillyer & Irwin had 40 attorneys in its heyday of the 1980s but is now barely breathing with just seven lawyers. Long-standing San Diego firms like McInnis Fitzgerald Rees & Sharkey and Jennings Engstrand & Hendrickson shuttered their doors after they were subsumed by or gradually lost their attorneys to larger firms.
Perhaps because of its contrary ways, Procopio has more than doubled its size in the past five years with a similar increase in revenues, according to a firm spokesman. In the last two years alone the firm has added 24 attorneys, and now consumes six floors of the Union Bank Building in downtown San Diego.
In addition to its lateral associate hires, the firm acquired a local three-attorney intellectual property boutique, Dain & Li, in October 1999, bolstering its high-technology practice. Then, just two months later, Procopio gobbled up a four-attorney corporate and securities transaction group from Hillyer & Irwin.
“Procopio is uniquely positioned in the San Diego marketplace,” Larry Watanabe of local legal recruitment firm Watanabe Nason & Seltzer says. “Unlike the different regions like San Francisco and Los Angeles, which have a number of successful boutique firms, Procopio is one of the only San Diego-bred firms in the area that has survived despite having no outside offices.” Watanabe says that Procopio has succeeded partly because it does not compete for the same clientele as behemoths like Cooley Godward and Brobeck Phleger & Harrison.
Instead, it provides a very specific service for a select segment of the market: small to midsize startups that need intellectual property or corporate work. Those companies usually can’t afford the high fees demanded by big shops and turn to smaller firms like Procopio, whose fees are a notch down but whose services are still top quality.
Turner believes a key distinction between Procopio and the Cooleys of the world is that his firm is at a different “price point.”
“Because of the boom in business and technology in San Diego, the big firms have been able to boost their billing rates and practices,” he says. However, Procopio has been more modest in its billing increases, providing more value for its services, according to Turner.
“A couple of big firms have made the pitch that clients should call them when they need to save the life of their company,” he continues. “My philosophy is that you can call us to save the life of your company without it actually costing you an arm and a leg!”
According to Watanabe, Procopio’s strength in many different areas -corporate deals, intellectual property, real estate transactions and litigation – has also contributed to its success among the transplants which have sprouted all over San Diego.
“The people at Procopio are terrific, nice to the core,” Watanabe adds. “They work hard, but you won’t find many people over there who bill 2,400 hours or more. It’s a more balanced approach.”
Balance is not just a mantra, but a reality at the firm.
“Many lawyers that come to live in San Diego are motivated, ambitious and committed to the practice of law, but they also want to have a high quality of life,” partner Steven Strauss, who heads the litigation practice, says.
“The goal here is not just to grind people down by making them bill a ton of hours and then throwing them out, but for everyone to succeed.”
Most of the firm’s attorneys stay “amazingly close to” the billable-hour requirement, which is 1,850 for associates, business and employment litigation partner Stephanie Sontag says.
Turner adds that Procopio attorneys are welcome to bill more than 2,000 hours, but there is no silent expectation that attorneys do so.
“In many of the big, powerhouse firms, the billing requirements are similarly reasonable, but there is also an unstated expectation for attorneys to blow the roof off that number,” he explains. “Our philosophy is to maintain the kind of balance that has treated us well here.”
Procopio associates agree that there’s no pressure to bill until you drop. “The focus here is whether you’re a good attorney and whether you get the work done,” says Bob Brown, a seventh-year tax associate who’s been with the firm since law school. “There is no one looking over your shoulder to see when you come in and when you leave.”
Besides their 1,850-hour billing requirement, Procopio attorneys must spend an additional 200 hours working for their community.
Both partners and associates says that’s a requirement that’s not difficult to meet.
“I don’t even see the community activity hours as a requirement,” says partner Michael Kinkelaar, who heads the business and technology practice.
“Many people want to get involved in various aspects of the community and we simply encourage them to participate in whatever area they may be interested in,” he says.
Kinkelaar, who’s been with the firm since graduating from Hastings College of the Law in 1982, currently serves as a director of High Five America, a youth focused nonprofit community organization.
He is also a past president and director of the San Diego League, a children’s charity organization and past director of the San Diego County Bar Association Barrister’s Club.
Once in a while the firm’s community involvement brings new clients in the door. Many other times, there is no such return.
“We’re really out there in the community as a firm – whether it comes back to us in the form of payment or not,” Sontag says.
