DTCI: Blaiklock and Lee on Developing New Practice Areas within a Firm

How do you grow a commercial law practice within a traditional defense firm? That’s the question I posed Rich Blaiklock and Jason Lee of Lewis Wagner, LLP. You are familiar with Lewis Wagner: Robert Wagner (“Mr. Wagner,” more likely), former DTCI presidents John Trimble and Tom Hays, well-respected defense lawyers such as Dina Cox; its roster is full of talented lawyers. It is a venerable law firm in the Indianapolis legal community, known for its insurance defense- and injury-based practice areas. In this, it is similar to DTCI, whose membership is replete with well-respected lawyers, traditionally focusing on insurance defense- and injury-related matters. Still, within such well-established organizations, there can be room for diversity of subject matter, for pursuit of new practice areas.

Rich Blaiklock and Jason Lee are partners of Lewis Wagner. During their tenure neither has worked within the firm’s traditional insurance and injury defense practice groups. Instead, over the course of more than a decade, together they have developed business litigation and transactional practice groups at their firm. In doing so, they have simultaneously veered from the norm but still fit comfortably within the firm’s longstanding structure. This article will, through one (of surely many) examples, provide insight into how to grow or build a commercial practice within a traditional defense firm.

I am the chair of DTCI’s business litigation section. The subject matter focus of our section differs from that of DTCI’s other sections (viz., insurance coverage, worker’s compensation, health law, etc.) Correspondingly, our section’s membership and activities have less overlap with the members and activities of these other sections. Thus, I am particularly interested in Blaiklock’s and Lee’s career paths: how they expanded their firm into new areas of law while maintaining, and at times leading, the traditional balance of their organization.

Seeking answers (and, true to 2020 form), I set up a Zoom meeting with Blaiklock and Lee. Blaiklock has been at Lewis Wagner since 2001. “I was brought on to try to continue to build a commercial practice at the firm” he said. Crediting lawyers like current Lewis Wagner partners Jerry Hammond, John Trimble, and firm founder Robert Wagner, Blaiklock said that when he joined the firm, there was commercial work being done, but that the area has grown over the years. Today, there are four partners, one senior counsel, and five associates who focus their practices on commercial transactions and commercial litigation.

In the mid-2000s, as Blaiklock’s workload increased, he wondered about the appropriate time to hire a lawyer to help him. “The hardest decision that happens over time is determining when you need to bring somebody on. That’s an additional commitment at the partner level — to keep another person busy and to supervise them,” said Blaiklock. “The first time as a young partner when you want to hire somebody, it’s a very anxious decision,” he said. “You’re committing the firm’s resources to something you’ve never done before, and you want to make sure it works.” I asked Blaiklock if bringing on a lawyer under him was a particularly difficult decision, considering his practice group was relatively new compared to some of Lewis Wagner’s other practice areas. “I think in our case it was maybe a little bit more acute because we were growing a reasonably new practice area,” he said. He explained that he simply did not have a track record as extensive and consistent as that of some of his partners who focused on insurance and injury defense. But he received support from the firm, and in 2008, Lewis Wagner hired Lee, who was then in his second year of practice at another firm. With Blaiklock, Lee has spent his entire tenure at Lewis Wagner aiming to grow the firm’s business-focused practices. “I wanted to get more on the business side of things and ultimately do transactional work,” said Lee.

Blaiklock and Lee expressed the necessity of hiring additional lawyers in order to foster growth. Taking the leap and adding to the group had risks, but according to Blaiklock, “it was significant in terms of helping us grow because it allowed us to have more bandwidth.”

Lee recalls that when he was hired, he spent about 90 percent of his time working for Blaiklock. At the time, Blaiklock’s practice consisted primarily of business litigation matters, athough he also had some transactional files. The transaction files were of particular interest to Lee, who wanted his practice to eventually consist entirely of transactional work. But for several years, Lee embraced the challenge of learning both to litigate and structure transactions.

I asked Lee how he learned to become a transactional lawyer. First (and a consistent theme during our discussion), Lee credited the mentorship of other lawyers at the firm. Moreover, the litigation experience he was obtaining benefited his main focus: transactions. “[Litigation] is a nice background to have because you can spot issues. You have seen what happens when things go wrong. I lean on some of some of those experiences [in litigation] when I am now drafting documents.” Lee was also quick to point out that he did not transition from a litigator to a transactional lawyer overnight. “Continuing to litigate allowed me to dip my toe slowly into transactions. It was not like somebody threw a huge transaction in my lap on day one.”

All this was good and well — firm structure, mentorship, etc. — but I wanted more. I wanted Blaiklock and Lee to give me the non-buzzword formula for building relatively new practices areas within a firm. They did not refuse so much as told me there is none. Rather, as I pushed for more, both Blaiklock and Lee kept returning to the same themes: working with good people, working hard, planning, and being intentional about executing the plan.

