Nutter: The Boston law firm that cracked the Cape code
by Glenn RittIn a tiny, windowless room deep within Nutter’s ever-expanding Hyannis office are several computer servers that play a profound role in the Boston law firm’s unique success on Cape Cod.
They allow the local team – 10 attorneys and 12 staff members – to operate exactly as if they were another floor within Nutter’s huge World Trade Center headquarters, alongside hundreds of partners and attorneys who represent 50 separate specialties, as well as a proprietary financial investment arm and a unique program to support entrepreneurs and startup companies.
“If you walked around our office and didn’t look outside, you’d think you were in the Boston office,” said Managing Partner Pat Butler.
This is no satellite model for a seasonal location. It’s very much a branch office – Nutter’s only one – that lets Butler and his local team leverage the firm’s global resources while prominently interacting at virtually every level of the Cape’s business, community and nonprofit life.
Other Boston firms have attempted to establish offices here, only to fall short of expectations. Still others have developed modest satellites or forged formal and informal relationships with local attorneys. The growing attractiveness of the Cape – with the arrival of many new businesses and wealthy baby boomers – guarantees that more Boston firms are on the way.
But there is virtually unanimous recognition within the Cape’s legal community that Nutter – which is one of the 10 biggest firms in Boston – has successfully carved a unique presence. It’s the result of history, prescience and some serendipity.
How the firm works to maintain its competitive advantage reflects the changing face of law on Cape Cod as well as the peninsula’s evolving demographics. It also can serve as a blueprint for other attorneys and businesses confronting the new Cape Cod. Among its bedrock strategies:
• Heavy and creative reliance on communications technology that eliminates the distance between Cape Cod and Boston.
• The ability to leverage Boston’s multiple specialties and become a full-service resource to clients – many with homes here and elsewhere in Massachusetts. Butler and his staff can summon experts in topics ranging from antitrust law to venture capital for a visit to the Cape.
• The elimination of unnecessary commuting time to Boston, allowing partners and attorneys to live on the Cape fulltime and get involved in local business and community activities.
• The resources to combine legal, accounting and financial advice for both business and personal clients. On the Cape, that is particularly significant given the high concentration of wealthy residents and small business owners, including doctors and health professionals.
“With a branch, as opposed to a satellite office, clients feel you’re committed to the Cape. You’re not just coming and going based on a meeting schedule,” said Butler, whose land-use and zoning expertise has him in the middle of some of the Cape’s most significant issues – from a Nantucket Sound wind farm to the arrival of BJ’s and Circuit City to the very future of the Cape Cod Commission.
“Clients want a broad spectrum of services, but they also want attorneys who understand the nuances of the Cape,” Butler emphasized.
“One of the first questions I get as a lawyer is: ‘Where do you live?’” observed Matthew Bresette, who practices trust and estate law in Nutter’s Hyannis office. At the same time, the Cape branch was a strong recruitment tool for Bressette and his family – including young twins. His parents and in-laws live here full-time after decades as summer residents.
While clients may be soothed by Bresette’s local roots, they also demand services that could extend beyond his particular expertise. That’s one reason the firm created Nutter Investment Advisors in 1988. Today, it has more than $1 billion under management.
The integration model goes one step further. The Cape staff is associated directly with departments in Boston based on their specialties. For example, Butler not only manages the Cape branch with significant independence, including its own budget, but also is a partner in the firm’s real estate and finance department and its land use group, organized transparently with peers located in Boston.
Firm’s roots go back to 1879
The roots of Nutter, McClennen & Fish LLP are old, firm and impressive. It was founded in 1879 by Louis D. Brandeis, who became a Supreme Court Justice, and Samuel Warren, scion of a prominent Boston family.
The roots of its only branch are more recent, of course, but in their own way are planted very deeply too, having been established by Edward F. McLaughlin Jr., the only Cape Codder to have served as Massachusetts lieutenant governor – as a Democrat in the Republican administration of John Volpe.
After leaving office in 1963, well connected politically, McLaughlin represented the Boston law firm, Herrick & Smith, on the Cape. In 1986, McLaughlin folded his practice into Nutter’s, which presciently saw the potential here, in large part because clients and partners had homes on the peninsula.
That very early start, plus McLaughlin’s charisma and contacts, established a competitive advantage that has been nurtured ever since. Those contacts included the new president of the United States, John F. Kennedy.
