Did WolfBlock Infighting Lead to its Demise?
WolfBlock may never have recovered from the loss of its leader Howard Gittis in the mid-1980s.
WolfBlock partners voted to dissolve the firm this week, but its problems began when Gittis left and “bureaucratic brush fires” broke out, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Infighting and resentments flourished, according to the story.
“As things went downhill, younger associates and partners accused the new firm leaders of hoarding clients and money, playing one lawyer against another, and of taking care of friends and punishing enemies,” the story says.
The atmosphere at the firm was so “corrosive” in the 1990s that several lawyers jumped to other Philadelphia-based firms, the story says. “The bottom-line consensus among lawyers in Philadelphia is that because the firm failed to halt the conflicts that broke out in the early 1990s, it lost an entire generation of lawyers, who because they were the best at what they did, could not be replaced.”
A former associate who unsuccessfully sued the law firm 20 years ago when she was denied partnership told the American Lawyer that many lawyers who left the firm were women. “The culture that resulted in my case was never repudiated by the firm,” she said. “And therein lies the problem.”
The Philadelphia News has detailed another problem at WolfBlock: It lacked a workable plan for surviving the financial downturn as a midsize firm with bigger and more specialized competitors.
