Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hi, I'm John Koh and welcome to icons of D.C. area real estate, a one on one interview show highlighting the backgrounds and career trajectory of leading luminaries in the Washington D.C. area Real estate market. The purpose of the show is to highlight their backgrounds and their experiences and some interesting stories about their current business as well as their past and to cite some things that you might take away both from educational standpoint as well as lessons learned in the industry and some amusing and sometimes interesting background stories. So I'm hoping that you will enjoy the show. Before I introduce my guest for this episode, I want to share some information about CoEnterprises, my company. It serves income producing real estate market participants through four distinct platforms. First, I advise early stage real estate companies on securing project financing and on forming and executing operating and financial strategy. My current clients include Brick Lane, a multifamily investment and development firm who began in D.C. and has expanded to the Southeast U.S. with many acquisitions and projects and One Circle Company, an early stage multifamily developer investor in Boston who was nearing their first development project 2. Career counseling for early and mid career Real estate professionals with a program approach including two one hour sessions and follow up six months progress reports.
My clients range from recent college graduates to mid career executives who are contemplating change and three of course, this podcast sharing knowledge and insights of market leaders. I want to give a special shout out to my associate on this effort, Colin Madden, who provides pro script, perspective and marketing assistance to produce the podcast. And finally, for deriving from the podcast listener base and my experience as a ULI mentor, Colin and I initiated the iconic journey in CRE, a community of young professionals from 22 to 40 years old who participate and contribute to online and live meetings, property tours, mastermind groups, book readings and career resources.
In summary, CoEnterprise's mission is to motivate and guide high achieving individuals and young companies to to get the results they want and in doing so, to elevate the already DC area real estate community. To learn more, click on my website coenterprises.com or reach out to me at johnoenterprises.com to learn about any of these services. Thank you for listening. Welcome to another episode of Icons of DCR in Real Estate. Today I'm pleased to introduce my guest Ron Gart, who is a Senior Partner with Seifarth Law Firm here in Washington D.C. seifarth is a national firm headquartered in Chicago. Ron came over in 2008 with three other partners to start the real estate practice here in Washington for them.
Ron grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York and then moved to Silver Spring, Maryland when he was in high school, attending Kennedy High School up there. He found it interesting. His father was a jeweler. And so he grew up kind of modest environment, but excelled in school and did extremely well and obviously then went on to GW undergraduate and Phi Beta Kappa there and then on to law school at GW.
So he was there seven years at that campus. Decided to stay in D.C. got married while he was in law school and his wife decided to stay there. So then he joined Volks Artists, which is a long term law firm in the city in transactional law. He decided to leave that practice and join another firm called Colton and Boykin. He then met his mentor, longtime mentor, Peter Siegel there, who he and Ron stayed together for the rest of his Peter's career in law.
So the two of them built a practice there and then on to Miles and Stockbridge, another firm, and subsequently Powell Goldstein. And they were there for several years, an Atlanta based firm.
And in 2008 they came over to Seifarth with two other attorneys coming along with them, Krista Dahmers and Adam Walsh.
So Ron, teamwork is a key, important part of law and that's why he has stayed together with his now partners for so long. Being a team and having somebody to rely on back and forth is important. He talks about that at length.
Ron sees himself as a generalist. In law today things are much more focused on specialization. So generationally he felt that back his generation earlier, generalism, being a generalist was important and then being able to have a lot of knowledge about different parts of real estate law and then focus on transactions, which he does in his practice primarily. He's very businesslike in his approach to the legal profession. He likes deadlines, he likes to close deals, he likes conclusion. He doesn't like uncertainty and long extended processes. Sometimes land use and other parts of law, including litigation, is frustrating to him. So it's interesting to hear his perspective there. Ron philosophically is, as I said, very businesslike. But he also enjoys his sense of humor. He likes to bring that in to help disarm tense situations and to attract people on both sides to make a deal. Make it happen.
His billboard statement that I always have each year for each guest is great. It's called people, he said people are just people. That was what his father said about his second marriage. And so it was interesting to hear that perspective in conclusion. So I hope you enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Ron Gart Ron Gart, welcome to icons of D.C. area real estate. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: So, Ron, could you describe your role at Seifarth Shah and your focuses day to day?
[00:06:58] Speaker B: I probably have three main roles. One is since I joined Cypharth in 08, I have been the head of the real estate group here in dc. So that involves dealing with day to day issues, personnel issues, business planning, client promotion activities as a group, work allocation. Then I'm also a member of the leadership team for real estate. The entire firm got about 120530 lawyers and 12 offices now, I think domestic offices. So we're well represented around the country. And so I'm part of that group in terms of studying policies for the entire.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: So when you say 125 lawyers, is that in the real estate practice?
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Yeah, just real estate. We are, I think we're the fourth or fifth largest private department, real estate department. And then of course the third primary role is frankly business generation and execution. So I'm a full time practitioner buying deals, identifying clients, effectuating their goals, hopefully.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: So before we get into your philosophies, et cetera, let's go into your origin story, Ron, if we could. So, Ron, where did you grow up?
[00:08:11] Speaker B: I grew up in two places. Poughkeepsie, New York is where I emotionally call home. I was there From I think five or six years old through 14. My father was manager of a jewelry store there and then he got promoted to supervisor for tape, what became Kay Jewelers. And they were located in Alexandria, Virginia. So my parents moved in this area, but they insisted on moving to Montgomery county for their schools. I grew up through high school in Silver Spring until my father got reassigned back to Poughkeepsie. Oh really? In the middle of my senior year. So in October of my senior year, I moved back to Poughkeepsie. I had enough credits, fortunately, from Kennedy High School to graduate in December as opposed to spending the balance of the year. I really didn't know, so I'm sorry. Poughkeepsie is broken up into two places, Arlington and Poughkeepsie. I grew up originally in Arlington, a suburb of a small town in Poughkeepsie, and then moved to the city of Poughkeepsie for a couple months.
I graduated in December, left school in December and became a shoe salesman so I could raise money to go to school until I went to GW.
Those are my own. That's my background.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Two homes, Kipsey, New York is known as was IBM's headquarters.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: IBM and Vassar.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: And now Vassar. There's much less IBM.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: It was a lovely place to go. Very sleepy town. You could walk downtown. In fact, I walked to school, I walked to the bowling alley, I walked out, and we walked everywhere all day long.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah. The Hudson river right there. It's a beautiful area.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Absolutely beautiful.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Yeah. That's great. So your high school years were here, correct? In Montgomery County. Okay. All right. Anything you learned or what did you pick up at Montgomery County?
