Selectmen Rehire Former Town Counsel

Originally published on Aug. 16, 2016. Comments from Leonard Kopelman were added on Aug. 17.

STOUGHTON, MA — Stoughton’s former town counsel is returning to down, but not after another heated discussion by the selectmen.

Thursday, the selectmen voted 4-1 to retain attorney Leonard Kopelman as town counsel at a rate of $175 per hour. Kopelman’s former law firm, K&P Associates, will be retained and used when applicable.

Selectman Robert O’Reagan was the only vote against the hire. He asked what factors were being used to make the choice, which led to a heated argument between O’Reagan and Robert Cohn after O’Regan mentioned a meeting between Kopelman, Cohn, Chairman David Sousa, and Town Manager Michael Hartman.

“This has nothing to do with that. Why is this even coming up? This has nothing to do with it!” Cohn said.

“It has everything to do with it because all of the information that’s public is that Mr. Kopelman went to have a conversation at the behest of two members with the town manager and that's all we know,” O’Reagan replied.

“We sat there as chairman and vice chairman to talk about him,” Cohn said,

“When he was here, I asked what was discussed. (Kopelman) said that’s confidential. The town manager said that’s not confidential,” O’Reagan said.

The dissenting selectman said that Kopelman retired 2 ½ years ago and couldn’t find his name on any legal cases from the past five years, adding that he’s registered out of his house and has no staff or associated.

“We have a $104 million operating business with complicated legal matters that need to be attended to. All of them can’t be attended to by a semi-retired attorney working out of his house if he cannot identify the areas of law he is active in,” O’Reagan said.

In an email to Stoughton Patch, Kopelman said he didn't practice out of his house but considers himself on duty 24 hours a day, noting that he went to a different floor of the same building that houses his former law firm. He added that he only retired as a managing partner of the firm and chose not to try any cases over the past five years.

"If you are on trial day after day you cannot be Town Counsel in my opinion. I tried to and it does not work. that is why most town counsels have separate trial counsel as Kopelman and Paige did and I do," Koppelman said.

Koppelman said he comes back to Stoughton with no preconceived agenda.

"I look forward to getting ahead of legal problems rather than dealing with them when they get out of hand and costly in terms of money and town officials' time. I no longer believe that town counsel should be a large firm with narrowly trained specialists that react to problems when they rise to fever pitch," he said.

Selectman Joseph Mokrisky said K&P Associates would be retained to serve as counsel when applicable.