North Shore Municipal Attorneys Form New Boutique Law Firm

CHICAGO — The eight North Shore municipalities who retain the firm Holland & Knight or one of its partners as their village attorney will soon be represented by a new firm comprised of all the same lawyers as their old firm.

Ten of the roughly 80 attorneys at the firm's Chicago office departed together to join Steve Elrod and Peter Friedman, founding partners of Elrod Friedman LLP, according to a release.

Though Holland & Knight has more than 1,300 employees across 28 offices, the Chicago office is its only one with a dedicated local government and land use team, according to Elrod and Friedman.

The practice group was formed in 2000 when Elrod's previous firm, Burke, Weaver & Prell, became Holland & Knight's Chicago office. The team's client list grew to include 18 public bodies as well as many of the area's leading real estate developers.

"As Holland & Knight grew, both in terms of gross revenue and size, and became much more corporate-oriented, it became clear that our clients — our local government clients and our local developers — would be better served in a smaller environment where we can provide more direct hands-on experience at more cost-effective rates," Elrod said.

The larger firm was inherently more focused on major corporate clients, and its size limited the prospects for advancement for junior members of the municipal practice group. The founders of Elrod Freidman LLP expect the smaller, streamlined firm will be a much more attractive place to work for attorneys seeking to practice municipal law.

Elrod, 62, of Highland Park, served as the executive partner of Holland & Knight's Chicago office for 15 years, recently completed a two-year term as president of the Chicago Bar Association and served as co-chair of the governance committee for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's transition team. The new firm has no immediate plans to expand, and any additional hiring would be done gradually, he said.

"We're not looking to expand into a full-service law firm like Holland & Knight was," Elrod said. "There may be real estate-related needs, maybe litigation-related needs, but only as it relates to land use and government."

Holland & Knight bills public sector clients at about half the rate it charges to its private sector clients. Although the move to a new small firm eliminates the constant pressure of a big law firm to raise billing rates, Friedman said the move was about more than keeping prices competitive.

"We wanted to be in a place where there was 100 percent focus on this practice that we all love so much, and I thought you could lose a little bit being at a multi-national firm where a lot of what is going on has, really, nothing to do with your practice area," said Friedman, who has led the practice group for more than a decade.

"So here, I think we can do a better job for our clients because we're in a boutique law firm now, and everybody is focused on this one practice area and this set of clients that we have, without any distractions or bureaucratic requirements or anything else. It just allows us to be, I think, a very, very nimble, efficient place."

Friedman, 57, of Wilmette, served as co-counsel and ethics officer for former Gov. Bruce Rauner's transition team and was appointed by Cook County Board President Toni Prekckwinkle to the board of the Cook County Land Bank Authority. He also serves as general counsel to the Chicago Association of Realtors, special outside counsel to the Teachers Retirement System of the State of Illinois, and entitlement counsel for the Hines company and GlenStar Development of Chicago, among others.

Elrod and Friedman are joined by two other partners at their new firm: Hart Passman, the village attorney of Kenilworth and a former Holland & Knight partner, and Ben Schuster, a senior-level associate who joins Elrod Friedman as a partner.

The list of Elrod Friedman's north suburban municipal clients includes: Arlington Heights, Crystal Lake, Des Plaines, Glencoe, Highland Park, Kenilworth, Lake Bluff, Lincolnwood, Northbrook, Deerfield, Winnetka.

Village boards are set to sign off on new letters of retention, with the only difference between new letterhead and the assurance of locked-in billing rates, according to the firm's co-founders.

Spokespeople for Holland & Knight did not respond to questions about the move. According to Crain's Chicago Business, the firm does not plan on attempting to revive its local government group.

Even before the practice group split from Holland & Knight, the team was unique in the area. Whether large or small, other firms in the field tend to represent exclusively public sector clients — villages, park districts and the like — or exclusively private sector clients, such as commercial real estate developers.

But Elrod said his group has always had a mix of both, allowing its attorneys to give local governments a better idea of what developers are looking for — and offering developers a better idea of what local governments require.

"We can't, obviously, represent a developer in our own towns," Elrod said. "But we're blessed with Illinois having more local governments than any other state in the country so there's plenty of room for us to operate a developer-oriented practice without conflicts."