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Well, Montgomery county was totally different. I went from a sleepy little town to a cosmopolitan place, quite frankly. And I had to learn places and people. Everybody was different. I came in beginning of ninth grade. It was 1968. So interesting times.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: I moved into an apartment project down the street from Kennedy High School. So it's just a totally different environment. But fortunately, people were very friendly. Got into a group at Kennedy High School. I'll come back to. But I did meet Dan Karchim as a freshman and later on represented and very close with Dan. So it was a lovely environment. It really was. And in fact, we celebrate our 50th anniversary in September. We'll see if I go or not for the reunion. So we'll see. We go. But it was a very good experience. Yeah.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Well, the demographics of that part of Montgomery county have changed quite a bit over the years.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So Arlington, where I grew up, was primarily farmland. As I said, there was a divide. Arlington and Poughkeepsie. City of Poughkeepsie was right. A regular little town. Arlington was a lot of farmland. So you had very few people, lots of open space, really rural, very quiet. Silver Spring was not quiet.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: No. That is contrast.
So, undergrad, where did you end up going?
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Well, let me. Let me. So I'm going to mirror or actually marry Gypsy and Silver Spring.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: I'm in Silver Spring, and there's a gentleman by the name of Jay Boyer. Jay Boyer was my assistant little league baseball coach. And when we moved to Silver Spring, Jay was down here. We kept up a friendship with Jay, obviously 10, 15 years older than me. And Jay was the dean of student activities at gw.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Ah.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: And in the course of some conversation, I must have mentioned either I was considering law or politics or both. Whatever. And Jay said, ron, if you're literally said to me, ron, if you're considering either politics or law, you must go to gw. And GW was not on my radar because at that time, my parents were living in Silver Spring. I didn't want to be that close to my parents. I want to move away.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: But he said, you got to consider it. So I made application. Fortunately, I got a tuition, full tuition scholarship, which for me was big. So I went to GW based on that strong recommendation by Jay and a tuition scholarship, only to find out that when I got here at gw, J moved to PG County, a community college, to be the Dean of Student Activities. So I never even saw him at gw. And I saw him maybe once or twice in my life since then. But nevertheless, that's how I got to gw.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Did you consider other schools?
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah, Northeast schools, University of Pennsylvania, New Jersey schools, Harvard. Yes.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: So you did well in high school, then?
[00:12:39] Speaker B: I did academically well in high school, yeah. I was one of those folks that was very goal oriented. And I think it comes up perhaps in some of our other discussions, but I wanted to be a lawyer since I was in fourth grade.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Really?
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: So why your dad was a jeweler?
[00:12:55] Speaker B: I mean, the right answer is. I'm not certain. What I can tell you is that I remember in either Highlights magazine. I don't know if you remember that magazine.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: I saw an ad for 25 cents you can send away to get a pamphlet on what it's like to be a lawyer. And I did. I did, really. And I got that pamphlet. And John, I savored that pamphlet for years. Years. I folded it up immediately, put it in my drawer, read it. I read it several times. And I don't know if it was that pamphlet or the fact I was also a solid TV Donald Reed show. Alex was the lawyer. Right. He lived in a nice house. Sure. Pretty people. A real house. I lived in an apartment project all my life. Right. So, you know, we had three bedrooms, one bathroom, five people. They had a house. They went upstairs.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: I don't know if that was the Influence. I can't tell you. It was Perry Mason with the. I don't know. I really don't know. That pamphlet. I do know I cherished that until I lost it one day. Oh, no. When I couldn't find it, I went into a panic and I couldn't find where I had originally bought it, so I was stuck.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: So did you ever meet any lawyers when you were in high school or college or whatever, just to kind of get a sense of what it was or.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: No. So I had a neighbor in Poughkeepsie as a kid who was a lawyer, an alderman.
I don't remember ever talking anything other than babysitting. His son. So I never talked the law, as I said this pamphlet, and maybe the Down Aren show, maybe the Defenders, you know, some TV show got me into law. So I wanted to be a litigator. I mean, there wasn't something that said real estate transactional lawyer. I mean, that didn't exist. So the litigator. Right. So that's. Those are my influences, I think. At least that's what I can recall.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: So undergraduate, you studied what now?
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Political science and history and speech communication. Because again, I wanted to be in litigation. Sure, I figured all of those. I think I majored. I majored in speech communication, but most of my classes were politics or political science.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: So you had no fear standing in front of people talking?
[00:15:06] Speaker B: I won't say that, but it's just something that I like the strategizing, I like the arguments and maybe the ego boost that sort of came that everybody's focused on you for that moment in time. Again, I really don't know what drew me to this, but I do know that from fourth grade on, I focused. Sixth grade, I went to Vassar College. They had a student teachers event. And I remember getting a letter. I have it at home. Ron, best luck in your endeavors to be a lawyer.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: So this is one of those things.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: That you mind all in.
So then law school, what did you look at other options other than, you know, you went to gw?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: I did apply to a couple schools, but GW was my primary school one. My brother, who is two years ahead of me, was a third year student there. His wife, he's a lawyer. He's a lawyer now. Right.
And Carolyn, his wife, was also a third year. My girlfriend, now wife of 44 years, was two years behind me at GW.
And I really did think that if I left the area, that relationship could be affected.
Why go anywhere else? I enjoyed gw. I also had an experience in undergraduate school. I always worked through the year as well as in the summers, and I continued that, frankly, during law school. So it was just natural to go to GW and GW had a good reputation.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Did you live downtown or did you live at home?
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Oh, I live downtown.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Again, my parents had moved back to Poughkeepsie by this point.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Oh, they had?
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was at dorms at GW and then got road to test and apartments over on.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: While in law school.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: So seven years trade. So you'd had seven years in Washington after law school, did you think about going somewhere else?
[00:17:03] Speaker B: I wanted to go to Florida because My primary source of fun is golf. I wanted warm. My wife was afraid of hairwood. Frith. I think she wanted to go to Connecticut.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: So you were married at law school?
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Yes, in law school. I got married after my second year.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: And she wanted to go to Connecticut, so it was natural.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Is that where she's from?
