Naples Law Firm Keeps Pace With Changing Business Climate

Dick Grant and Jeffrey Fridkin had long wanted a lawyer with significant corporate law experience to join their Naples firm, but it was difficult to draw someone with those qualifications to the region.

“The problem was, anybody with that level of experience, generally there would be no reason why they would want to come to Southwest Florida because the practice historically wouldn’t support somebody doing that. They’d have to do other things, too,” says Grant, president of the firm and certified by the state bar in Real Property Law.

So it was something of a coup last year when Peter Keeley left Schlumberger, Ltd., where he had worked for years and moved from Paris to join Grant, Fridkin, Pearson, Athan & Crown, P.A.

It was partly luck, Grant adds; Keeley and his family wanted to move to the area. But the ability to attract someone of Keeley’s caliber is also a comment on not only the quality of the firm, but also on the region’s business climate.

With tourism, construction, development, and real estate as business mainstays in the region, Grant points out, “Lawyers representing clients in those kinds of businesses are going to do certain kinds of work. As Southwest Florida and Collier County mature more, things are becoming a little bit more diversified. They’re also becoming more sophisticated. There’s more of a demand, a justification for more involved, corporate-type legal services than there once was.”

In the 22 years Grant has practiced law in Naples, he’s watched the area and its business climate grow and change. Along with several others in their current firm, Grant and Fridkin both were practicing in Naples for Mershon, Sawyer, Johnston, Dunwody & Cole, a large Miami-based firm.

Then, January 1, 1995, in what has proven a wise move, Grant, Fridkin, Bill Pearson, and Helen Athan opened their own practice. “We have over doubled our size and over tripled our revenue in the six years of our existence,” Fridkin says. It has grown to 10 lawyers, including six shareholders — those with a financial investment in the practice — and 15 support staff.

“Is the growth of our practice exponentially more rapid than is the general growth of business and demographics and the economy of Southwest Florida? I don’t really know,” Grant says. “I would guess it’s probably ahead of it, though.”

Grant, Fridkin, Pearson, Athan & Crown, P.A., located on the top floor of an office building flanked on one side by the Waterside Shops and on another by the Philharmonic Center for the Arts, offers legal services in business, real estate, commercial litigation, and wills, trusts, and estate law. Grant heads the four-lawyer team in the business and real estate group, Fridkin leads the three-member team in commercial litigation, and the three lawyers in the wills, trusts, and estates group is led by Pearson, who is certified by the state bar in that specialty.

The practice helps people with an array of legal issues ranging from business and real estate transactions and commercial litigation, to trust and estate planning and administration. Its civil litigation group has tackled federal antitrust matters, construction and contract disputes, libel and slander, corporate dissolutions, and trademark infringement among its many challenges.

“We rarely are seeing the same thing twice,” Fridkin says. Especially in litigation, “It tends to be very customized.”

According to Grant, “Our law firm is a business-oriented law firm. A significant number of our clients are businesses or people in business. That’s not the whole story, but that’s a large part of it.”

When they were with Mershon, Sawyer, the parameters of their practices were much narrower than they are today, says Fridkin, certified by the Florida Bar in Civil Trial Law and Business Litigation Law.

“Most of the out-of-town law firms that are located here were attracted here because of the will, trust, and estate business that is in Collier County,” he says, but the region’s legal needs have branched out. “Certainly, when I came in ‘85, it was part of the growth of the area into a more diversified practice set that justified creation of a position for a commercial trial lawyer.”

In recent years, more entrepreneurs are starting businesses in Southwest Florida and existing businesses are growing, increasing the demand for lawyers who know how to create businesses, handle corporate reorganizations, investments, and other legal issues common to large companies — not only locally, but outside of the area.

Some people can do business just about anywhere as long as they have a laptop computer and a cellular phone, such as a client who runs a fleet of jets around the country, Fridkin says. That client could choose a law firm pretty much wherever he wants and Grant, Fridkin serves as his primary legal counsel.

They didn’t win his confidence through spectacular advertising, but through their performance.

“We’re pretty old-fashioned on the marketing end,” Fridkin says. “People find us primarily through referral and word-of-mouth. We market ourselves by trying to do the best work we possibly can.”

Grant agrees. “The best marketing is really doing a good job for somebody — doing it well, handling it competently, getting a good result and, hopefully, people not feeling that they got overcharged. It’s a results-business, just like any other business in this world.”

It helps that, since its inception, the firm has earned an AV rating, the highest rating by industry guide Martindale-Hubbell, and Grant, Fridkin’s reputation gets an added boost from its members’ activities with community organizations.

Good business practices are responsible for the firm’s success, as well.

“Even though our firm is only in its sixth year, we have people, not just the lawyers, we have staff members who have been with us over 20 years,” Fridkin says. “Our receptionist is an integral part of what we do. Our office manager has been with us 12 or 13 years.”

The shareholders have worked out flex-time schedules and other arrangements to ensure that their valued employees stay with them. “It’s always been important to us to have continuity, to have a work environment that people enjoy, where they feel they’re progressing in their lives, and look forward to coming to work,” he explains.

In addition, the shareholders decided to do “some innovations based on our experience with a large law firm. We’re on the high end of hourly rate charges,” Fridkin admits, but not necessarily in overall charges. “We like to have the straightforwardness of a higher rate, because we don’t charge for routine, out-of-pocket expenses,” such as long-distance calls, faxes, postage.

The shareholders also take pride in the fact that it has no dominant client. “No one is responsible for even 10 percent of the revenue,” Grant says. “That’s good for us and it’s good for clients because you’re a little more able to be detached. You can tell them something they don’t want to hear — but which they need to hear.”

Larger firms have made overtures to Grant, Fridkin, Pearson, but the shareholders feel no urge to take that route again. They like their independence and, Grant explains, “We haven’t felt we needed to do that in order to provide the services to clients that they want us to provide.”

As Grant and Fridkin point out, they are like many other law firms in terms of the economy and marketing, but their business is thriving largely because of their track record.

“It’s a service,” Grant says. “You have to have a mindset that says ‘I’m here to help somebody; I’m here to try to solve people’s problems.’ If you like to solve problems, it makes it fun and exciting. I think the fact is, most of us like what we do; we enjoy it.”

“Which,” Fridkin adds, “is what I think makes it a profession, and not just a job.”

Jill Tyrer is a freelance writer and editor based in Cape Coral.