Phelps Growing Raleigh Office
This article was written for the Daily Report and was published Aug. 30, 2024 under the title Phelps Dunbar Growing Raleigh Office, Using Regional Focus for Competitive Edge.
Phelps Dunbar is expanding its Raleigh office with more services and plans for a larger space to leave its insurance-centric roots behind as it faces growing competition in North Carolina’s capital city.
The New Orleans-founded firm opened its Raleigh office in November 2011 as part of the firm’s goal of “becoming the preeminent firm in the southern region of the United States,” the firm announced at the time. It has opted to grow “in a disciplined way” within a Southeastern footprint for decades, said managing partner Marshall Redmon.
Though its head count in Raleigh has doubled since 2021, today it has 17 lawyers with six of them joining the office in recent months and adding services it did not previously have, Redmon said.
Redmon said the firm is focused on both the Raleigh/Research Triangle market, and the Carolinas generally, as markets for growth.
“We are super high on the Carolinas,” Redmon said.
“Certainly Raleigh in that market is where we started that journey in the Carolinas,” he said. “But we think that, for us and the clients that we serve, and for the types of folks that want to join us, we think that from Raleigh we’re very well positioned to be able to grow if that opportunity exists beyond Raleigh.”
The additions of lawyers in new practice areas enabled the Raleigh office “to maximize its interconnection with offices throughout the firm’s footprint,” and it also “expands our employment, business counseling, and litigation services provided to insurance and other industry clients,” Redmon said.
“It gave us local practices we didn’t have [in Raleigh],” he said.
Office managing partner Kevin O’Brien, an insurance lawyer, moved from Phelps Dunbar’s Tampa, Florida, outpost to help open the Raleigh office in 2011 with a group of litigators and insurance defense lawyers.
Redmon said insurance “remained the central piece to where we are now,” but it had looked for opportunities to bring lawyers in other areas to the office.
With the new Raleigh office, “Phelps has moved beyond its insurance roots” and now has 18 lawyers in the North Carolina capital in the firm’s six core practice areas of admiralty, business, health care, insurance, labor and employment and litigation, the firm said in a news release.
The additions include partner Patrick M. Meacham, a litigator in such areas as professional negligence who specializes in the health care industry. Meacham moved from Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein in Raleigh in June.
Intellectual property partner Drew Patty had been with the firm since 2022 in the Baton Rouge office and will split his time between Raleigh and Baton Rouge.
Other newcomers are counsel Sarah Covey Blount (construction law); labor and employment associate Matthew S. Perez; real estate associate Nash Joyner; and premises liability associates Tyler C. Radtke and Maeve Healy.
A Growing Footprint
The additions prompted the firm to plan to move to a larger office in Raleigh “that will accommodate the firm’s future growth plans,” the firm said in a release.
Redmon noted that the firm’s combination earlier this year with Farris Bobango, a 28-lawyer firm, gave it offices in Memphis and Nashville and boosted Phelps Dunbar’s strategy of developing a regional firm. The deal created a firm of about 400 lawyers in 14 cities across the southern U.S., plus London, England.
The Am Law 200 firm posted an almost 7% revenue increase in 2023 that followed a 12% increase the previous year.
It tracks its origins to 1853 in New Orleans but did not open its first regional office until 1984 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It then added offices in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1986; and Tupelo in northeast Mississippi in the late 1980s; Houston, Texas, in 1990; and two Gulf Coast offices in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Tampa, Florida, both in 2001.
It later added offices in Mobile, Alabama, in 2010; followed by Southlake, Texas, near Dallas, with six attorneys from Cantey Hanger in 2013; Fort Worth, Texas, in 2019; and Birmingham, Alabama, with its 2021 acquisition of Cabaniss Johnston Gardner Dumas & O’Neal.
Its London office was established in 1987 “to facilitate the work performed by the firm as a result of a growing relationship with the European insurance market,” the firm said on its website.
Competition Growing
Compared with larger markets such as New York or Los Angeles, Redmon said the firm remains a “value proposition” in its markets and for the work it does.
The latest data on hourly rates collected through 2023 by Wolters Kluwer suggest a significant difference in hourly rates in Raleigh compared with nationally.
Nationwide, the average rate for partners increased from $768 in 2022 to $784 per hour in 2023; while in the same time period in Raleigh partner rates decreased from an average of $392 to $379 per hour, the report found.
O’Brien acknowledged the firm faces growing competition in Raleigh and the Research Triangle area of central North Carolina. However, the new additions give the office some ”long established” Raleigh lawyers which will help it compete in a number of areas.
He noted that the city already is dominated by midsize regional firms such as Smith Anderson and Wyrick Robbins, which have larger offices than the Am Law firms in the city such as McGuireWoods, Alston & Bird and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.
Foley & Lardner opened in Raleigh in July after it hired a team of life sciences and health care attorneys from K&L Gates led by three partners, one of which is based in Raleigh.
Maynard Nexsen acquired four-lawyer Raleigh firm Dysart Willis in March, bolstering its white-collar criminal defense and government investigations practices nationally and expanding its presence in a target market.
“I think we have something unique to offer,” O’Brien said, noting the firm’s regional focus.
“We can offer more to clients looking in that [Southeast] region,” he said. “These additions just help, sort of, fill things out.”