[00:17:24] Speaker B: No, she's from New Jersey. But she wanted. She. She liked what Connecticut looked like. The cool weather. I can't stand cold weather. So the compromise was to stay here. And in fact, not having grown up in Maryland, instead of living in Maryland, I moved to Virginia because the metro was much more accessible to GW and downtown than it was from Silver Spring or somewhere else.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Interesting. Virginia.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: And stayed in Virginia ever since.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Interesting, interesting. So you knew that you wanted to look and cure. And so what was the process then as far as. And by the way, let's talk about law school. Did you have any sense of what you wanted to do when you were in law school? You started with litigation. You were really interested in that. Did you continue that interest?
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Well, going into law school, I wanted to be a litigator.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: My first job, which was in my second semester of the first year, which is very unusual to have a job that early in law school, was acting as a paralegal for a firm then called Hill, Christopher and Phillips. It was to review all the real estate cases that were published and digest them.
So I did that for the next year and a half. So I started doing real estate related analysis.
My next job was a small boutique firm out in Alexandria where I did litigation and real estate. It was Lanoff and Cohen.
Then I got a job with the U.S. attorney's office doing litigation for some. My last clerkship was with Jackson, Campbell and Parkinson. I worked for a woman by name, Pat Gurn. She handled litigation that involved real estate in the title world. So I was doing litigation and real estate related.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: You learned a lot while you were in Boston.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. And worked with some wonderful people. I really did. So now at that point, I'm graduating and I literally said to myself, I can do litigation or I can do real estate. And I put my resumes out there. And I didn't. I said, I'm interested in litigation or real estate. I got an offer from Jackson at that time, Jackson Campbell Parkinson, for $16,000. But if I pass the bar, I could get 18,000. And I got an offer from Wilkes Artists. Wilkes Artists at the time was probably one of two, I thought, two premier real estate firms, Reynolds and Blocker was still here in D.C. and Wilkes artist and Wilkes Artists offered me an opportunity to work in the real estate finance group.
And I took that and obviously a terrific firm.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Who was your first senior attorney that you worked with?
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Bob Gore. Bob Borman had just made partnership, I believe Al Ledger was the department head. But I worked with Bob. Bob is terrific, lovely guy, worked very hard, straight as an arrow. You'd show up at 7:00 and he will have been finishing his breakfast.
You couldn't get in earlier than.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: He was a great inspiration.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. And a terrific guy. Terrific guy. Smart guy. So we started doing work for various lenders. And then of course, the interest rates went from whatever they were to 21%. And sure enough, that work slowed up and guess what I started doing? Litigation.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Rtc.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Oh, no, no, no. This is. This is way. This is 79 to 81. So way before that. And so now they didn't have real estate finance work. I started doing litigation and did that for, I don't know, for about a year.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: And then real estate related litigation, or was it a broader spectrum?
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, it was real estate related. Was a home development issue. And then after about a year, I decided, you know, this isn't the right place for me. I just don't feel comfortable at Wilkes Artist. Real Estate finance was, I'm not going to say a stepchild, but it was known. Wilkes Artist was a zoning firm and they had real estate.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Wayne Quinn.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Right. Oh, Norman Glasgow and Chip.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Chip Classko.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Son Chip. So. And that group was the strong group. So Real Estate Finance was there with Al and some others and Bob, and they had some litigation, but it really was a zoning firm. And I honestly didn't feel I fit in. I just didn't.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: I never felt land use didn't interest you.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. Never had any interest in that. I wanted to do at that point transactional work. And I put my resume out there and. And interesting story. I interviewed with some folks at Shaw Pittman, not the Fred and Jays who were just junior associates in that one with the departments there. And one guy who to this day I thank, a guy by the name of John Engel. I interviewed with John, among others, and John reached out to a firm called Colt Room Boyfriend and said, look, I don't know if we're going to hire this guy Gardner now, but I know you're looking for someone who's a friend of a partner. There's. I know you're looking for somebody in real estate finance. I think he'd be good for you. You ought to Interview.
So I got contacted by a firm I'd never heard of, Colton Boykin. They reached out to me. Would I be interested in interviewing with them? Hey, I want to be bookstart. I'll interview with anybody. And I, at that time, I hadn't gotten an offer, but hadn't been rejected from shop. And make a long story short, a guy by the name Peter Siegel was an energy partner. I interviewed with Peter, hit it off. Just hit it off. And then I met with a few other folks and everything was great. Got an offer, went to Colden Boykin, had a wonderful experience until we collectively decided to shut down colton boykin in 93. And still good friends with Peter.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Did they just go different directions or what?
[00:23:14] Speaker B: When I joined Colton Boykin, I was the 10th attorney. And it was a very unique experience, which I'll be happy to go into. But Colton Boyd was just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful place. We still get together.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Real estate focused.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yes, yes. So it was started by two guys that worked with hud.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Colton was former officer at hud and then he took on a junior person hamburger at the time. And they developed a HUD oriented practice and then it moved to a larger practice. So I joined and there's one or other associate and nine partners or eight partners. Excuse me, eight partners on the 10th attorney. And they had no commercial real estate practice. They did HUD work at that point. They're doing 236 work.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Housing.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Yeah, housing oriented. And then they had some other. They worked at the Homeowners Home Builders Association. So again, housing related. So Peter was going to develop this commercial real estate practice and he needed an associate. I was it again. As I said, we hit it off. And to this day we're still friends. We had a reunion of whoever could show up about four years ago, 30 years since we terminated in 2023, probably try to get whoever is around to get together and usually 20, 30 people show up and it's just great. So great relationships with everybody. We actually closed it down in 93 because the four people that were the most senior by that time, it was me, Peter Hamboek and Bill Cassano decided that we no longer.
Our lease was up. We no longer wanted to work with all these other folks. We want to go in a different direction. But Bill and Ham wanted to be small. Peter Siegel and I thought we had to be with a larger, more regional firm. So we went and joined Miles and Stockbridge for a year and a half. Sure. And then together we went to Palm.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: State after that, Miles and Stockbridge is still practicing, right?
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. They've had their ups and downs.
Yes, yes.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: And I was there for about a year and a half again, decided that it wasn't the right place for me, let alone him. And after a year, looked out there and.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: So how did Paul Goldstein find you guys then?
