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N.J. Wolf Block Office Reconstitutes as Brach Eichler
Move may be a holding action as partners weigh merger queries from potential suitors
New Jersey Law Journal
April 16, 2009
As lawyers in the crumbling edifice that was Wolf Block leave in droves for new firms, the 62-attorney Roseland, N.J., office will stick together for the most part and be called Brach Eichler, as it was before a merger with Wolf Block five years ago.
It may not be a permanent solution. The next step will be to decide whether Brach Eichler should remain a stand-alone firm or merge, says John Fanburg, its managing partner.
Fanburg says that in the three weeks since 290-lawyer Wolf Block announced it would wind down by the end of May for financial reasons, he and his colleagues in Roseland have received almost 40 queries from firms with an urge to merge or to hire individuals or practice groups. Rather than respond with undue haste, he and his partners decided to reconstitute as a separate firm and weigh the offers deliberately.
"We have a lot of options," Fanburg says, declining to name the callers. "We can stay as we are and grow organically. If we like the potential suitor we can be acquired by a larger firm, we can merge with a similar-sized New Jersey firm or we can acquire smaller groups and grow that way." He says he can't predict how long the process might take.
Fanburg says the only partner to leave since the dissolution announcement was William Greenbaum, an employment lawyer who went to Lowenstein Sandler in Roseland and did not take any associates. Greenbaum was in Wolf Block before the 2003 merger.
Most of the senior partners have remained in the firm, which at the time of the merger was Brach, Eichler, Rosenberg, Silver, Bernstein, Hammer & Gladstone, founded in 1967 by William Brach and Burton Eichler.
"Many of us have been working together for more than 30 years and we are excited about the opportunity that forming a stand-alone firm provides," Fanburg says. Even so, he adds, it is not a reversion to the past because five years as part of Wolf Block brought more lawyers into the operation and deepened the firm's level of sophistication, he says.
The firm's new five-member executive committee appears to draw from the firm's chief practice areas. Fanburg and Mark Manigan are in the health care practice; Stuart Gladstone represents trust and estate clients; Charles Gormally is a senior litigation partner; and Alan Hammer is in the real estate group and is active in real estate tax appeals.
Fanburg says that in the past three weeks lawyers had to do everything a startup firm would do: enter leases, obtain malpractice insurance, set up trust accounts, borrow money and transfer software licenses.
"None of us have every done it before," he says. "But when the issue came up no one sat around wringing their hands saying 'oh gee, what do we do?' Everybody pitched in."
ECHOES OF HANNOCH WEISMAN DEMISE
In the history of New Jersey, no group of lawyers so large has reconstituted itself as the substantially similar operation it was -- and with the same name -- before a merger with a large firm.
In 1993, after five years in Hannoch Weisman, then the state's second-largest firm, 18 lawyers who had merged in from Sterns, Herbert, Weinroth & Petrino, dropped out and went back to practicing on their own at what is now Sterns & Weinroth in Trenton.
Brach Eichler's situation is different in one major respect. Hannoch Weisman collapsed after the Sterns & Weinroth group left; Brach Eichler was formed after Wolf Block decided to dissolve.
Last week, most of the 25 lawyers in the Cherry Hill, N.J., office of Wolf Block, the firm's second-largest branch in New Jersey, opened a Cherry Hill operation for 650-lawyer Duane Morris. Cozen & O'Connor has also taken over substantial portions of Wolf Block's practices.
