“General counsel” for smaller companies
by Glenn RittSeveral years ago, the partners at Masterman, Culbert & Tully LLP decided to become more strategic.
How could their impressive individual specialties mesh more productively? What companies could be their best clients? How could they better communicate their firm’s value? How could they assure a long-term relationship with a client?
As a mid-sized law firm, MCT wanted to maximize its Boston roots – it overlooks Lewis Wharf – but in ways more intimate and customized than those of the city’s huge law firms with hundreds of partners.
“We’re still small enough to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’,” said partner Andrew Culbert with a wry smile.
The firm’s diversity of specialties was a significant asset, compared with thousands of smaller practices. At the same time, MCT’s partners understood they could not be all things to all clients and compete with the larger firms.
So they decided to focus on their strengths – real estate, employment, contract, business and estate planning law – so each specialty could serve as part of an overall long-term solution for individual clients.
What emerged was a strategy to become an outsourced “general counsel” to small and medium-sized businesses in Boston and beyond – companies that could not justify their own in-house lawyers.
Those included businesses with annual revenue from $500,000 up to $100 million or more.
“We want to be seen much as a primary care physician would,” said Culbert. “You rely on the doctor for annual exams and preventive medicine. The same can apply for legal counsel.” That includes those times when a partner can serve as a sounding board, not only on issues of law, but on business matters as well, he added.
Another strategic focus is geographic. Increasingly, MCT views the Cape and South Shore as its market. Partner Beth O’Neal lives on the Cape and she long has monitored the growing sophistication of the peninsula’s business community, as well as emerging opportunities – especially in her field of employment law.
O’Neal is ambitiously reaching out to businesses and associations such as the Cape Cod Landscape Association to offer up employment law advice, especially related to seasonal workers, overtime and the new health insurance law. (She also is contributor to Cape Business magazine with her column, The Law at Work.)
Discovering the new marketplace
Finding the time to become “strategic” is difficult for partners who are working around the clock. But they were so committed to the exercise that they hired a consultant to help them better identify their strengths, extract greater value out of their impressive resources and design a clear, consistent direction for the future.
Some of what they discovered:
• The fastest-growing sector of the economy encompassed small businesses and entrepreneurial enterprises that could not afford their own in-house attorney, despite constant legal needs.
• Many of the owners and managers of these companies came from larger corporations where they could rely routinely on in-house counsel. They were therefore comfortable with the “general counsel” model.
• Many smaller businesses would call MCT for help only after a crisis occurred. It would more effective and less costly, the partners concluded, to convince these firms to anticipate problems.
• Smaller businesses might be hesitant to reach out for legal help because they feared the costs, especially if they expected to be charged on an hourly basis – or even for a phone call. Better to develop a relationship model with predictable costs and incentives to stay consistently in touch with the firm.
• Smaller, closely owned companies not only need strong business and human resources counsel, but also succession and personal estate planning help. These were both strengths of MCT; the key was to package them as related services to address business and family simultaneously.
As each discovery is woven into a strategic blueprint, MCT is learning better how to celebrate its strengths more prominently, establish a competitive advantage and, most importantly, sustain long-term relationships with its small and medium-sized business clients.
“Today, it is difficult for a business to operate without a lawyer by its side, and that can be very expensive,” said Culbert. “We try to work in a partnership relationship; we recognize that a client’s interests are our interests, and we will do what we can to serve them and make adjustments in terms of cost.”
The strategic blueprint also reinforces the value of each partner as a teammate, emphasized Paul Baccari, who specializes in real estate and development law.
“Almost every client I work with on the real estate front at some point needs to consider succession planning and passing along corporate wealth. My value is enhanced if I can bring my partner, Paul McNamara, along as an estate planning expert.”
Similarly, Baccari has many clients in the franchise restaurant industry. “Many of them have an intense need for help in the employment field, what with overtime laws and seasonal employees. So the fact my client can also work with our employment partners often means we can satisfy 99.9 percent of their legal needs.”
“We need to emphasize that integration,” McNamara added.
Educating the business community
O’Neal noted that the concept of “general counsel” may be more familiar among Boston clients than those on the Cape. It takes a significant investment of time and money, she said, to educate prospective clients.
“On one level, we need to illustrate how a client will save money by working with us to avoid costly problems and litigation,” she explained. “We have to create opportunities to meet with clients on a no-charge basis for lunches or breakfasts and offer advice.”
This emphasis also has led to a growth in education and training, including seminars on how to behave in the workplace, O’Neal pointed out. She also publishes newsletters to keep current and prospective clients updated on fast-changing employment laws and regulations. Much of this activity occurs at no charge, but is viewed as effective marketing and an investment in long-term relationships.
“The worst thing is to have a client come to us in the midst of a crisis – with a problem that could have been resolved before it became a problem,” said Patricia Granger, another partner specializing in employment law.
Baccari nods in agreement. “Often, very smart clients will call me and say they signed an offer sheet to buy a house for millions of dollars without realizing they actually signed a binding contract that they now want to get out of. They needed to include me right from the beginning.”
Said O’Neal: “If an attorney knows a business’ goals up front, if we understand the business from A to Z, then our legal decisions will be better informed. That takes time, trust and teamwork with the company.”
When a business client holds back, noted Baccari, it often is related to worries about legal fees. That is an issue MCT’s partners are addressing as boldly – and prudently – as possible.
“If we have to make adjustments and spend more hours than we should bill for, we do it. In return, we develop a relationship with the client which, over time, more than makes up for the adjustments."
Granger recommends that businesses approach law firms much as they do vendors. “They should not be afraid to talk about costs. Some legal items are more difficult to predict, such as the total cost for litigation. But for most services, they should absolutely seek an agreed price up front, with no surprises.”
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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