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A law firm by any other name  …

By: Jane Pribek//January 31, 2011//

A law firm by any other name  …

By: Jane Pribek//January 31, 2011//

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Michelle Fitzgerald of the Horizons Law Group in Brookfield holds a replica of the firm’s sign. (WLJ photo by Kevin Harnack)
Michelle Fitzgerald of the Horizons Law Group in Brookfield holds a replica of the firm’s sign. (WLJ photo by Kevin Harnack)

Personal injury attorneys in California probably like to joke about the cheapness of lawyers at Bay-area insurance-defense firm Low, Ball & Lynch.

It’s a real firm, with a really bad name. And is it any wonder that Argue & Phibbs, in Sligo, Ireland, is no longer a going concern?

Usually, law firms are named after the founding partners, with names sometimes added later. But for firms that specialize — or that want to avoid a name that will draw derision — a name that stands out from “Lawyer & Lawyer” can be another option.

A handful of lawyers who chose nontraditional names for their private-practice firms said it has proven to be a smart marketing decision.

Appleton attorney Kevin L. Eismann went with Epiphany Law six years ago because it conveys the firm’s brand. It’s a business-law boutique and doesn’t practice traditionally, he said — for example, they place an emphasis on technology and offer alternative billing structures whenever possible.

The firm has grown from a solo practice to six lawyers. Eismann anticipated that prospective clients would ask, “Why are you called Epiphany Law?” That’s his cue to explain — to bring an epiphany of sorts — about how they are different.

And they are different in at least one way.

“We’ve been growing and doing well, when other firms in this economic climate are getting their teeth kicked in,” he said.

Along these lines, Brookfield lawyer Michelle Fitzgerald said she initially named her firm Legal Horizons in 2002, because in addition to full representation, she offers unbundled legal services, thereby broadening the horizons for prospective clients.

She changed the name to Horizons Law Group after a few years because the “legal” part of the former name suggested to some that it was a legal-services firm, which it’s not.

Like Eismann, her firm has grown, from her as a solo, now to four attorneys and branches in two other locations. She can’t attribute that entirely to the name — but it sure hasn’t hindered that growth, either.

Then there’s Delafield Law Offices. Attorney Kimberly K. Haines said at its inception in 1999, she and her two colleagues brainstormed the name and that’s what they came up with. Haines and one of the other lawyers had come from another firm named after the principals in a neighboring community, and she said they wanted to convey that they were different.

“We wanted to get away from the old hierarchy — the old structure where the first name of the firm made all the rain and the names after that did all the work,” Haines said.

The name is an expression of their geographic focus — they’ve all limited their practices to Waukesha County. And, its generality conveys the fact that they’re a general-practice firm.

A twist on that is the Milwaukee Bankruptcy Center. Its owner, Peter J. Zwiefelhofer, concentrates in — you guessed it — bankruptcy, and he does it in — again, you guessed it, Milwaukee.

He said that when starting his firm, the domain name was available. That, in combination with the fact that “Zwiefelhofer comes last in the Yellow Pages,” convinced him to go with the nontraditional name. It doesn’t hurt that his office is located in Milwaukee and serves Milwaukeeans. In addition, he was born and raised in Whitefish Bay, does community service for a Milwaukee non-profit, and has a piece of Milwaukee-related art adorning his office wall.

Finally, if you just can’t resist the temptation to put a surname into the firm’s name — after all, you’ve built a reputation so that your name resonates within the legal and general communities — consider the strategies of Madisonians Barrett J. Corneille and Robert J. Kasieta, of Corneille Law Group and Kasieta Legal Group, respectively.

Instead of going with Corneille & Associates, Corneille opted for “Group” because although the other attorneys at the firms were in fact all associates at the time, he envisioned making them partners, and at that point they wouldn’t want to change the firm’s name.

As for Kasieta, he said, “We wanted to express that we’re not just about one or two people, but that when someone hires us, they’re getting a team. From the person who greets them, to support staff who organizes the file or obtains the medical records, to the lawyer who tries the case — we’re all working together to get the case done.

“We put a lot of thought into the name,” he said. “Law firms tend to be so hierarchical, and the names are an expression of that. We wanted to get away from that.”

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