SIX DECADES OF MEETING CLIENTS’ CHANGING NEEDS

As this issue of Perspectives demonstrates, the firm’s expertise and experience cut across a number of practice areas and legal disciplines, from business law matters involving creditors’ rights in bankruptcy cases to individuals’ concerns regarding the status of the estate tax debate in Congress. During our 60 years as a law firm it has been our hallmark to make available to our clients expertise and experience that provide them value in their businesses and as well as in their personal business affairs. As the article on our firm’s history reveals, our foundation was built initially upon the litigation talent and savvy of Luther Carr, the estate planning and probate process knowledge of Jed McClellan, and the business law acumen and personal charisma of Frank Ingersoll. “In the earlier days of practicing law within Carr McClellan,” Frank Ingersoll would tell me shortly after he retired, “we only needed three code books, the Probate Code, the Civil Code and the Penal Code.  Now we have a wall full of Codes.” As the wall full of Code books grew (and then shrunk as libraries entered the digital age), the firm’s areas of practice expanded to meet our clients’ needs. The litigation practice expanded as areas such as estate and trust litigation became more specialized, as clients’ needs for expertise and experience in real estate and construction disputes proliferated and as business disagreements became as complex as, well business agreements. The sophistication of estate planning techniques grew as our clients’ successes allowed them to build wealth that needed to be protected for successive generations. Business law matters exploded into a myriad of sub-specialties that include entity formation and financing, mergers and acquisitions, tax, real estate, employment, intellectual property and more. While Carr McClellan still serves the needs of our clients in dispute resolution, estate and trust planning and administration, and business law matters, those areas have become more complex than ever before. Sixty years later, we continue to draw strength from the vision of our founders. They brought to the firms’ clients the expertise they then needed; we now bring to our clients that expertise albeit with ten times the number of lawyers, an expanded menu of practice selections and a few more Code books to draw upon.