While the merger between law firms Walter Haverfield and Bernstein-Burkley took some time to fruition, Kirk Burkley, managing partner of the new WH Burkley, said that patience can be a virtue in cases like this.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood things come to those who wait,\u201d Burkley told the Cleveland Jewish News. \u201cThis is very, very exciting. Sometimes I have to remind myself that, with the amount of work we\u2019ve already been doing with each other, that it feels like we\u2019ve been together for a year. But it\u2019s only been a month. The future looks absolutely terrific for this firm.\u201d<\/p>\n
The combined firm took effect on Feb. 1 and was given the name WH Burkley with Burkley elected as the managing partner.<\/p>\n
Walter Haverfield, a business-focused firm that had locations in Cleveland, Mayfield and Columbus with core areas of competency in real estate, corporate transactions, commercial litigation, labor and employment, tax and private wealth, was founded in 1932.<\/p>\n
Bernstein-Burkley, a Pittsburgh-based law firm with offices in Cleveland and Wheeling, W.Va., was founded in 1967 and specializes in complex bankruptcy and restructuring, creditors rights, corporate, litigation, real estate, and oil and gas matters.<\/p>\n
The combined firm will include more than 70 lawyers across the offices in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.<\/p>\n
The partnership first came apart a number of years ago after Burkley ran into a few people from Haverfield at a conference in Las Vegas where, over a few cocktails, a conversation started about joining forces.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talked about, \u2018Hey, you\u2019re in Pittsburgh and we\u2019re in Cleveland. You specialize in these markets and we specialize in those markets. We should talk.\u2019 It was just some initial conversations amongst friends about how this might make sense. And then it went from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
An attractive focal point was geography, Burkley explained, with Haverfield strong in the Northeast Ohio market and Burkley having a solid presence in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The two firms also saw the areas both specialized in as a prime opportunity to bring the complementary practices together.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me personally, I grew up in the insolvency world but what\u2019s really taking place within that sphere are a whole bunch of other things: sales, litigation, tax issues, acquisitions, whether of assets or companies \u2013 it really made a lot of sense for us on our national bankruptcy practice to bring in some more services and expertise to support us there, Burkley said. \u201cFrom their side of the house, I think they certainly saw the benefits of helping to service their clients better by having some of the expertise and some of the litigation capabilities that we would bring.\u201d<\/p>\n
The benefits are already being reaped from the cross pollination, Burkley said. He saw it first-hand while at a dinner hosted by investment bankers in Pittsburgh where he was talking with a client who is a turnaround firm about a deal the two had when a tax issue was brought up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018You know what? I\u2019m going to call the tax guys tomorrow,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not something that I would have been able to do previously. We\u2019ve had a number of occasions just like that. Recently, one of the lawyers in Cleveland called me up and said, \u2018Hey, we\u2019ve got a mortgage issue in Pittsburgh. A client acquired a mortgage on some property that they want to develop and there are various issues surrounding it. I said, \u2018Hey, talk to one of my partners.\u2019 And they got the whole thing resolved and worked out in a couple of days and the client was thrilled. So, it\u2019s been a really positive environment for that kind of synergy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burkley said that leadership between the two are \u201ccompletely aligned\u201d and see \u201ceye to eye\u201d with one another, and that the two will work together to bring the highest quality of service to clients and grow the firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a big believer that if you put the right people in place, they will take care of the customer\u2019s needs,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat\u2019s going to flow from there is a great culture with intent to accomplish those goals. There\u2019s work to be done, we\u2019ve got to make sure we integrate our cultures and what that needs to look like. But this is going to be fantastic for our client community. They get some of the very best with our staff and don\u2019t have to go to New York City or Los Angeles to get it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the merger between law firms Walter Haverfield and Bernstein-Burkley took some time to fruition, Kirk Burkley, managing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[53474,60169,60,2272,17394,60171,61,2265,56565,60170,12449,73,75,74,2267,60168],"class_list":["post-129423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-bankruptcy","tag-bernstein-burkley","tag-business","tag-business-law","tag-corporations","tag-economic-law","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-law-firms","tag-merge","tag-personal-finance","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-private-sector","tag-walter-haverfield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}