No borders: it has taken nearly 40 years, but Greenberg Traurig's transition from small town Miami law firm to global powerhouse is almost complete

South Florida CEO, March, 2006 by Jennifer LeClaire

ALMOST ANY DISCUSSION ABOUT MIAMI-BASED LAW firm Greenberg Traurig LLP eventually winds down to size. The firm is huge and seemingly ever expanding.

With $870 million in revenues last year and 1,503 attorneys, Greenberg is the nation's No. 8 largest firm, according to The National Law Journal's NLJ 250. The firm was ranked No. 15 on The American Lawyer's 2005 AmLaw 100, based on 2004 revenue. And Greenberg's geographic footprint spans four continents.

Still, things weren't always so. The three founding partners--Mel Greenberg, Robert H. Traurig and Larry J. Hoffman--and two associates brought in only $137,000 of revenue in the firm's first year in operation.

"The biggest challenge in the early years was survival," recalls the 80-year-old Traurig. "We had to develop expertise in our fields. It was hard work and long hours."

Greenberg, Traurig and Hoffman first met in 1967, at a small Miami diner where they often interrupted their busy days for a quick lunch together. The men soon discovered that each had a taste for corned beef and sports. And each had a successful track record in the field of law that would eventually drive them to worldwide expansion.

"We saw a niche and capitalized on it," Traurig says. "I thought if we worked hard and kept being good public citizens we might have 12 lawyers by now. This type of expansion was never in my mind."

South Florida was just beginning its evolution from sleepy tourist region to major commercial center. Greenberg's tax practice was budding. Traurig's real estate firm law was developing. And Hoffman's corporate work was blooming. The trio joined to form the law firm Greenberg Traurig & Hoffman with the thought of bringing what they called a "New York City-style approach" to practicing commercial law in a pre-metropolitan Miami.

The firm was in the right place at the right time, Traurig says, to benefit from an exploding South Florida population and increasingly sophisticated business climate. Even so, the partners, who were Jewish, also battled discrimination because of their religion. The men found a kinship with the Cuban exile community, which was growing rapidly in South Florida during the 1960s and 1970s.

"In those days, you didn't get hired if you were Jewish or Cuban," says Greenberg Traurig CEO Caesar L. Alvarez, who became the firm's 13th attorney in 1972--and its first of Cuban descent.

"Mel was one of the first to realize that the Cubans weren't going back to Cuba and he purposely went against the times and looked to hire a Cuban attorney," Alvarez adds. "The Jewish community was extremely helpful to the Cuban community. They understood what it was like to be discriminated against, and they gave us opportunities."

A Big Break

The 1970s condo boom and its attendant excesses propelled the firm to its first big break: representing expanding real estate developers. Momentum began to build in 1974 when Greenberg Traurig's institutional clients looked to the firm to provide property foreclosure services as the boom began to bust, and the Miami-based firm added litigation to its services.

Still, it was another decade of slow and steady growth before the firm took its first steps beyond the Miami-Dade County border, opening a West Palm Beach office in 1984, a Fort Lauderdale office in 1985 and a Tallahassee office in 1991.

At that point, Greenberg stepped down from the chief executive office, and Hoffman took over. Hoffman soon saw the 150-attorney firm facing a choice: move into cites across the nation and become a major player in the industry or merge with a larger firm. Hoffman chose the former, starting with New York and continuing into international financial and business centers. By the time Alvarez became the firm's third CEO in 1997, Greenberg Traurig employed 340 attorneys in four states and had an office in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Although Alvarez tries to play down his role in the firm's growth, he has continued to be aggressive about expansion, targeting high-growth markets and consolidating by offering more services in cities the firm was already in. Mainly though, he has grown by opening new offices and adding additional attorneys.

Alvarez first took the firm into Boston, then made a move into Wilmington, Del. to build a greater presence in the bankruptcy field at a time when the American Bankruptcy Institute was reporting 84 percent increases in filings over the previous decade

"A disproportionate number of corporate filings were occurring in Delaware," Alvarez says, noting that Delaware is widely recognized as a good place to incorporate, with asset protection, low costs and a stable legal platform.

The firm's revenues more than doubled from 1998 to 1999, hitting $197 million. In 2000, following his strategy to enter into high growth markets, Alvarez opened a Los Angeles office, the firm's first on the West Coast. Greenberg Traurig landed on The National Law Journal's list of fastest-growing firms in the United States, with 60 percent growth in the previous 18 months. By the end of that year, the firm was ranked No. 25 in the nation by number of attorneys, according to The National Law Journal.