The best of both worlds
by Glenn RittIf you search for partners on the Web site of Boston law firm Rubin and Rudman LLP, you will find Pamela Marsh and Robert Chamberlain among its streaming photo gallery featuring 80 attorneys.
If you go to capecodlawyer.com, the Web site of Yarmouthport attorney Bruce P. Gilmore, you will discover Marsh and Chamberlain affiliated with him.
And you can always find the two attorneys and their associates at their Willow Street offices.
In the face of a highly competitive legal environment, these two long-time Cape Cod attorneys have designed one of the more unique business models. They can provide clients with all the resources of a Boston law firm and simultaneously represent themselves as knowledgeable, local practitioners intimately connected to the community.
And for good measure, their recent working relationship with Gilmore – a sole practitioner who shares office space with them and specializes in litigation, municipal law and land use – brings them additional referrals and specific local expertise for their own clients.
In many ways, Marsh and Chamberlain embody several dominant themes that characterize the changing face of law on Cape Cod:
• entry of Boston and South Shore law firms seeking clients among ever-sophisticated small businesses and wealthy residents;
• the growth of partnerships and associations among attorneys to share business and marketing costs, as well as expand their ability to serve clients across multiple fields of legal knowledge.
• growing reliance on the Internet and computers for both internal communication and marketing exposure through many channels.
Marsh and Chamberlain had been partners for many years before they joined Rubin and Rudman LLP three years ago as that firm’s first and only full-scale branch office.
Marsh, a Boston College Law School graduate, honed her legal skills three decades ago in the sophisticated product and drug liability field. While working for a small Boston firm at that time, she married a “Cape Cod man who would not go to Boston.”
She convinced her boss and mentor, who owned a second home on the Cape, to open a small branch in Barnstable Village to serve the Southeastern Massachusetts market.
Chamberlain, also a BC graduate, grew up in Dennis, where his father developed Patriot Square. He joined Marsh in 1981 – and almost immediately began running the Cape office as she took time off to raise a family.
In 1989, with Marsh back almost full time, they gave up the Boston connection and established their own local partnership, expanding their practice beyond product liability and litigation to general business representation.
In 2005 – as much by good fortune and planning – they joined Rubin and Rudman LLP as full partners, with a twist.
The firm, understanding the unique if not insular nature of the Cape, agreed that locally it would be known as Rubin, Rudman, Chamberlain and Marsh.
“We are one of the only real Cape-based practices that have fully associated with a Boston office. We are both partners; it is a total association from the ground up,” said Marsh – who travels to Boston routinely, but stays fully connected via the Internet.
“We already knew a couple of partners in Rubin and Rudman,” said Chamberlain. “One of them had a fair number of Cape-based clients and lived here. They had wanted an office here, but not an outpost. I think the ultimate sell was that we were a successful practice surviving quite nicely on our own – and provided them with instant connections into the community.”
For Marsh and Chamberlain, the Rubin and Rudman association provided instant scale and infrastructure. Equally importantly, the Boston firm’s expertise matched their own. “A number of their attorneys represent business in the same context as we do,” he explained.
Added Marsh: “It has also allowed us to build out our practice more into estate and trust planning as well as elder law,” emerging opportunities given the Cape’s older, wealthy population.
“We have lots of Cape Cod-based clients where Boston matters not at all. That’s fine,” said Chamberlain. But in many other cases, the association brings additional firepower without the big city price tag.
“There are two very important elements to the model,” said Chamberlain. One is the firm’s decision to combine rather than bury the local partners’ name on the shingle. More importantly, Marsh and Chamberlain can charge Cape Cod rates, not Boston ones.
“We were not pressured in any way to increase rates as part of the association,” he said. “That is rare. Usually, you would find enormous pressure. But Rubin and Rudman recognized that for us to succeed here, Cape Cod clients could not sustain the same rates that can be obtained in Boston.
“Most businesses on the Cape, if they were willing to pay the increased Boston rates, would already be gone to a large firm,” he added. “The reality is that today, for a sharp consumer of legal services, to get high-quality work you don’t have to pay large Boston firm rates.”
Meanwhile, Rubin and Rudman provides the two local partners with invaluable synergies, beginning with infrastructure. Now, Boston assumes responsibility for activities ranging from accounting to IT.
“Under the Cape-based firm that we operated, I was managing partner, devoting up to 50 percent of my time on non-legal matters. So, in a sense, I was a big winner from the merger. I have recaptured a tremendous amount of time totally devoted to the practice of law, where it should have been all the time,” said Chamberlain.
Added Marsh: “I did the human resources work, which cut into my practice – as well as my ability to be involved in the Massachusetts Bar Foundation and the local community.”
Equally important, the two local partners now can rely on Rubin and Rudman’s strong trust department, which manages wealthy client accounts, and its employment group, which provides expertise regarding employee and employer relationships.
“More and more, my business clients need that kind of support,” emphasized Chamberlain. “Without the merger with Boston, we never could be able to provide that in-house.”
Small firms and sole practitioners long have referred their clients to each other, depending on their expertise. But in Marsh and Chamberlain’s case, they now can keep their clients satisfied without losing their business.
As partners in the larger law firm, that’s a huge advantage. It provides more quality control with clients and lets Marsh and Chamberlain benefit directly because fees remain within a business whose equity they share.
When they do refer clients to associates in Boston, so far at least, those partners and attorneys have been willing to negotiate their rates down to Cape levels.
Will they be able to maintain this equilibrium moving forward?
“One reason we are optimistic is that the firm has a tradition of independence among its partners, most of whom were sole practitioners or came from small firms,” said Chamberlain. “They were comfortable with the Cape branch model and were seeking it out.”
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. 