The two had become friends in World War II. McLaughlin was in a Quonset hut hospital in the Solomon Islands when Kennedy was placed in an adjoining bed after being rescued from the sunken PT-109.
“McLaughlin was a unique networker,” Butler recalled. “He extended his network so that eventually no other Boston firm tested the marketplace seriously.”
McLaughlin also had the gravitas to recruit heavy hitters. Among his prominent recruits was Augustus Wagner Jr., who left a Superior Court judgeship to practice trial law for Nutter in 1986.
Wagner, who eventually became managing partner, brought the experience and perspective of a judge to Nutter’s litigation team. And while he practiced locally, his judgeship had taken him to virtually every county in the state, establishing invaluable professional and political relationships.
“Ed McLaughlin had a vision that a Boston firm could have a Cape presence,” said Butler, who also joined the firm in 1986. “He had the local connections to make it work.”
Added Wagner: “Personally, I wanted the community to know I was coming to the table with a presence in Boston as well as the Cape.”
“I think the experience is that we have been somewhat unique,” Butler recently told Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. “We’re the only firm of our size that has this type of operation here. A few others have niche interests. I can see some have opened offices to deal with trust and estates or particular clients. In one case, there was a Boston firm that affiliated with a Cape firm. Some personal injury firms popped up and then tended to go away.”
Noted Wagner: “Ed McLaughlin understood that the key to success was the ability to provide full service to clients. He understood we must service the community, not only the interest of clients.”
In many ways, McLaughlin was ahead of the curve. He understood the strategy to think globally, act locally. Today, virtually every kind of business is trying to leverage strong internal infrastructures, but customize their services and products to very local and micro markets.
At the same time, Butler said, the other key is integration, a strategy strengthened today by computerization, data management, video conferencing and the Internet.
Integration also means that Nutter’s clients on the Cape encounter the same fee structure and philosophy as they would in Boston. But, with that, Butler emphasizes, comes the entire resource base of Boston when needed.
The Cape branch can concentrate on the law and rainmaking and leave almost everything else – from IT to marketing to human resources – to headquarters. That is a critical advantage when faced with increased competition and a growing requirement to manage a practice.
“We are a business,” said Butler, who devotes up to 10 percent of any day to administration and often Saturday mornings as well. He reports to a full-time CEO at Nutter who is a non-lawyer, as well as an executive committee with its managing law partner.
Bresette nodded with recognition. Even as a new attorney, he had to put together a model for his practice with targets to achieve. That exercise actually encourages community engagement and networking, often mentored by Butler – even though that time commitment often does not lead to immediate business. A significant part of this community strategy is involvement in nonprofits and events such as Philanthropy Day.
The Hyannis branch presents yet another advantage. Its relatively small size has fostered an intimate atmosphere, especially alongside its Boston offices.
That has been particularly appealing to Sarah Manning, who refers to a “family atmosphere.” Manning speaks with a brogue, as she was among thousands of Irish college students who discovered the Cape as summer workers. Now, she is a litigation attorney with Nutter with 18 years experience.
Nancy McGuire recently returned to Nutter’s employment/labor practice group after working as in-house counsel for Cape Cod Healthcare. Prior to law school, she worked as a counselor for the Dennis Yarmouth School District.
While Manning and McGuire work full time, two other women attorneys practice part time while raising families on the Cape. This all underscores another theme to the changing face of Cape Cod. As noted by Gus Wagner, “When I went to law school, I had only one other female classmate. My daughter attended the same law school and was among a class that was 54 percent female.”
Butler, who has watched Nutter evolve on the Cape for more than two decades, appreciates the firm’s unique position in the local market, but acknowledges that clients are getting increasingly more sophisticated and demanding, while smaller competitors are developing more effective alliances with other firms and related professionals, including CPAs and financial advisers.
Yet he would not trade places with any other firm. “In our first five years as Nutter, we did not achieve traction,” said Butler. “But in the last 15 years, we have developed a strong reputation. We tend to be in the front of the business community’s mind.”
Published in Cape Business March/April 2008
Glenn Ritt Glenn Ritt is editor and co-publisher of Cape Business Publishing LLC. He is the former publisher of Cape Cod Community Newspapers and editor of The Bergen Record in New Jersey. 
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