Many WolfBlock lawyers left only with fond memories

NOTE: THIS STORY HAS BEEN CORRECTED.

Yesterday, a partners' meeting at WolfBlock LLP, the 106-year-old white-shoe Center City law firm, had not yet ended when the art was taken down from the wall for fear that angry staffers might damage it.

Meanwhile, behind closed doors, the equity partners voted unanimously to dissolve one of the city's largest and once most profitable and politically connected law firms.

The 300-lawyer firm - with offices here and in Wilmington, Harrisburg, New York, Boston, Washington and three other locations - will officially close on May 28, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

At 4:15 p.m. yesterday, the partners met with the shocked staff.

"We are deeply saddened by the decision to unwind," said Mark L. Alderman, chairman of the firm's executive committee.

Alderman and about 100 attorneys are expected to join Cozen O'Connor law firm, a former merger candidate in 2006.

Alderman "took care of himself," said a prominent lawyer who declined to be identified. "That's really not supposed to happen. He's not like Captain Sully," the attorney added, referring to Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III, who carried out an emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River and saved all 155 lives.

In recent weeks, Philadelphia law firms have laid off dozens of lawyers and staffers in the face of the economic meltdown. Yesterday, Saul Ewing laid off seven law associates and seven staffers.

Last September talks of a merger between WolfBlock and Florida-based Akerman Senterfitt broke down. Afterward, brief discussions were held again with Cozen O'Connor, according to a knowledgeable source.

In talks with both firms, WolfBlock presented three hurdles to overcome: "Wolf" was to be the first name of a new law firm; the parties had to agree on how to deal with the substantial tax impact on WolfBlock partners if the firm's fiscal year changed from its current Jan. 31 end date; and its large unfunded pension liability needed to be addressed.

In 1903, Morris Wolf and his law professor, Horace Stern, began a tradition of attracting the brightest and best Jewish law grads from Ivy League schools as anti-Semitism reigned at top firms.

As prejudice decreased and hiring practices improved in the late '60s and early '70s, the firm continued its strong ethic of pro bono work and diversified into commercial, real-estate, securities, environmental and other law specialties.

"There were a lot of brilliant people from top to bottom," said a former WolfBlock attorney.

To determine whether a young lawyer could make it at the firm, partners would ask: "Would you entrust a substantial matter of your most important client to this associate?"

Robert Fiebach, who spent 30 years at WolfBlock, during which he was a senior litigator and served twice on its executive committee, recalled how lawyers mentored young law grads.

"Everything I am as a lawyer, I owe to WolfBlock and people who took the time to mold me as a lawyer," said Fiebach, former chancellor of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and a senior commercial litigator for Cozen O'Connor.

"We were treated as family," he added. "It was a wonderful place to practice law.

"I feel so badly for my friends there, and the people in retirement or close to retirement," Fiebach said. With its unfunded pension liability, he added, "there may not be assets to pay retirement."

Through the years, several WolfBlock attorneys became chancellors of the Philadelphia Bar Association, including Louis Goffman, Bernard Borish, Seymour Kurland and the late Howard Gittis.

In the 1980s, the firm was the "most profitable" in the city, says a knowledgeable source. But after Gittis - the firms's managing partner, who had represented Mayor Frank Rizzo during a recall movement - left in 1985, there was a downward spiral caused by what several attorneys claimed was mismanagement.

"For a long while, they were harsh and arrogant and profitable," said the prominent attorney. "And really good people left because they didn't like how the firm was being run."

Said a former WolfBlock attorney: "They couldn't even find a place for one [U.S.] Supreme Court law clerk, who worked for Associate Justice William Brennan. What does that say about your institution?"

In 1995, 15 attorneys left; 10 went to Cozen O'Connor and five to Ballard Spahr, beginning a trend. Most recently, 10 planned to join Drinker Biddle & Reath, in Delaware.

Yesterday, WolfBlock attributed its dissolution to "a confluence of unfavorable factors."

They included the recession, which affected the firm's core real-estate practice; the ongoing banking crisis, which affected its credit, and the departure of significant partners and practices.

Alderman - a major fundraiser for President Obama last year - said that the law firm will remain open for a few months "to protect the interests of its clients, employees and creditors."

The firm hired the Hildebrandt consulting firm and Leslie D. Corwin, a partner with the Greenberg Traurig law firm, to "work with firm leadership to relocate as many people as possible, as promptly as possible, while liquidating the firm's obligations." *

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