Specialties Contribute to Law Firm’s Growth : Three-year-old Ernest Brown & Co. solves construction-related disputes and helps companies comply with California’s growing environmental regulations.
It was nearly 7 p.m. one fall day three years ago and Irvine attorney Ernest C. Brown was ready to call it a day when his phone rang.
A panic-stricken Orange County manufacturer was at the other end of the line. The South Coast Air Quality Management District--the state’s environmental watchdog--had threatened to shut down his business and impose an $18-million fine for polluting the air. So started an intense three-hour discussion in which Brown mapped out legal and abatement strategies to keep his new client’s manufacturing facilities operating and about 100 jobs intact, while the company looked for a remedy to its pollution problems.
He kept his client in business and the government authorities at bay for a few months until the company’s research division developed a special ultraviolet coating to stop the pollution emissions. As a result, impressed air quality officials recommended the manufacturer for a state technology advancement award for its new coating methods.
Even while California is losing manufacturers because of its tough environmental regulations, which make it more expensive to operate in the state, companies providing environmental-related services, such as the Ernest Brown & Co. law firm are in demand.
“We worked in absolutely hellish hours before we began our expansion,” Brown recalled.
He worked 12-hour days and brought work home to do on weekends. He didn’t spend as much time as he wanted with his wife, Barbara, and three children--ages 1, 4 and 9--at their San Juan Capistrano home. But his efforts have paid off.
Brown’s 3-year-old firm is one of the fastest-growing practices in Orange County at a time when many law firms are shrinking or disbanding for lack of business. It started with Brown, one other attorney and two support staff and has grown to 18 attorneys, four engineers and 11 support staff, which include secretaries and paralegals. From $350,000 in 1989, the firm’s revenue rose to $3.5 million last year and Brown expects it to bill about $5 million this year.
Brown attributed this growth to its specialties: environmental and construction law. Even while construction began to slow in Orange County in 1990, companies still needed his services to solve construction-related disputes and help them comply with California’s growing environmental regulations.
He also hired attorneys like himself. Brown, 38, is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he majored in civil and environmental engineering, and UC Berkeley’s law school--a rare combination among attorneys.
More than half of his firm’s lawyers have combined degrees in engineering or the sciences and at least five years of legal experience. As a result, a substantial amount of engineering and science-related analyses are done in-house, which can cut costs for a client.
“Ernie does highly specialized work, which is very topical today because the issue is about environmental hazards in real estate and this has a significant impact on development and commercial lending on real estate,” said Ronald Rus, a credit rights lawyer who has worked with Brown on environmental-related litigation. Rus was a co-lead counsel for bondholders in the securities fraud litigation against Charles H. Keating Jr. in the failure of Lincoln Savings & Loan.
At the outset, Brown invested in computers and special software, such as those on accounting and financial management, to increase responsiveness to clients and to cut overhead costs. As a result, Ernest Brown & Co. is among a growing number of county law firms that are highly computerized, said Richard Montevideo, a partner who specializes in environmental law at Rutan & Tucker, the largest law firm based in the county.
Brown has also beefed up his firm’s library. “We accumulated virtually every construction and environmental legal reference books in the field,” he said.
Brown’s initial clients include government agencies and those in the construction industry where he had extensive dealings during four years of working in the corporate counsel department at Fluor Daniel Inc.--the Irvine engineering arm of Fluor Corp.--and another eight years as an attorney with two law firms, including Newport Beach law firm Stradling, Yocca, Carlson & Rauth, where he headed its environmental and public works practice.
Ernest Brown & Co. has expanded its client base to include manufacturing and financial concerns, such as Sanwa Bank and Ameron Inc., a Pasadena manufacturer of large concrete pipes used in water systems.
Current projects for the firm include work on the Anaheim Sports Arena, such as drafting contracts between the city of Anaheim and the various general contractors building the $60-million arena near Anaheim Stadium, which is home to the California Angels.
The firm has also represented Orange County in its dispute with the contractors that built John Wayne Airport. Of those cases, only the one concerning Taylor Woodrow Construction California Ltd. of Newport Beach, is pending, Brown said. The rest were settled without litigation.
