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Greenberg Traurig Gets 5 Environmental Lawyers From Ballard Spahr
The Legal Intelligencer
November 04, 2009
David Mandelbaum
Greenberg Traurig, which has been deliberate in its growth in Philadelphia since it opened its office there in 1997, has added a five-attorney environmental group from Ballard Spahr.
David Mandelbaum, who served as partner-in-charge of Ballard Spahr's environmental practice, moved over to Greenberg Traurig last month with partner Monique M. Mooney, of counsel Marc Davies and associates Sabrina Mizrachi and Caleb J. Holmes. Mandelbaum, Mooney and Davies joined Greenberg Traurig as shareholders and Mizrachi and Holmes maintained their titles.
The addition brings Greenberg Traurig's Philadelphia presence to 36 attorneys -- 15 of whom have at one point practiced at Ballard Spahr, including the regional managing partner in the office, Michael Lehr.
Mandelbaum had a 22-year history with Ballard Spahr, starting as a summer associate.
"I came to Ballard pre-children and left as an empty nester," he said.
He said he had known lawyers at Greenberg Traurig for years and has talked to them on and off for some time. Talks about making a move accelerated this fall and he gave notice to Ballard Spahr in early October. Mandelbaum said making a move in the fall, as opposed to the beginning of the year, is "kind of weird," but negotiations were driven by a large trial he has scheduled to start in January in Wisconsin.
While Mandelbaum described his practice as handling a lot of the conventional air, water and waste environmental work, he said this upcoming trial in Appleton Papers Inc. and NCR Corp. v. George A. Whiting Paper Co. is not conventional Superfund litigation.
The case deals with the contamination of the Fox River in Wisconsin. Mandelbaum and his group represent paper recycler P.H. Glatfelter Co. in its effort to show that various paper manufacturers were responsible for the pollution, not the recyclers who purchased tainted paper from the manufacturers.
The group that joined Greenberg Traurig is composed of the attorneys who are working on the Fox River case and other matters. Mandelbaum said the group also represents an oil and gas developer with a significant interest in mineral rights to the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania. There is a dispute between the land owners and the mineral rights owners as to how the oil and gas can be mined.
Mandelbaum said that although he handles environmental transactions, the bulk of his practice has migrated toward litigation and regulatory counseling and disputes. He said it was quite simple, when looking at client interests, to have some clients follow him to Greenberg Traurig and others stay at Ballard Spahr.
He said there are still excellent lawyers at the firm, with about half of the environmental group still there. Mandelbaum said there was nothing negative about Ballard Spahr that spurred his move, but the opportunity to join a firm triple the size in terms of attorney headcount, as well as join a practice that is complementary both locally and nationally, was just too good to pass up. He said there are a number of attorneys at Greenberg Traurig who focus on the transactional side with environmental bankruptcies and risk transfer matters.
Mandelbaum said the geographic footprint at Greenberg Traurig is more suited to his practice because of the firm's locations in places like Chicago, New York, the Deep South, the Southeast and Midwest "rather than a more real estate development-driven footprint that Ballard had."
In a statement, Ballard Spahr Chairman Arthur Makadon said the firm wishes Mandelbaum every success.
"We have tremendous respect for David's abilities and intellect, as we do for our former partner Monique and the three non-partners who accompanied them," Makadon said. "We wish them all good fortune. In my view, David is a gifted lawyer who felt he needed to make this change so that he could realize his professional and personal goals. Meanwhile, we continue to have a very substantial environmental group that will not miss a beat under its new head, Glenn Unterberger, in whom we have all the confidence in the world."
Rachel Shapiro, a managing director at Major Lindsey & Africa in Philadelphia, said Mandelbaum has been a well-regarded environmental attorney for a long time.
"He's a great catch for Greenberg," she said.
Environmental law has been "really quite healthy" in this economy, Mandelbaum said. Large law firms have reacted to it differently over the years. Many pulled out of the practice, for example, when large Superfund litigation that produced high revenue per lawyer looked like it was on its way out. But other firms have been more attuned to being nimbler and moving where the practice goes, he said.
There is an ongoing natural gas boom in Pennsylvania, Mandelbaum said, even though it's down a bit from last year because natural gas prices are lower. But, he observed, it still produces a lot of litigation. People could say that's a small-firm practice or they could take the view that there are a lot of large companies involved in some reasonably large deals, he said.
Firms like K&L Gates and Reed Smith have certainly taken that approach, getting involved in the increasing oil and natural gas litigation and transactions in Pennsylvania over the past few years.
Mandelbaum also pointed to the uptick in environmental regulation. Firms could take the view that they are "quirky, weird and fringe" or they could view them as affecting large corporations and costing millions of dollars to implement, he said.
Lehr, who started Greenberg Traurig's Philadelphia office in 1997, said the office's environmental attorneys are strong in transactional work, but weren't as strong in regulatory and litigation matters. He said Mandelbaum's group adds that component.
Aside from the quick growth the office had to do in the beginning to be able to appropriately staff matters, Lehr said the firm has grown in Philadelphia because of the people, not the practice area.
"Our firm is so big that we practice in virtually every practice area that there is, so almost everybody becomes complementary if they're really good," he said.
Greenberg Traurig is purposefully going slowly when it comes to growth in Philadelphia because there are more quality lawyers in this town than local business needs can support, he said. Lehr said local firms that have reached out nationally, like Morgan Lewis & Bockius and Dechert, have, in his estimation, done the best among Philadelphia firms. More likely than not, an attorney joining Greenberg Traurig in Philadelphia would have a national practice rather than a regional one, though there are always exceptions, Lehr said.
About three years ago, the firm brought on Tampa-based environmental litigator David Weinstein and consulted him when thinking about bringing Mandelbaum's group on board, Lehr said.
