New Montgomery McCracken chair will preside over a period of growth

As a young man growing up in small-town New Jersey, Louis A. Petroni knew early on that he wanted to be a lawyer.

His father was among the first in Glassboro's Italian American community to attend college, and he urged his children to prepare for professional careers.

Petroni said he never imagined that he would one day ascend to chairman of one of Philadelphia's most venerable law firms, Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads L.L.P. Yet that's exactly what happened earlier this month, when Petroni's colleagues elected him to a two-year term.

"It is surreal - maybe that is the wrong word, thrilling - but it is surreal for me to be in the position I am in right now, being raised in a small town in South Jersey and pursuing a legal career and to end up as chairman of a fine firm like this," Petroni said in an interview.

The 60-year-old Petroni is taking over at a propitious time for the firm, which counts among its former partners U.S. Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, named to the court by President Herbert Hoover. While the firm has long been known for high-end legal work, many of its contemporaries - old-line firms such as Ballard Spahr, Dechert, and Morgan Lewis - long ago surpassed Montgomery McCracken in terms of number of lawyers and revenue.

The firm now has about 125 lawyers and has been hovering around that number since the financial-market collapse of 2008 and 2009.

But Montgomery McCracken has been on a recruiting binge, and Petroni anticipates that the firm will add at least 20 lawyers in the coming months, mostly in Philadelphia and New York, where it has been on a growth spurt.

He said the firm also is focused on raising the bar for associate lawyers, and will increase its starting salary to $140,000 by Sept. 1 2017. (The firm declines to disclose the previous starting figure.)

Petroni made the announcement of the salary hike to the firm's associates at a meeting in Philadelphia on Monday. Associates in Delaware and New York listened in on a conference call.

Along with the added money, Petroni told associates that the firm would be expecting more in terms of chargeable hours and work quality.

Although there has been much hand-wringing in the legal world about the slow pace of recovery following the recession, Montgomery McCracken's recent growth also points to the market's resilience, especially for smaller firms with a reputation for high-quality work.

Montgomery McCracken has its share of high-end corporate clients - it handles, for example, class-action defense for Microsoft and other big companies. But it also is able to do the work at a rate structure - partners typically charge $425 to $775 an hour - that is considerably below that of the mega-firms, where the going rate can be north of $1,000 an hour.

"We are finding that we can represent Microsoft or big pharma companies at a lower rate than what would be typical of big firms," Petroni said.

A sizable portion of Montgomery McCracken's revenues in recent years was accounted for by litigation. But Petroni says the practice mix has been diversified with real estate, maritime law and financial services playing an ever greater role. That explains the firm's growth in New York, where those practice areas are strong.

It's not just the added business that is driving the need for more lawyers, though. Petroni said the firm is facing succession issues, with about 15 percent of its lawyers in the 60-plus age bracket. The firm needs to plan for the eventual retirement of those lawyers by making sure the recruiting pipeline is full.

"One of the reasons we are becoming aggressive in pursuing laterals is to make sure we have the critical mass to deal with clients that we have had for a long time," Petroni said.

A strapping six-footer, Petroni has lived in the Far Northeast section of Philadelphia with his wife since the mid-1980s. The couple have three adult children and two grandchildren.

When he isn't working - and he works much of the time - he's out on the golf course at the Merion Golf Club, where he is a member, or at the Union League's Torresdale course.

But his thoughts are never far from the machinations of the legal marketplace.

"Yes, the business is strong," Petroni said. "More and more of our business is coming from the non-litigation side, and as a result we are starting to see growth pick up."

cmondics@phillynews.com

215-854-5957@cmondics