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Interesting. I had an offer at Holland Night. I had a relationship with Dick Danelles because I represented an investment that he was a new partner in, and I got to work with him as outside counsel, and he asked me to consider Holland tonight. So I was going to go to Holland Night, and I got an offer from Holland.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Was this before the Wilkes Artists, you know, merger with Holiday Night? Not merger, but no, I think.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: I think they were there.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: They were there.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: 95. So I think they were there.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: I think they were there because that happened in the early 90s, I think.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: I think they were there.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: I'm pretty certain they were. So. But Dick had a particular goal of mine which I don't want to get into in order of being there, which is a little uncomfortable for me. And Peter said, ron, I'm interviewing a Powell Goldstein. They are lovely people. They've got this practice. They can grow this one. Please give them a second look before you sign up. I mean, before you actually go. Because I already accepted the offer from Dick, and I went, I interviewed. They were very nice. They don't offer this, that, and the other. And I rethought about the basis for which Dick wanted me to come and join Holland. You know, I don't think I want to take that risk. Sorry, Dick. Terribly embarrassed. I decided I'm going to go to Power Bolster. I went to powerhouse in 95 and was there until 2008.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: So talk about that firm and why you liked it and looking at alternatives. And they're from Atlanta. Right. Originally.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: They only had two offices at the time, Atlanta and D.C. right. D.C. had about 80 people. Atlanta, maybe 200, 210 people. I like them because there's a theme here going back to Colton Boyfriend. And it may go to sort of my philosophy at Colton Boykin. We were very team oriented. I never felt like I was junior associate, mid level. No, I was the attorney on the deal. Part of that was because Peter didn't have a lot of experience in commercial real estate, but we were doing commercial real estate deals, which means I was doing it from soup to nuts. And I go to Peter, what do you think, Ron? Sounds good to me, I'm telling you.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: So you were learning as you were.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Going feet to the fire. Feet to the fire. Working with some very senior people in town. Joe Freeze, Phil Gorlick, who you may or may not know of. Stan Roble. Just people that more senior than I would. And I was doing what I was doing on behalf of my clients with much more senior partner people. And I'm an associate. Learned a ton, had opportunities go forward, and truly enjoyed that. Now I go to Powell Goldstein, and I felt that I could do my own thing. It was important. I wasn't going to have a bunch of hands overlooking. I had an opportunity to grow the practice. Peter and I, again were the only commercial real estate folks in the D.C. office. They had a very strong real estate group in Atlanta. They did not have that here. I wanted to grow, had some clients that wanted to grow with me at that point in time. And they seemed to be very nice people, which for me has always been the fundamental draw. Al Goldstein, Cycle Shaw. When I was out in the Marketplace back in 2008, I want to work in an environment where I enjoy the people.
And that's how I got into real estate. Transaction work I enjoy. So it's very people oriented. If you don't like people, you shouldn't be in transactional work.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: So, so all very important. And they let me build a team. Critical, critical.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: That's great.
So, I mean, let's go back. Why real estate law? I mean, why not, you know, and you taught litigation. I mean, was it just because you were directed really early in your career, or is it you wanted real transaction law because of the people?
Why real estate and not patents or some other practice? What is it about real estate that really turned you on?
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Well, if you said patent law or tax law, you'd have to shoot me.
So I think the draw of litigation and real estate for me at least, is again, that interaction with other people. Yes, I want to be a litigator. When I got to Wilk's Artist, I started to enjoy the transactional work, but again, I enjoyed working with Bob.
And then when Colton Boykin came up, the opportunity was real estate, it wasn't litigation. And I like the opportunity to grow a practice. I mean, here I'm a second year associate. I'm going to grow a practice on my back. But given that opportunity, the sense of control, the sense of entrepreneurship in law, which is sort of an oxymoron. So I enjoyed that opportunity. And then it was just what I did.
I just had that opportunity and went with the opportunity.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: That's awesome.
So you've worked with Several partners and associates for years, including Krista Dahmers and Bob Bodanski. Talk about why that's important at a law firm.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: I'm going to take the same analogy about teamwork, John. The good sports teams, they're together for years, right? I think, look at Fred and Jay. What's that other guy's name? You know, look at, you know, look at Jay and Fred. They've been together forever, 40 years. Yeah, you know, it's, it's just teamwork. There's trust, there's confidence, there's a limitation. You say what you want, you're a smart guy, I'm a smart guy. We have our limitations. Hopefully the person that you're working with has different limitations or doesn't have your limitations. And the two of you, the three of you, the four of you with your separate perceptions, separate perception, separate backgrounds, just make a stronger team to develop and then to present the right result for the client or multiple goals being satisfied. I can't do it alone. I don't pretend to be the smartest guy in the room. I'm not the smartest guy in the room. But if I can find three other people that are pretty damn smart, maybe the three of us, four of us become pretty smart people.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: So when you're working on a deal, you normally have an associate working with you on it. So that person might draft the documents or be involved in the negotiations or reviewing the documents initially, and then you review their work or you work together to kind of coordinate. And a two person orientation is typically the situation. Do you ever need more than 2? Usually in a situation and why?
[00:32:16] Speaker B: So right now, both on the size of the deals, the complexity of the deals, and then it depends on the scope of the deal. So let's take a typical deal, it probably is just one in one. But with larger deals now we may distinguish between the due diligence work at a more junior level and again, keeping in mind legal fees that you're going to be charging being more efficient and more economic. So we'll have a more junior person deal with the title, the survey, the zoning issues, generally speaking. And if they identify issues, then the associate and the associate could be junior associate, mid level or senior. Depends on the matter and who's available, and then myself. So as a practical matter, and it depends on the sophistication of that associate, the senior associate, as to how involved I am, in the old days, 10, 15 years ago, I was very fortunate. 1993, Chris Adamris, a third year associate, Adam Wall's third year associate joined me at Palo Gold for the Next, call it 10, 12 years that they were with me as associates and junior partners, they were 2,000 plus hours every year. They got involved directly in the deals. They would handle 80% of the deal, 70% of the deal, whatever it may be. And then I'd come in for the political elements, dealing with the client, tough issues, strategizing, yes, doing some editing. But they're really at that point, senior associates, junior partners, they're largely on their own with guidance with more junior associates, there's more oversight today.
My tip of modus operandi is as follows. Matter comes in, it could be a purchase contract, it could be loan documents. I go to the associate and I say, okay, I want you to take the first stab at the comments. Because if I do it, you're going to just assume my comments. I want to know what you know after all these years of working together or if I haven't worked with them yet. I want to understand the level of your capacity. So I want you to take the first stab at it. I'm going to then give comments to your comments and then together we'll present someone our comment. That's mostly the way I try to operate on some occasions, clearly where either the associates, more junior or we've got to move faster, I'll do it. I'll ask them to look at my work. But I tell every associate that ever works with me that I'm expecting you to look at my work and to be critical of it. I don't want you to think or assume that I'm doing it right. I'm expecting you to look at this with a clean slate, separate set of eyes, because together we can present a better product.