Sontag is a prime example of the firm’s commitment to community service. The list of her outside activities is a mile long: She is on the board of directors and a former president of the San Diego County Bar Association and the San Diego County Bar Foundation; she is a member of the Lawyers Club of San Diego’s advisory board, the Association of Business Trial Lawyers and the Consumer Lawyers of San Diego; a participant in the San Diego Volunteer Lawyers Program; and a master of the Enright Chapter of the American Inns of Court.
Sontag moved to Procopio in 1998 from Post Kirby Noonan & Sweat, another San Diego law firm, where her husband, David Oberholtzer, works as a partner. She left the litigation boutique because Procopio offered a full-service law firm where she could better develop her business, employment and labor litigation practice.
She does not regret the switch.
“This firm is a good fit for me,” she says of Procopio.
“I knew the lawyers here pretty well before I came,” she says. “They had an excellent reputation in town for their legal work, among other things. I also liked the firm’s community spirit. … The people here genuinely care about the community.
“The firm has grown tremendously since I started, when it had 35 or 40 attorneys. But it has been a good, thoughtful growth which has enhanced the firm.”
Strauss – an old-timer who joined the firm in 1981 after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law – agrees that Procopio’s growth spurt in recent years has been very fast and largely positive.
“We’ve had the benefit of growing by acquiring good, experienced lawyers in the fallout from other firm failures or those attorneys who were simply looking for a different firm culture,” Strauss reflects.
When Strauss started at the firm, about half of its business consisted of litigation. In recent years, trial work has been supplanted by other practice areas.
Transaction work in business and technology, intellectual property, tax, real estate and international law now command two-thirds of Procopio’s caseload.
“We recognized internally that we needed to diversify from litigation into other strong, complementary practice areas, like intellectual property,” Strauss says. “Plus, as the technology business has taken off here in San Diego, our firm was able to take advantage by gaining some of these clients and expanding the business and technology department.”
As the firm’s practice areas have expanded, so has its attorneys’ expertise. Unlike some large firms that pin an attorney to a specific niche, Procopio allows its attorneys to delve into other practice areas.
“Procopio gives its attorneys the flexibility to practice in the area of law that they enjoy, even if it involves a crossover,” says Kinkelaar, who drifted from Procopio’s tax group to its business and technology department, where he focuses on corporate, securities and intellectual property transactions.
He continues, “We encourage you to develop a number of different skill-sets so you can perform a variety of transactions for your client, as opposed to just sending it over to another department within the firm. This is a lot more efficient for the client,” Kinkelaar continues.
Turner joined Procopio in 1993 after an eight-year stint at Brobeck’s local office. He cites other reasons why Procopio attorneys are happier than their big-firm brethren.
“Even though I made partner at Brobeck, I was a partner in name only – I wasn’t making any decisions or doing any strategic planning,” Turner says. “It wasn’t my idea of what a law partnership was all about. Here, there’s a lot more personal involvement; we sit around and have good, healthy discussions before making decisions and implementing them.”
Turner says another key to Procopio’s success is its “nurturing” culture. “There’s a fundamental degree of human consideration here; people don’t even think of back stabbing each other,” he proudly says. “A number of people have had opportunities to go to bigger firms for more money, but have chosen to stay here or to come here from those firms.”
Last year’s “salary wars” did not entirely pass Procopio by – a first-year associate at the firm receives an annual base pay of $105,000, while larger firms pay from $125,000 to $135,000. But it hasn’t lost many attorneys to higher-paying megafirms.
“If your sole goal as an attorney is to make the most amount of money, you should go somewhere else,” Strauss says. “But if you want to be successful and have the power and flexibility to build your own practice, then this is the place. It’s a trade-off between money and quality of life.”
Kinkelaar concurs. “We realize people have a life outside of the office, that they have families,” he says. “The firm doesn’t just make decisions based on the bottom line or on making the most money. If you need to leave the office early to go to your kid’s softball or Little League game, no one blinks an eye.”
In fact, this “warm and fuzzy” feeling has fostered many friendships within the firm, both among partners and associates.
“The firm culture here is outstanding,” observes Spencer Skeen, a fifth-year litigation associate.
“Many of the partners have been here 15 to 25 years and are very good friends,” Skeen continues. “They get together with each other and the associates, not because it’s required but because they like to do it. People here ask about what’s going on with your life and genuinely express concern about how you’re doing as an individual.
“That means a lot. Sometimes more than money.”