Law firm wins chamber's first Small Business Award

Mercer Business, Jul 1994

When the Mercer County Chamber of Commerce and Core-States/New Jersey National Bank set about selecting the winner of the First Annual Small Business Award which they joined in sponsoring this year, they found themselves faced with a difficult choice.

"We received 29 nominations," recalls Jeff Perlman, the insurance firm executive who chaired the selection committee. The criteria for the award were that it had to be a for-profit business, with fewer than 50 employees, and it must have been in business for three years.

"We narrowed the field down to 10 finalists. They were all excellent, superior. But one firm really stood out."

The law firm of Sumners, Council, George and Dortch was chosen to receive the award, Perlman said, not only because it has enjoyed dramatic success and growth in the short period of its existence, but because of its remarkable record of involvement in the community.

The award--an engraved plaque and a $1,000 cash prize--was presented at the Chamber's May luncheon meeting at the Trenton Country Club. The partners promptly turned the $1,000 over to the Trenton school system for its fund for student achievement.

Sumners, Council, George and Dortch is the largest minority-owned law firm in this part of the state, with offices in the former National State Bank building at Sullivan Way and Sanhican Drive. The four partners are all under 35 years of age. All are reluctant to talk individually about the firm's success as they regard it as a team effort. But the figures speak for themselves. Their gross revenues have grown tenfold since the firm was formed four years ago, and in the past year the company's staff has more than doubled.

Two of the partners--Thomas W. Sumners Jr. and Gerald J. Council--were born and raised in Trenton and have known each other for years. They formed the firm in 1990, and were joined last year by Harold W. George and Charles W. ("Chuck") Dortch Jr. Although George is originally from Lakewood, N.J., and Dortch from Virginia, they have entered enthusiastically into the spirit of the firm and its community activity in this area.

"Gerald Council and I went to Junior High School No. 3 together," Sumners says. "We really weren't close friends--I lived on Bellevue Avenue, he on Edgewood Avenue--but we knew each other because he was a close friend of one of my cousins. I met him again when he was a student at Howard University Law School where he and my cousin were roommates, and I visited him because I was also considering going to Howard."

But after attending the Hun School and Lafayette College, Sumners earned his law degree at the Rutgers University Law School in Newark. Council had attended Notre Dame High School and Trenton High, received his undergraduate education at Rutgers University.

After completing law school, both Sumners and Council joined the firm of prominent Trenton attorney Lemual Blackburn. After a while Sumners left to work with Dallas Dixon, and when the firms of Blackburn and Dixon merged in 1989 he and Council were back together again.

In February, 1990, Sumners left to launch his own solo practice. A few months later Council and another attorney, Lolita Inniss, also left, and the firm of Sumners, Council and Inniss was formed. Inniss departed from the partnership in April 1993, and in July George came aboard, followed by Dortch a month later.

The firm initially had space in a dentist's office at 1302 West State Street in Trenton, but its rapid growth forced the partners to look for larger quarters. Last December they moved into their present spacious Sanhican Drive location.

The firm currently handles the legal affairs of the Trenton Board of Education and the Zoning Board. The members are busy with a host of community organizations. Sumners is chairman and CEO of the Granville Academy of Trenton, which trains young people in the workings of the American free enterprise system. He has served on the boards of the Urban League of Metropolitan Trenton, the Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Mercer County, the West End Little League. He was the founding president of the Urban League's Young People for Progress. He is former treasurer of the Mercer County Bar Association, served as Young Lawyers Division representative of the New Jersey Bar. He has been treasurer of the North-West Trenton Athletic Fund.

Council is president of the Trenton Housing Authority, and secretary of the Mercer Bar Association. He has served on the board of the NAACP's Trenton Chapter, and is a member of the Mayor's Economic Development Committee in Trenton. He is active in fundraising for the Blessed Sacrament School.

George is currently president of the South Jersey Lawyers Association, and treasurer of the State Bar's Minorities in the Profession Chapter.

Dortch is a trustee of the State Bar Association, has been active in the Big Brothers, Big Sisters organization in Camden County, and has served as president of the South Jersey Lawyers Association.

Council said Dortch as a native of the South has brought a different perspective to the firm. Being able to trace his roots back to slavery, he added, Dortch has a clear view of what it takes to make it as a minority firm, and he often tells the other members that he can remember a time in the South when they couldn't do what they are doing now.