And some people get it, frankly, and some people don't. The ones that get it, I think can move along faster in their career. And fortunately in the last couple years, I found I've always been able to find that mid level to then bring them up later on to more senior associate, who in fact does do that, does accept, it, does grow. And then frankly with the game plan, become partner and go off on the road.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: So one thing I've talked in the past with attorneys is scope of work. And so the industry has divided itself into different disciplines, it seems, and even sub disciplines now with people focusing purely on debt, let's say real estate debt, others real estate equity transactions or private equity, or that other people focus on REIT work, let's say, or, and that's all the transactional side. And then there's the organizational side of law, which I interviewed Steph Tucker, and that's his mandate. And the tax side of law of the real estate business. And then there's the whole land use side, which you said doesn't interest you. Really? So my last attorney I interviewed, and she's now a businesswoman, is Donna Schaefer. She started out and, and she did kind of transactional work, but she got involved in land use work, too, although her initial thrust was land use. And now she's a developer and she's purely doing land use and some transaction work because she's doing entitlement work. So it's interesting how those different disciplines work in the legal profession.
And it also goes back to your clients. So your clients all have different hats. But developers do everything. They're kind of like, you know, they have to do everything. So they do the transactional work, they do the land use work. They do all that.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: How.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Why have attorneys divided themselves up that way? Just out of curiosity. And why isn't the discipline more generalized as opposed to specific? Just out of curiosity in your, from.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Your perspective, I know you asked the question. It's a pointed question. I'm going to answer it in a different way. Okay. And then we'll have to pull out the final answer. If you ask. I think if you ask people of my generation and maybe the generation ahead of you, assuming they're still alive, about that question, and I think you get the answer is it's a shame that they have gone ahead and bifurcated, trifurcated, just made these multiple disciplines. When you talk to the Freds, the Wendy's, the Ron's, we've all had a generalist background.
I may not know the tax law like Steph. I mean, not mad, I don't.
And I certainly don't know the zoning that Wayne and others, but I know enough to pull stuff together and when to ask somebody for the input that I need, especially when it comes to joint venture work, part of its tax, part of its real estate, part of it, part of it's corporate, part of it's just freaking common sense. And if you have someone who's a specialist, they don't know the questions to ask. So when you ask someone of I'll say my vintage, which is kind of scary when I say it that way, I think you get the answer. They are better off if they were generalists than if they were specialists.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: So I'm not sure that's the question you asked. Why it happened that way. It happens that way. I think because it may be easier, easy. You get somebody who gets a focus and they don't want to know anymore. They want to become an expert, perhaps in an area, then they want to grow that area. So self preservation, I mean, that's a cynical view. My view is I want all of my associates to be as generalist as possible. I want you to do leasing. I want you to do finance. Now, if it turns out that you have an affinity for finance or for leasing or for something else, and that's where your strength is and that's where you ought to be, bless you, go off on your way. But otherwise, I want someone who can think and take the perspectives of all the players in a transaction and then come up with an answer.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Let's say you have a development client who loves your work and says, okay, we're going to close on this land acquisition. So this is a raw piece of gray, hasn't even been entitled yet. And so they look to you and say, ron, can you help me? I've got to start meeting with community groups and really pitch this project to get it entitled. So what would your response be to them at that point? You'd say, that's not my specialty?
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Well, no, no, what I'd say is I've worked with a lot of folks, depending on the jurisdiction. Let's say it's D.C. i've worked a lot of folks who do zoning work at this firm, that firm and the other firm. L. Let me make the suggestion that you talk to so and so at such and such.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: Right?
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Let's get on the phone. I'll introduce you, and I've done this, and let's get on the phone. The three of us will get on the phone, see if it's a match. If you feel comfortable, then you guys go forward. I'll be happy to handle the transaction. And frankly, the zoning lawyers in town know when they get a referral that they ought not to go beyond that scope of work and then take your client for the transactional work. They won't get referrals.
So they're all respectful, at least ones that I've dealt with. Very respectful as I am of them if they were to refer something to me. So that's the right answer. I'm not going to try to sell you on something that I can't deliver and deliver competently and comfortably. I'm going to find the right person for you, and that's ultimately what the client wants. They want client service, whether it's me or somebody else that can get it done. They want the client service.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: So if somebody's asking you to help form an LLC and, you know, drop the company documents, then all of a sudden they come in with a complicated tax issue.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: You'll say the news being with the firm that I'm with, you name the issue somebody in my firm deal with. And if it's not. And it's not necessarily in my office. Right. It's when I joined the firm. They use this pitch line. Ron. We've got long cars at this firm, so you can go to other offices. The reality, John, after being here now 12 years, I work with people in all the offices. I'm working with Seattle right now, New York, Boston, Atlanta, and la, on occasion, San Francisco. We just work.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: So the matters aren't necessarily in Washington.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Oh, no, no. And in fact, there's been a positive and negative with sidepartners in that regard. When I joined, I was in dc, Maryland. I'm licensed in all three jurisdictions. So my deals with these three jurisdictions, my clients may be located here, but I'm doing deals all over the country. And in fact, today I think I got one lease in D.C. the rest of it is outside of D.C. the closest one is Virginia beach, but it's all around the country. And I think that's with all the real estate lawyers in the D.C. office. We're doing work all around the country. But that means my environmental lawyer in Chicago, pick up a phone. She's done work all around the country. I've got her involved in three deals right now, three different states and different jurisdictions. Tax lawyers. I got him here. Stan is down the hall. I can go to Stan for tax work, but I'm working with folks in New York. Someone who's actually resident in Israel is working with me on some REIT work. So it's having that availability of expertise in the firm that helps me on that.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: So what you're saying is not only is the industry segmented, but each individual attorney has its own real, their own practice. So they may have a subspecialty even more so, and are expert at a particular angle to the law that other counsels may not have, either within the firm or outside the firm.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: That's true. And also, don't forget, you're licensed in Virginia and you practice in Virginia. You know Virginia law. You may not know Maryland or D.C. well, that's true. So you take those elements of specialization into account as well.
