Wolf Block's end marks an era's passing

It was the early 1980s, and under the leadership of the influential Howard Gittis, the Philadelphia law firm of Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen reached so deeply into City Hall that it participated in 90 percent of the city's bond issues and could count the mayor, William J. Green 3d, as an alumnus.

This period was a high-water mark for Wolf Block, which would lose Gittis to Ron Perelman's New York takeover firm in the mid-1980s.

Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll L.L.P. would eclipse Wolf Block as the law firm with entree at City Hall in the 1990s, when up-and-comer David L. Cohen, who was close to Ed Rendell, replaced Gittis as Philadelphia's legal go-to guy. Cohen, Rendell's chief of staff when Rendell was mayor, was a partner at Ballard Spahr and later led the firm as chairman.

Wolf Block never regained its political clout, and yesterday the mid-size firm voted to dissolve itself, a victim of a bad economy and a failure to adapt to new times.

It was the passing of an era. For years, Wolf Block had been the firm of choice for Jewish businessmen in the city and an incubator for Jewish legal talent. The firm also had one of the city's premier real estate law departments. An early partner, Sam Goldberg, developed the "percentage lease" in 1926 - the firm says in its history it is still used by shopping centers to attract retailers.

"Incredible sadness," said former Wolf Block partner Abbe F. Fletman, 49, who left the firm three years ago after an eight-year stint. "There was a time when Jewish lawyers in Philadelphia really couldn't get hired at other firms," said Fletman, a Northeast Philadelphia native who entered the legal field well after such wholesale discrimination had vanished.

Now a shareholder at Flaster Greenberg and head of its intellectual property litigation group in Phildelphia, Fletman recalled her family's pride when she was hired at Wolf in 1998. "When I told my mother that I was going to be a partner at Wolf Block, you would have thought that I had told her I was going to the moon, that I was going to Harvard," Fletman said.

George Burrell, a political adviser to former Mayor John F. Street, was 27 years old and three years out of law school when he joined Wolf Block in 1977 for a three-year run. "It had a culture of legal excellence," said Burrell, an African American, "with a byproduct of politics."

Cohen lamented the loss of "an employer of choice for decades for lawyers and particularly for Jewish lawyers who often had no choice but to go to Wolf Block."

Horace Stern and Morris Wolf established their practice in 1903 in the Drexel Building at Fourth and Walnut Streets. Wolf was a 1903 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Stern, the grandson of a rabbi and a prodigy who graduated from Central High School at the age of 13, eventually rose to chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Among his decisions on the bench was a 1956 vote that upheld the exclusion of African Americans from Girard College. Stern wrote that Stephen Girard's will was clear and that it was "unfortunate" that the court had to uphold it. The ban was eventually overturned.

Among the young Jewish lawyers who found their way to Wolf Block was Bob Toll, then a law graduate of Penn. He worked in several departments between September 1966 and July 1967 before deciding that a law-firm job was not for him. "It was a spectacular firm," Toll, now chief executive officer and chairman of the Toll Brothers Inc., said yesterday.

Even as Wolf Block faded in recent years, home-builder Toll Brothers continued to use the firm as its corporate counsel "as much out of allegiance as anything else," Toll said.

Despite its progressive reputation, a federal judge ruled in late 1990 that Wolf Block had been guilty of sex discrimination in withholding a partnership from a female lawyer. The case had been highly publicized, but the judge's decision was overturned by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992.

The firm has been active locally and nationally in the legal profession. Wolf Block's Jerome J. Shestack was the head of the American Bar Association and founded the ABA Center for pro bono legal work.

Andrew Chirls of Wolf Block was the first openly gay lawyer to serve as chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association earlier this decade.

"They have never been a firm that was afraid to take on tough issues," said Sayde Ladov, chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association.

On its Web site, Wolf Block said it had high hopes about its future.

"As we enter our second century of existence, we're just getting started. WolfBlock is ahead of the curve, racing into the future filled with new discoveries. We're well positioned - strategically, technologically and philosophically - to help our clients embrace the future, and thrive in it."

That was then.