Firms add, adapt practice areas to keep busy

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Real estate attorney Ronald M. Trachtenberg has dabbled in mediation for the last decade.

But until this year, Trachtenberg, who practices at Murphy Desmond SC, never had the time to formally put together a practice group focusing on alternative dispute resolution.

Now that his commercial development practice area has shrunk due the recession, “I finally had time to flesh this [ADR group] out.”

“People like me get projects through, and the number and size of things getting through has dropped off dramatically,” Trachtenberg explained.

Several other firms have also either shifted attorneys to stronger practice areas or expanded into new ones in an effort to stay busy.

At the start of the year, Milwaukee litigation firm Friebert, Finerty & St. John SC absorbed the Miami law office of solo practitioner Sara E. Dill, who practices immigration and criminal law.

While her criminal practice has dipped during the recession, Dill said her immigration work has increased, as a crackdown on illegal immigrants has led to more arrests and more people in need of representation.

“It’s an area of constant business now, but it will also increase over the next few years,” Dill said.

Her addition was well-timed, she said, because it has allowed the firm to create a “natural marriage” with the labor and employment law practice, leading to new business.

“In the last six months I’ve seen an increase in companies taking proactive measures to make sure they are in compliance with federal [immigration] regulations,” Dill said.

Shifting Focus

At Milwaukee-based Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, business and land resources attorneys have been shifting toward the Renewable Energy Industry Group.

Attorney Scott C. Beightol chairs the firm’s Management Committee. He said that the last two or three years the number of attorneys doing renewable energy work has grown from about eight in 2006 to approximately 25.

The recent availability of federal stimulus dollars for businesses willing to invest in renewable energy sources like wind farms has expanded opportunities for business attorneys to draw in clients as more conventional commercial contract work has dried up.

Beightol said it’s becoming more common for “traditional merger and acquisition” lawyers to help clients navigate through a transaction involving something like a renewable energy transmitter.

“A deal is a deal,” he said.

Many firms aren’t seeing radical changes.

“Litigators [aren’t] becoming family law practitioners,” said Ann. M. Rieger, president of Brookfield-based firm Davis & Kuelthau SC.

Instead, lawyers are adjusting their focus within their practice areas.

For example, said Rieger, while real estate work was “gangbusters” through 2008, those attorneys are now working to salvage ongoing development deals and dealing with creditors’ rights issues.

“I’d say for us, it’s the type of work that has shifted, in part because of the economic conditions,” Rieger said.

Though Trachtenberg said that the formation of the ADR group at Murphy Desmond was not a direct result of the recession, he noted that many of the attorneys doing mediation and arbitration can now dedicate more time to the practice.

And client interest in ADR has increased.

“If there is something in the economy driving ADR, it’s simply that our clients are getting more and more mindful of every dollar and every cent,” he said.