And at the end of the day, it's about client service. I've got to find the right People to achieve the goal that my client said.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: So do you have any memories of interesting deals and any other stories you'd like to share about unusual transactions where you learned a concern about your practice, Ron?
[00:43:41] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I guess there'd be a couple. I'll tell you one and they're not all necessarily positive.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: That's fine.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: I'll tell you my first big deal.
It's a Property located at 28th and M Street. I'm a fourth year associate I believe.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: At this point in time.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: And we've got a client at the time with BRG Ventures.
They were primarily a finance oriented operation in Georgetown, but they had a commercial owner. In fact, Anthony Lanier was an employee there for some period, as was Gary Malaski who went off to be a developer on his own. Right. In any event. So I ended up working on a commercial development at the corner of 28th and M Street. Vacant land and one historic building. Make a long story short.
I, with the architect and internal planner conceived a mixed use condominium for the building that now fronts M3B28. It's office, multifamily condo. Then there was a building which was on the plot of land which the hotel employees and restaurant employees was interested in. So a joint venture with them for them to ultimately take ownership of that site. Stan Roe, who represented them. And then there was land which the client developed five land parcels. And I think, John, I don't know for sure. I think it's the first land condominium ever created back in 1984. Ish where I.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: In the district.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: In the district where I created three dimensional cube for each of the townhouses so they didn't have to be subdivided. So we had.
[00:45:32] Speaker A: Who was the original architect of that thought process? Was it you or the developer?
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Me.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: It was your idea.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Oh no, no, it was me now taking all of that. We had to sell it. Forgetting whether they could sell it to the market. We had American Security bank at the London.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: And it was represented by a guy by the name of Phil Gorley, sort of a notorious gentleman I might add. At least that's my perspective and I'll never forget. Sit down and I'm trying to explain how this is all going to work.
And then I can negotiate the loan documents. And they were skeptical. In fact, I think the deal died once and then it came back. If I recall correctly, it was construction loan. And I was going to do all this. I was doing all the work, all the condominium work. You know, they did handle the zoning. Somebody else handled the zoning. But in terms of the condominium work, Working with Stan Roble on how it would work between his client, my client, and how they would end up with this office building and he'd end up with the rest. And then during the negotiations, Phil was very hard on me. I mean, here I am, I'm a fourth year associate and I won't go into who Phil was, but pretty notorious about frankly terms of how he dealt with other attorneys, his partners, his associates, and certainly peons like me. And I'll never forget the golden rule. He told me about the golden rule.
He who has the gold makes the rules, Ron. So that's why the answer is no. Notwithstanding how many times I would ask for something and he just rejected. Make a long, long story longer. At some point he turns the property, the legal work over to Neil Bien find up for work with Neil. I think that was Neil's first real deal as well. And we got it done. And it was just a wonderful opportunity to put all this stuff together. Probably took a year and a half to two years easily to make it happen. And I'd go back to Peter and say, this is what I'm going to do. And that sounds good to me.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: So thinking about that intersection, I mean that's the Four Seasons Hotel right across.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: Yes. You've got that triangle piece and then on the other side is Four Seasons. That's correct.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: Okay, so JBG developed that originally from what I understand.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: So, and so this is again back in 83, 84, 85 time period.
[00:47:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:47] Speaker B: This is the beginning of development of new development in Georgetown.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: So that, that was just a problem.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: So did your property front on Rock.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: Creek park or were you it backed back so those five blocks would overlook Rock Creek Parkway and then it's on 28th and on M Street. Sure. So working with Stan was terrific, very thoughtful.
So while I'm taking credit for conceiving this stuff, trust me, I had input from Stan, I had input from Neil how it would work. So there were other lawyers involved, but I'm a fourth, fifth year associate. I'm running this show. So that was clearly the best.
Fast forward many years later, just to bring it an interesting deal. It's late 90s and a friend of mine at that point in time from high school, I ended up by the name of Daniel Karcham, says, hey Ron, I have a letter of intent on property up in 9th and F Street.
And I'm at 10th and 10th at that time. Nobody came four blocks up. Still got 9th and F Street. It was a pretty bad area at that point in time. But there was a lot together with an historic property. Ron, I want to get it under. This would be his first development.
So I said okay, happy to help you out.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: Who's Dan with at that time?
[00:49:08] Speaker B: Dan was. Dan. He was on his side of cartoon property at that time. He was primarily, I think not exclusively a consultant to others on development deals. Getting an architectural background and development background.
So he wanted to go out on his own. This is his first development.
So again, soup to nuts. There was no lease for the Gallup building at that point. There was no financing. There was a letter of intent for an interesting piece of profit nobody was looking at. And fortunately he put it all together. He found third party investors, we found the financing and or who found Gallup. And we worked night and day to make that thing happen. And it was just again, wonderful experience. Involved in joint venture work, leasing work, finance work on borrower side, not zoning that was handled by somebody else. And to see that come to fruition and then ultimately lease the building, lease the retail a couple times because the restaurateurs were not a business. And then to sell it at the end of the day for me, and it's not necessarily a trophy building or it may not be the largest building, but having the opportunity to put all those skills together and to meet and work with all these people. Adam Walsh worked with me night and day on end. Wonderful opportunity.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: Who was Daniel's partner? Joint venture partner.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: He had Dave Jackson with.
I forget the name of the group in Georgetown, but it was Middle east money primarily and then some folks, ICG or Infrastructure Capital Group also.
So the reason why I'm pointing this out is not only that opportunity, but for the next 12 or 15 years I then represented ICG in their development and that. So making those contacts were again just a great opportunity. Growth opportunities for Adam and others that were on a team that could help grow.
Next Big One 1770 in Rhode island had to be a cartoon property development. What is the ground lease with the Archdiocese. Right.
Difficult in its own right. A non financeable rally because there are certain quirks in the ground leaves. There were some resets and a lender could not get comfortable with the resets which were unknown. So they couldn't finance it. So they reached. So ultimately Daniel found what was then bent all 10 and the MAPT fund to invest on just equity. So Daniel found the one investor in that.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: David Antonelli.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: David Antonelli and David shared the enthusiasm and vision that Daniel had for that property. But Its neighbor was the ymca. And, and we had to deal with the ymca, a charitable organization that was very willing to extract funds from ownership in order to have an easement temporary or otherwise over the property. Again, complicated physical property for Dan. Leasing, excuse me, ground leasing negotiations, joint venture negotiations. We leased to a California oriented law firm that open, went bankrupt. So we had those issues to deal with through the process, stayed with that property from 2000, I guess it was 1999 or 2011, 10. We just sold it in December of 2020 and I'm still dealing with that property. 20 years still dealing with that property because we're suing the District of Columbia for a refund on recordation and transactions.
