MIAMI — Andrew Smulian's first year as chairman of Akerman Senterfitt hasn't been an easy one. The firm lost one of its most popular and successful partners, Steve Chaykin, a leader in its white-collar practice, to a freak hiking accident in Colorado. Then, after months of intense negotiations with Philadelphia-based WolfBlock, the merger fell apart at the 11th hour — ostensibly due to conflicts. And last week, rumors flew of reported layoffs in the Miami office.

Known as one of Florida's largest and most stable law firms — counting several former federal and appellate judges among its ranks — the 484-lawyer firm has had trouble breaking onto the national scene, with its opening of offices in New York and Washington plagued with defections. But the firm will not be deterred in its desire to become a national firm and break into the top 50 of the NLJ 250, The National Law Journal's annual survey of the nation's 250 largest law firms.

Miami-based Smulian, who took over as chairman of Akerman in February, spoke with the NLJ on Monday about the challenges facing the firm, the 92nd largest in the 2008 NLJ 250.

NLJ: What are your goals and priorities as chairman? Any plans to grow, expand or contract? Any plans to change the structure of the law firm or make key personnel changes?

AS: I think the main goal is to continue the growth strategy. I think we're going to continue that through organic growth or external growth. We want to amplify and round out some of our key practice areas to provide greater support to our clients. We're the dominant corporate and securities firm in Florida, and also specialize in the areas of real estate and infrastructure. We want to become a national player in middle market mergers and acquisitions.

As far as opening new offices, that will come as a result of external strategies rather than plunking a lawyer down. We want to be in high growth areas. We're in California already, and we're looking to expand our presence there. We also want to be in other areas of the Northeast that one would not think of as high-growth areas.

NLJ: Speaking of the Northeast, your efforts to break into New York and Washington have been bumpy. The founding partners in New York, Marvin and Jason Pickholz and Jane Sexton, abruptly departed after less than two years. And the crack white-collar group of Guy Singer, Richard Smith and Alexandre Rene left the Washington office last year after six months [Singer] and one-and-a-half years [Smith and Rene]. Has it been challenging to establish yourself in those competitive markets?

AS: They are competitive markets, no question. We are creating a bankruptcy practice in our New York office, we're hiring some laterals there. There's certainly a lot of competition, but we find opportunities, with respect to practices that are really related to our core businesses. What is really key to our New York strategy is to stick to areas where we do have strength and focus on them. One of those is related to real estate and it's the incentive business.

NLJ: So New York and Washington will definitely remain open?

AS: Yes.

NLJ: You spent many months in discussions with WolfBlock, a 300-lawyer firm in Pennsylvania, about merging. The deal was close — it was approved by executive committees of both firms over the summer and was up for a partnership vote when it was announced that it fell through in September, due to continuing conflicts over health care litigation. What was your original motivation for the merger and what went wrong?

AS: We were motivated by a lot of what I alluded to already — to really increase the depth of our practice in real estate and policy areas, and that would have helped us accomplish that, to expand the breadth of our office and help us in our game plan on becoming a dominant real estate firm. Unfortunately the conflicts in our practice areas made it impossible for this to be resolved

I was disappointed. We liked the WolfBlock people and they seemed to like us. We are still making referrals back and forth, We're sorry we invested a lot of time and effort in something and could not get it across the goal line. But [pursuing it] was a strategy we believe in.

NLJ: Any plans for other mergers?

AS: Yes. A lot of people followed that deal and we've been noticed. We talk to a lot of people all the time, in a consolidating industry. But there is nothing that I can get into specifically at this time.

NLJ: How has the economy affected your law firm? Several sources said that three lawyers and five support staff were let go in your Miami office on Friday, including the co-chair of your distressed properties division, Tony Casareale, as well as of counsel Stu Cowitt. [Neither lawyer returned calls for comment from the NLJ. and they are no longer at the firm.] Can you comment on that? Are any further layoffs expected?

AS: I'm not going to get into any specifics about our employees. We do not have a program of anticipatory layoffs. The economy is the economy. We have a number of practice areas that are strong in this economy. They're helping overall. We're strong and a well-positioned firm and have a very good capital structure. We don't have debt and we're well positioned to weather an economic downturn.

NLJ: How important is diversity to your firm?

AS: It's very important. We've won several awards due to our African-American and Hispanic populations. We have a great deal of minority lawyers. Judge [Joseph] Hatchett [a partner at the firm] is the head of our diversity program and working very hard to further our efforts there. We get pretty high marks for our diversity efforts.

NLJ: There has been a lot of talk about alternative billing lately, as the economy heads south and corporations look for ways to save money. The managing partner of Holland & Knight said earlier this year that he would start offering more success fees to clients rather than straight billable hours. Have your clients been pushing for more alternative billing?

AS: Those are the buzzwords in the general counsel community. We're very concerned with providing value to our clients. A large measure of this is the need for predictability in budgets; clients want to know what their costs are going to be.

We do offer clients a great deal of flexibility in our fee arrangements between blended rates, fixed fees and retainers. The billable hour is still the number one billing method. Really, it comes down to cost and value. We've always had a number of alternative arrangements we've offered to clients.

NLJ: Every firm has its own culture. What is the firm culture at Akerman?

AS: We really have a New York style to our practice. We're no nonsense. We're very professional. We're really concerned with adding value to our clients. Internally, we have a get-it-done culture, we're not flamboyant and there's not a lot of posturing, we're really to the point. Our clients are looking to us for value and efficient solutions. We're the go-to firm in Florida.

NLJ: Where do you see Akerman in five years, in numbers of lawyers and offices?

AS: I think from our perspective it's really a question of how we distinguish ourselves. I would like to be a top 50 firm — that's really a question more of adding strength to our practice areas, not to be struck in a metric of size or geography. We have a terrific environmental practice…and as we get more and more green issues and climate change issues I see that developing, as well as corporate and policy, transportation and water resources.

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