America's leading black law firms - Cover Story

Black Enterprise, August, 1993

The work generates at least $100,000 a year in billings. But more significantly, says partner Alan W. Brothers, the firm is savoring what would typically be a "majority piece," not a "miority piece" of business.

Demetrius E. Carney, a graduath of the Depaul University College of Law, and Brothers, a University of Colorado law school alumnus, started the firm in 1981. Now with a practice divided almost evenly between transactional work and commercial litigation, the business has arrived at a point that many firms strive for and never reach. Even as the nation's wealthiest law practices shrink due to a downturn in work, this firm's workload outpaces its staff-a fact which has forced it to grow almost in spite of itself.

In December, Deneice Jordan-walker, a heavy-hitter in the public finance arena, became the firm's first woman partner. A graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Walker, 37, was hired away in 1990 from Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, one of Chicago's top-10 law firms.

In its twelfth year, Carney & Brothers' lists among its clients several Fortune 500 companies, as well as the nation's third-largest black-owned financial institution, Seaway National Bank of Chicago. The firm has served as counsel in the issuance of more than $2 billion in bond obligations for public offerings and private placements. And in a significant milestone earlier this year, Carney & Brothers was placed on retainer by Illinois Power Company, the second-largest utility in the state, to do regulatory work.

Despite such coups, Carney, 46 and the most cautious of the firm's four close-knit partners, remembers all too well the days when he and his high school classmate, Brothers, 47, alternated paying their mortgages to keep their fledgling firm afloat.

Altthough Carney & Brothers expects to break the 20-lawyer mark this year, its partners balk at any growth for status' sake. Hubert O. Thompson, a 38-year-old employment labor law specialist who joined the firm in 1988, puts it this way: "My ego doesn't require my saying that I'm a partner in a 50-lawyer firm."

FITCH, WILEY, RICHLIN & TOURSE, Boston

While some may scoff at the notion of mergers, Fitch, wiley, Richlin & Tourse knows that strength in numbers is de rigeur for reeling in big clients. Partnerships of one sort or another have propelled d to the top spot among New England's minority law firms.

The 18-lawyer practice grew from the 1991 merger of New England's two largest minority-owned law firms: Fitch, Miller & Tourse and Wiley & Richlin. Before the merger, each had about 10 lawyers, and they were forced to compete against each other in the public finance area.

Since the union, Fitch, Wiley landed a place among the 12 elite firms to serve as bond counsel to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The state's initial bond offering of 1991 - a $567 million general obligation transaction - marked the first time a minority firm acted as sole bond counsel in the state.

It's only in recent years that black firms have had the capacity and skill to do this work,' says partner and Harvard Law grad, Dennis Tourse, 52.