[00:52:42] Speaker A: Oh no.
[00:52:43] Speaker B: So I mean again it's one of those things where all the skills were brought to bear, great relationships and fundamentally this is the point.
While not again the biggest or the most complicated transaction. I've now been representing Bento Kennedy, now known as Bento Greeno since 2002 and now I'm representing them around the country.
So it's just worked out, huge fund. Yeah. And very active and knock on wood, coming to Cypher for some of the representations. So those were some seminal developments for me but I can't not say or mention one and that is working for the District of Columbia in doing the work relative to City center there's an RFP that goes out and someone reached out to me and said Ron, would you be interested? And I hadn't even thought about it. So we looked at the RFP we applied. I'll never forget this. One of the competitors was Ballard Spar and Ballard Spar was managed by a former partner of mine, Alan Wynn. And when we got the award I saw Alan and Alan said so you lowered your rates for this, didn't you Ron? And I'm thinking yeah, we got the work.
So yes, we did lower our rates but for the next three years had a wonderful experience working with behind group. Excellent, excellent. Bill, just. Yeah, just.
And Marley. They're since retired council, excellent lawyers, excellent developers, really thoughtful, thoughtful folks. Good people in the District primarily I worked with a guy named Mike Kranak who was in house counsel for Fintech at the time. Very thoughtful, very protective of DC's interest, as he should be. And we came up with a scheme. Originally they wanted to go with theoretical lots and at the time theoretical lots has since been a non issue but at the time it was an unusual way to develop.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: Can you explain what theoretical lots are?
[00:54:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a three dimensional lot in the air Right, got it.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: Air rights.
[00:54:58] Speaker B: Air rights basically. But it wasn't air rights. It's actual lots that were created, tax lots that are theoretical. So instead DC did not like that concept. They didn't want to be in the forefront or be the precedent for others for that. So we ended up doing ground leases, but in this case not a typical ground lease. Why would it be typical? We did a three tiered ground lease. So each set of floors. So floors one and these are kind of ground lease, next set of floors, ground lease. So there's a retail ground lease, office groundings as it turned out again with complications for Master association to make sure it all worked, that they could finance it. Of course it's be critical to them. And DC required development to be 100% not in phases. 100%. You start with brick one, you had to complete it all also very unusual in terms of development. And that's so Heinz had to do that. And, and it made for a very pressure packed, complicated negotiation.
At the end of the day I will always look back at City center being involved in that.
Shake me. I mean that was a wonderful opportunity.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: I took my ULI Group to tour it with Bill also. Bill was so kind to share the pro forma of the project with us.
And when he told us that they spent $80 million before they had an equity partner on that, it was all out of pocket. No debt, no equity partner, all Heinz money at that point.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: Shows you how much he wanted to do it.
[00:56:43] Speaker A: It's the most pre development money I've ever heard of before third party financing on any project.
[00:56:48] Speaker B: Well, at 9.4 acres it was the largest undeveloped DC site.
[00:56:53] Speaker A: Large project.
[00:56:54] Speaker B: Yeah, no question. Great project.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: Yeah, interesting. The mid-80s were go go times in real estate and we were all busy. Then 1990 hit. Talk about the transition and business activity from closing new deals to restructuring and workouts.
[00:57:10] Speaker B: Well, I was very fortunate at that time, right before the RTC days. So the tax law comes into being in 86. So there are now concerns of how real estate will be treated. And sure enough come 88 things fall off the rails by that time. However, my practice which had prior to that time probably been 80% development and 20% lending, had switched to 80% lending and 20% development. So I had some folks that were out there and they frankly got in trouble and they had to get the property back and they were in trouble. But for Ron Guard and Colton Boykin, at that point in time we were representing and you'll know some of these players, Perpetual Savings.
[00:57:57] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:57:58] Speaker B: Okay. Started out handling their traditional or conventional loan work. And then I was introduced to the Joint Venture Group.
So what happened was Perpetual formed a joint venture group run by Tom Ferrissy.
[00:58:15] Speaker A: Right, I remember that.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: And they invested in projects with Giuseppe Czechy, for example, and others. But Tech World was. I'll mention Tech World for a reason. In a moment.
[00:58:25] Speaker A: Bob Ketler.
[00:58:28] Speaker B: A number of projects. And I started representing them in doing the joint venture deals. So I remember going back. Remember I said, be a generalist. This is now joint venture. Had I just been a development lawyer? No. Had I just been a lender lawyer? No. But having these various varied background, somehow they were attracted to engagement. So, anyway, I'm working with Tom and others for that group again before it hits the fan.
Because what happened was when it did hit the fan, one of the first things that occurred was all these banks or thrifts who had formed these joint ventures had to take into account the losses that they were able to avoid prior to either the change in the tax law or I forget the reason, but all of a sudden they had to take all these losses, which means now the bank, as opposed to having been very profitable based on the expectation of these developments being successful, they now have on their books the losses that were being incurred that stopped Perpetual in its tracks. Perpetual gets taken over rtc. RTC comes in and ironically, the people that were representing the RTC was Howell Goldstein. And they look at me and they think that I'm the enemy. Not only was Perpetual the enemy, but I'm the enemy. I'm associated with Perpetual. I had to convince them that my work was proper, I was doing the right time, I was protecting the value of the assets. And make a long story short, they ultimately agreed and RTC hired me to finish out my deals and then picked up some other deals for rtc. So I was fortunate, John, during that period of time, yeah, there was a hiatus, maybe three months, where they told me to stop all work. And then they brought me in to start redoing the work. So I worked opposite Afritz and some others, but. But anyway, good, solid deals, workout deals.
They avoided the bankruptcy with, with Conrad. And I worked opposite folks at Aaron Fox on that on behalf of rtc. But I was able to make that transition. Not everybody was. So my work continued and I had some great years until the RTC wound down closer to 92. 91, 92. I guess they started to slow up and then I had to find another way to make money since the ROTC went away. And sure enough, I worked for workout groups. I ended up working out for the group for Maryland National, South Charles. I did not South Charles, interestingly enough, but they had South Charles. I think either was separate from the group that I worked with. But South Joe Homie took over for all the workout. But I worked for a group for about 18 months to two years. And that kept me going. That kept me fortunate. And then there was. Then it was fallow ground around 93 to 95. But I was fortunate. I found another project that you asked about. One more project. And I'll go on to your other question. So I get a phone call from John Abbott.