“I was just really fortunate to work with [Blaiklock] and learn from him, and also to be given the encouragement to step out and grow the transactional side,” said Lee. “Given our broad practice areas here and experience levels, we have people that we can lean on all the time, even if it is a question about a small portion of a transaction.” Blaiklock jumped in, adding, “Jerry Hammond has had a long practice of representing small- and medium-sized businesses, and I leaned on him, and continue to do so, for a lot of the types of issues that come up in transactions.”As an associate, Lee was not unique in practicing across multiple areas of law. That is the nature of an associate’s job: serving partners, or superiors, as though they are clients, even if that requires learning several areas of law, some of which the associate may not prefer. But it is surely challenging to determine when junior lawyers appropriately transition from doing any work that is given to them and, instead, focus more specifically on their preferred practice areas. Blaiklock and Lee told me that, to some extent, circumstances – namely, workload – dictate this. “I was trying to balance the transactional work against the litigation files I had,” said Lee, “And that becomes more and more difficult in terms of managing deadlines and different practice groups.” The lifespan of a typical transaction is much shorter than that of a typical litigation file. When a transaction has to close by June 30, it has to close by June 30 or loan commitments may expire, etc. As the transactional side was growing, the ability to manage both sets of deadlines became a significant challenge. Blaiklock agreed: “As time goes by, you realize you cannot juggle both these different types of [litigation and transactional] deadlines. There was a busy year or two where Jason and I realized we needed to restructure and divvy up responsibilities.”

For Blaiklock and Lee, this need to restructure occurred around the time Lee became a partner at Lewis Wagner. Blaiklock said he and Lee were running themselves into the ground and they needed to get more organized, to get a plan in place. Near this time, Blaiklock said, he had spoken to an accountant friend who had just had a particularly successful professional year. His friend attributed his success to getting organized, spending time on what he wanted to work on and working with a coach, who had helped him put together a business plan.

Blaiklock and Lee set out to work with that same coach. They put together a business plan, which accounted for Blaiklock being a full-time business litigator and Lee exclusively handling transactions. They also began to think more intentionally about circumstances that would justify their hiring additional lawyers to work with them. Traditionally, Lee said, they had added people when their workload was maxed out, if not overflowing. Moving forward, Lee’s suggestion was that they bring in help before they were working at a frenetic pace. “In the midst of a really big transaction, adding somebody does not necessarily help, because of the ramp up, it is almost too late,” said Lee.

Blaiklock and Lee both emphasized that forecasting personnel needs on the fly was not ideal. They wanted to have a plan in place that they could refer to when they began to consider whether a new hire was appropriate. Lee aptly referred to this strategic planning process as “working on the practice group,” as opposed to “working in it.” He also emphasized how strategic planning encouraged him and Blaiklock to consider contingencies. Of course, things do not always proceed as one expects. Accordingly, Lee said, having a plan A and a plan B “allowed us to pivot if needed.”

Lee and Blaiklock, both of whom (full disclosure) are friends of mine, were reticent to speak to me for this article. They did not seem uninterested, but both were uncomfortable talking about their careers. “I do not think I have necessarily done anything special,” Lee insisted. “I was fortunate enough to be part of the growing process with [Blaiklock].” Lee repeatedly emphasized that framing his and Blaiklock’s journey together as one that only the two of them traveled was incorrect. Both he and Blaiklock rarely answered a question without referencing other lawyers who have supported, and continue to support them. According to Lee: “To have the support of the firm as you try to do these things — without that, you cannot do it. And that comes from everybody. That is something that [Robert] Wagner has instilled in everybody who has worked with him.”

Blaiklock concurred, rattling off names of more lawyers than I have space to list who have been essential to his career. Still, as our conversation neared an end, Blaiklock offered the following insight, which ought to carry weight with DTCI’s younger members: “The first thing you have got to do before you even think about developing a book of business is to just be good at what you do. Reading and learning about marketing — it matters nothing if you are not good at what you do. You have got to get that base of being good at what you do before you can think about going out and growing things.”

As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I wanted to talk to Lee and Blaiklock because of the parallels I thought their career paths offered to the business litigation section of DTCI. I wanted their recipe for charting a new course within a well-established structure. Turns out, there is no recipe. Or, if there is, it consists of the same terms and phrases that I, and you, hear time and again from individuals who fit our definitions of success: work hard, stay organized, pursue your passions. The “recipe” is buried somewhere, illegibly, in these terms and phrases.

Nevertheless, Blaiklock and Lee’s progression and their insights do have application to DTCI as a whole and to its business litigation section. DTCI is an organization of good people who are also good lawyers. We are a group that supports one another. Among our membership are lawyers of vast experience and skill. The organization’s leadership — its employees and the members of its board of directors — want new, fresh ideas. Past presidents remain involved, eager to lend their insights and assistance as needed.

Ultimately, Blaiklock and Lee were never going to be able to tell me precisely how they fostered and grew business litigation and transactional practice groups at Lewis Wagner. They could only tell me that they like each other, their colleagues, and their practices; that they work for a good law firm; and that they follow a plan and try hard to stay focused on doing good legal work and having thoughtful growth. These are simple yet useful insights. They apply with the same force to the business litigation section of DTCI and to the broader organization as they do to Blaiklock and Lee’s experiences at Lewis Wagner.•

Ian Goodman is a business and insurance litigator at the Paganelli Law Group in Indianapolis and chairs the DTCI Business Litigation Section. Opinions expressed are those of the author.