Firm Expands Local Presence

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When business booms, the need for legal services follows suit.

One of the state’s largest law firms is bringing its business law expertise to Northwest Arkansas to help meet those growing needs.

The Law Offices of Mitchell Williams Selig Gates Woodyard PLLC, ranked this year as the state’s third largest firm by Arkansas Business, boasts 55 lawyers and 50 years of history in Little Rock. In 2002 the firm leased 4,300 SF of posh fifth-floor space overlooking Pinnacle Point Drive in Rogers to house five lawyers, three paralegals, four support personnel and a part-time messenger. Plans call for the addition of at least one more lawyer by year’s end.

Since 1992, the firm had operated a two-man office in Bentonville that specialized in tax and estate law. Mitchell Williams’ expansion adds full business legal services, including tax, insurance and environmental law, and a specialized practice in health care regulatory law.

Mitchell Williams has “made a serious long-term commitment” to Northwest Arkansas, said John Selig, managing partner of the firm. Selig said he really couldn’t determine the firm’s financial investment in Northwest Arkansas because it involves not only the office space, but also technology and the investment in law partners operating from the new office.

“It was important for us to expand in Northwest Arkansas for a variety of reasons,” Selig said. “Mainly, we want to be able to serve our clients and our future clients up there as well as we serve our clients all over the state.”

Christopher T. Rogers was recently named the administrative partner for the new Northwest Arkansas office. Rogers partnered with the late Ernie Lawrence in Mitchell Williams’ downtown Bentonville office for 10 years before last year’s move to the new office.

“We were two guys just trying to keep our heads above water,” he said. “The affiliation with Ernie was never intended to be the Chris and Ernie office forever. It was always our goal to expand the Northwest Arkansas office.”

A lack of quality office space, logistics and manpower delayed the decision.

Advanced technology, which Rogers said he can’t understand, allows the Little Rock and Benton County attorneys to communicate as if they were in the same building.

Mitchell Williams declined to disclose its average annual billings.

Health Regulatory Practice

One of Mitchell Williams’ most thriving services is its health regulatory law practice. Debby Thetford Nye, who specializes in health care-related corporate and administrative law, said she’s been traveling back and forth from the firm’s West Capitol Avenue offices in Little Rock to Bentonville for years. Now she’s better able to serve the growing health care community in Northwest Arkansas.

Nye said she’s able to meet much easier with health care providers at times that make sense for the client, rather than her travel schedule. She can be there quickly if there’s an emergency.

“We tailor our practice to the health providers’ operations, and they operate at all hours,” Nye noted.

Nye is a former chief counsel for the Arkansas Department of Human Services and represented the state Medicaid agency for 11 years before joining Mitchell Williams in 1985.

The firm’s health regulatory practice isn’t limited to Nye. She has a lot of support from Little Rock and in the Northwest Arkansas office, Rogers said. Bryan G. Looney, a former director of nursing services for a group of residential care facilities, is another expert in heath care and corporate law working from the new office.

Mitchell Williams represents more than 150 nursing facilities and has put together a risk management program to help them meet their health regulatory requirements, such as the patient privacy rules in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 that recently took effect.

The risk management program is basically a loss prevention program that concentrates on four areas of service for health care providers:

• Day-to-day operational advice.

• Development of staff-educational

activities.

• Identification of the proper methods of evaluating and identifying a facility’s risk areas in conjunction with the facility’s quality assurance responsibility.

• A resource for survey and certification issues that arise in the facility’s operations.

The firm has a long list of duties it will perform to meet those areas of service for facilities that participate in the risk management program. Each facility pays a monthly fee of $450 to participate. That fee doesn’t include litigation or other legal services outside the realm of the program.

Litigation

Mitchell Williams also has brought in the litigation experience of L. Kyle Heffley. Heffley has defense experience in insurance, medical malpractice and nursing home litigation and experience in defending corporations from class-action lawsuit attempts.

“I sort of cut my teeth with medical malpractice cases, which are fascinating,” Heffley said. “These cases are very personal, and each is its own little novelette.”

But he’s glad to get the variety of business litigation cases he’s handling in Northwest Arkansas.

“The need is here, and variety is the spice of life,” he said. “That’s what is fun about being a litigator.”

Northwest Arkansas has tended to be the best place in the state for defending businesses, and that adds to Heffley’s enthusiasm for the move.

“By and large, in this part of the state, juries are very fair,” he said.

He’s not sure if the culture, history or attitudes toward business in Northwest Arkansas create the jury outcomes that tend to be more favorable for business.

Heffley cited a premises-liability case he litigated in Carroll County that involved a fall in the parking lot of Eureka Springs Hospital. The outcome could have easily favored the victim who was out more than $100,000 in medical bills. The jury, however, saw that the hospital can’t be responsible for every step a patient takes after he is released and the victim was somewhat responsible for the fall, Heffley said.

He’s also defended businesses against class-action lawsuit attempts. One big win stopped Arkansas rice growers from a class-action suit they attempted with rice growers in other states. The growers wanted to sue their crop insurance company for discontinuing coverage.

Heffley said the court found the growers weren’t a class. Each individual grower may have a case, but the group didn’t meet the criteria for a class-action case and didn’t deserve the empowerment it creates, Heffley said.

Big Firm Benefits

A big benefit for large firms is their ability to grow specialized legal experts within each category of business law, Rogers said. For instance, Nye is able to draw on the knowledge of lawyers within the firm who know HIPAA regulations inside and out, or others who specialize in health insurance requirements or Nick Thompson, who represented the health care industry in the fight for tort reform legislation.

“The beauty of the big firm is that you can walk down the hall and ask a partner a question,” Rogers said. “Each attorney is able to develop expertise in each of those areas.”

With the technology investment the firm has made to link its offices, the lawyers are at each others’ fingertips with handheld GoodLink communication devices for wireless e-mail, integrated phones between the two offices and instant conferencing capabilities, Rogers said. Selig said the firm has spent more than $500,000 in the past year alone on technology upgrades.

Heffley believes it’s paying off. He’s “just as accessible” if he’s in Benton County or in Washington, D.C., conducting a deposition, Heffley said.

There’s also a lot more support for each lawyer just from having a bigger pool of legal minds from which they can draw, he added.

Rogers doesn’t believe there’s any limit to the office’s growth in Northwest Arkansas. It’s taking up half of the top floor of one of the Pinnacle office towers, and has an option on another 1,000 SF and right of first refusal on the remainder of the floor.

If the need supports expansion, there’s nothing that will stop Mitchell Williams from having a larger presence in Benton County than in Little Rock, he said.

“I don’t think we have a limit,” Rogers said. “That’s one of the strong things about this firm — there’s not a Little Rock versus Northwest Arkansas competition. We’re all excited about the possibilities up here.”

The firm even has an open office for visiting Little Rock lawyers that is used frequently, Nye added.

In addition to health care and tax law, Mitchell Williams is handling a number of real estate and real estate tax cases in Northwest Arkansas. Exploding real estate values have resulted in more real estate law needs, including estate tax legal needs for landowners whose property has generated a lot of revenue, Rogers said.

Additionally, Mitchell Williams can handle all types of business and corporate organization and transaction needs, workers’ compensation and labor legal issues, product liability and governmental relations.

“Our goal has been to make ourselves more readily available to our business clientele in Northwest Arkansas,” he said. “We’re now a full-service firm and can do everything for business law.”