Article Courtesy of LAW.COM

By Alana Roberts

Published August 9, 2008 

Pay cuts and dwindling morale pushed most of the lawyers in Becker & Poliakoff's West Palm Beach, Fla., office to defect from the real estate-dominated law firm.

Nine attorneys led by commercial litigator Dan Rosenbaum left Becker to open a West Palm Beach office for Katzman Garfinkel.

Rosenbaum said he left after 28 years because of mismanagement and declining morale at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based firm.

The lawyers who left with Rosenbaum, managing partner of Becker's West Palm Beach office, include his wife, Cheryl Rosenbaum, Laura Wiley, Mark Keegan, Joe Jansen, Jennilynn Lawrence, Richard Valuntas, John Siracusa and Tatiana Yaques.

Alan Becker, managing shareholder at Becker & Poliakoff since March, imposed a 12 percent pay deferral on all attorneys at the firm in May due to slow-paying clients. Full pay was reinstated last week, but attorneys have not been told when they will get back money that was held back.

"Mr. Becker and the management committee were telling people, 'Please work harder. We need to get more billings in,'" Rosenbaum said Monday. "Yet everyone on the management committee went away on vacation."

Becker said he’s not expecting any additional defections and called the pay deferral successful. He denied the group left because of the pay cut and said despite the 12 percent hold-back, attorneys received a 16 percent pay hike in 2008, which meant attorneys still enjoyed a small raise.

He said the firm won't immediately replace those who left.

"The first thing we're going to do is put experienced long-term litigation attorneys from other offices into that office to make sure the clients are properly serviced," Becker said.

Rosenbaum blamed problems at the 116-attorney firm more on management than the real estate downturn. He said decisions to open a new office in the Bahamas and what he called an "overbudgeted" marketing department are examples of bad business decisions.

"Personally I don't feel the firm was negatively affected by the economy," Rosenbaum said. "I think they had more to do with mismanagement than the economy."

Rosenbaum pointed to the resignations of Poliakoff and the failure to replace a chief operating officer who left in 2006 as the impetus of the firm's problems. He said once Poliakoff stepped down the firm began delegating management functions to lawyers in the firm, some of which lacked management experience.

"We had more work than we could handle," he said of the firm's litigation practice, but the firm had trouble attracting replacements during the pay hold-down, Rosenbaum said. Becker denied that allegation.

Donna Berger, managing partner of Katzman Garfinkel's Fort Lauderdale office and a former Becker attorney, said the group made up the bulk of the litigation practice of Becker's West Palm Beach office.

Berger left Becker & Poliakoff last year to focus exclusively on condominium association work.

Katzman Garfinkel also hired three paralegals three months ago from Becker & Poliakoff.

Rosenbaum was on the winning side of an $8.1 million award to Chalfonte Condominiums in Boca Raton, Fla., on its claim that QBE Insurance inadequately covered its Hurricane Wilma damage claim.

Cheryl Rosenbaum and Siracusa were part of the Becker legal team.

"He had a groundbreaking trial decision against QBE," Berger said of Rosenbaum. "Our clients are going to be thrilled to have someone like that available to handle their work."

The Katzman firm is based in Fort Lauderdale, has five other Florida offices and lists 34 lawyers on its Web site without the new additions.