Law firm stops operating after 136 years
Chamberlain D’Amanda Oppenheimer & Greenfield still has an active website listing 16 attorneys on the law firm’s roster.
However, the 136-year-old Rochester, New York, firm ceased operating on Nov. 20, according to a voice mail announcement. It says phone messages will not be returned, the Rochester Business Journal reports.
Former managing partner Eugene O’Connor joined Gallo & Iacovangelo in November. “I’m not in a position to say anything at this time,” he told the business publication last week.
However, former bankruptcy partner Douglas Lustig, who also left the firm for a new job last month, said he believes the firm may simply have lacked the work needed to make it a viable business.
“I haven’t been that close to management and could not say what exactly went wrong,” said Lustig, who is now with Dibble & Miller. “Partners retired or died or left and not enough new people joined. I think it just reached a point where there wasn’t enough business coming in.”
The firm was particularly known for its labor law practice, but last year group leaders Michael Harren and Matthew Fusco left for Trevett Cristo Salzer & Andolina, the article notes. The two had been with the Chamberlain firm for 40 years and 26 years, respectively.
Shortly before the two announced their plan to leave, then-managing partner James Vazzana said in a written statement that Chamberlain D’Amanda intended to specialize in small-business matters.
“The reality of the legal marketplace and industry changes over the past five years have led many firms to become more specialized,” he wrote. “In order to be more laser-focused from a marketing standpoint, we need to be more streamlined from a practice standpoint.”
Vazzana, who, like Lustig and O’Connor, is still listed on the firm’s website, was elected to serve a 10-year term on the Monroe County family court bench, starting in January.
Another longtime former managing partner, Edward Radin, left the firm in 2013 for the Rochester office of Bond Schoeneck & King. He had been with Chamberlain D’Amanda since graduating from law school in 1977, the article reports.
