Cozen O'Connor chief looks to expand selectively
Every business cycle has winners and losers. Some firms and companies fail, while others take tough hits during a downturn and emerge as newly dominant players by absorbing markets that competitors have left behind.
Every business cycle has winners and losers.
Some firms and companies fail, while others take tough hits during a downturn and emerge as newly dominant players by absorbing markets that competitors have left behind.
Cozen O'Connor is betting that its business will grow as other firms retract. Earlier this year, the firm absorbed 66 lawyers from Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen L.L.P. after that firm, once a pillar of Philadelphia's legal establishment, dissolved.
Thomas A. Decker, Cozen O'Connor's president and chief executive officer, has been looking at office space in New York abandoned by firms that have been hit hard by the financial-services collapse.
Decker says the firm's strategy is to grow in New York, Washington, and a handful of other markets in the view that work will increase over time as the economy recovers.
The firm has core practices - such as insurance, white-collar defense, and commercial litigation - that remain robust. At the same time, it has had less exposure to mergers and acquisitions and structured finance, two practice areas that have cratered.
Decker says that the firm is on budget and that its projected revenue of about $226 million this year, though relatively small by the standards of the largest law firms with revenue of $1 billion or more, will be about the same in 2009 as in 2008.
Question: Do you think the legal-services market has bottomed now?
Answer: I think it's pretty close. I think a lot of firms have really taken a hard look at what they can do, what they're doing. So I think it's probably pretty close to the bottom for the great, great majority of firms.
Q: And what gives you confidence to say that?
A: First of all, I think the economy's starting to come back a little bit - at least it's flat.
And second, I think a lot of people have cut a whole lot. And my guess, without being inside the other firms, is they probably don't have a lot more hanging around that they can cut easily.
Without cutting expertise that they need. Or without really hurting their ability to service clients should there be even a slight uptick in the marketplace.
Q: What's the situation here at Cozen O'Connor?
A: We've done some trimming, ones and twos. We haven't had massive layoffs, though.
Q: Where do you see opportunities for growth?
A: What we have focused on was growing in Philadelphia - full service - and New York and Washington. And commercial litigation in our other offices. We want to continue to grow in New York.
I think you have to be strong in New York and Washington. You've got to be a strong Philadelphia firm in order to attract people in New York. Why would they go to you? If nobody had ever heard of you?
Q: Where else would you like to grow?
A: We are looking in Chicago. And Texas as well, to see whether there are some folks we can add. We may have something dropped in our laps in Atlanta. Who knows? And I think Atlanta's a great place to be. Or in Los Angeles. But some of the markets are more limiting by their current state. I don't know that we're going [to have] full service in Denver or Seattle, for example.
Q: What is it about Denver that would make it unappealing?
A: I think it's a tough legal market. There are a lot of lawyers there already.
Q: "Over-lawyered," as they say?
A: Yes. I think Seattle's probably the same way.
Thomas A. Decker
Hometown: Gladwyne.
Age: 63.
Education: University of Pennsylvania undergraduate; University of Virginia Law School.
Title: President and CEO of Cozen O'Connor.
Family: Wife, Candace; two children, ages 23 and 26.
Favorite leisure activities: doubles tennis, skiing.EndText