[01:01:41] Speaker A: I don't know if you know John.
[01:01:42] Speaker B: Sure. So cig. Cig, right. I've known John. Don't ask me how, but I did some minor work for John. That's not true. I did some minor work for John on Delta Associates.
And John calls me and says, ron, I'm invested. We're invested in trying to acquire all of the Xerox property at Lansdowne. We've got council, so we can't hire you, but we're bringing. There are two doctors from California that are the general partners, basically managing members. They need counsel and counsel for the venture. Would you be interested?
What do you think, John?
[01:02:26] Speaker A: Of course.
[01:02:26] Speaker B: You would be. Yeah, absolutely. So I met the doctors and for the next two years worked night and day on trying to acquire 2000 acres, lands down everything but the resort. Well, it wasn't just the acquisition. The way the deal was structured, Xerox Realty cut a deal with the doctor who had some relationship with Xerox and then John's investment group to not only be a contract party, they were going to be responsible, meaning my client, to rezone the property. And while they were rezoning Xerox, who wanted out of real estate, they said, you then go forward and you do any deals you want at the property because ultimately you're going to own it anyway. So I did deals. I did the Loud Checkies Leisure World project. I was representing the landowner selling to Bob Faub and represented and allowed in hospital. So I was doing deals in Landsdale and with the hope and expectation that my client was ultimately going to acquire the property and develop the rest, only for my client to make a tragic mistake and I would say, not listening to its lawyer, frankly, and took a gamble and lost. And at the closing table, Xerox said, you're in default. We're taking your deposit. And my client couldn't perform. Oh, no. And filed bankruptcy. So unfortunately, my Chance to be what I call an equivalent of the entertainment lawyer. I mean, can you imagine handling all of lands down, all the development of work.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: There's a lot of activity.
[01:04:16] Speaker B: Work, contract work, infrastructure work. I was set. Or I thought I was set. But more importantly, these guys lost their money at the table. And it was a very intense time. Very intense.
So that was another real estate transaction. Not necessarily a positive one, but I had a great experience working with Opposite Bob on the Leisure World deals and doing the lab in hospital and then, frankly, just working with Xerox. I was trying to get that when the getting was good.
[01:04:50] Speaker A: So in the early 90s, you. You then were moved. You and some partners of yours moved over to Seifarth from Paul Goldstein.
[01:04:56] Speaker B: Well, no, no. What happened was. So in 95, 93, we terminate Colton Boykin, and Pete and I go to Mon.
[01:05:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:05:04] Speaker B: And that's when I pick up the tech role. I'm sorry, the landfill. And then in 95, we decide, let's move on.
[01:05:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:05:12] Speaker B: So I move on to Powell Goldstein, and I have a wonderful accounts receivable from Lansdowne Oakley, part of the bankruptcy claim. So not very popular in the first 18 months. But things turned around. Found other clients, and we developed. Peter and I developed a nice practice. He primarily stayed with National Home Builders and then picked up Northrop Grumman at the time. And I picked up more development work and more lender work on now 5050 development and lending work. And we built a team of about nine, 10 warriors. And then in 2007, I made the decision that this was probably not the right place for me. I was on the board of the firm. I didn't like some of the decision making, frankly, and said, okay, I got to think of someplace else. Went back out in the marketplace, and I asked Krista and Adam to join me. And so we interviewed the three of them at a number of places, and we ended up at cycling in 2008.
[01:06:15] Speaker A: And then Paul Goldstein then merged in with Brian Cave, another law firm, after.
[01:06:20] Speaker B: They tried to merge into Saul Pittman, which I did not know, to Cyclone, which I did not know.
[01:06:26] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[01:06:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I get here, and they say, oh, Ron, did you know that we were having discussions with Powell Goldstein?
[01:06:32] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: And my response was sort of, oh, my goodness. I was not happy. But they terminated that. And it was a natural, given our Atlanta office here at site for. And the Atlanta office there. But no, unfortunately, they did not come this way. And sure enough, 18 months later, they're out of business.
[01:06:50] Speaker A: So Cypher Earth has grown organically since that time. Do you believe scale is important for a law firm?
[01:06:59] Speaker B: Not scale for scale's sake, but getting the right discipline, I think is yes. It's interesting how every couple of years you hear these law firms seeking to merge with other firms to get large. And that was one of the problems with, frankly, Powell Olstein. They felt that they had to be larger, but they also felt that they had to be the one that was going to be the surviving merged part of the merger partners. And they weren't strong enough. They just weren't strong enough to Today, I think it's all about the disciplines that you do have.
It's having the right people being able to perform. I don't know that you've got to grow numbers, but you have to be able to match the numbers with the goals of your client. So if you're going to take on a new client, you've got no one to do. I think that can be a mistake. Having the right people, those are the people that are able to collaboratively produce a work product that you're proud of and the client wants. That's more important than growth for growth's sake, if that's sort of where you felt.
[01:08:07] Speaker A: Well, I think part of the question also is you can get too big where you have conflict issues, too.
[01:08:13] Speaker B: I imagine we've got conflict issues almost on every deal that we open. So let me background on CIFARS for a moment.
The reason I never even thought of Cyphar before I found Cyphar was it was known as a labor employment firm. And it's still one of the top labor employment firms, I think, in the world.
Well, what happens is they represent some pretty big players. So when you go out and do your real estate deals, sure enough, some affiliate somewhere is represented by somebody in Chicago or Boston. The good news is, with rare, rare, rare exceptions, my partners understand that if there's a conflict, it ought to be waived in the absence of a dispute and the ethics are set up. As long as there's not a dispute, you ought to be able to waive it with appropriate restrictions and walls, if that's what it is.
I've only had maybe one or two deals in the 12 years I've been here that I couldn't go forward because a contract would be waived. One of them within the last 30 days. For some reason, a retailer that my client wants to lease to, they want to lease from them, felt that there were going to be contentious negotiations on the lease and they didn't want Us on the other side.
My partner was shocked that they hadn't waived the conflict. We were surprised, but it is what it is. My client will find somebody else to handle that lease. We'll still continue to lease the shopping center and represent them, but that's a little annoying. But it's interesting here at least.
Management has made sure that every partner understands that if there's a conflict, you do whatever you can do ethically to get away and you don't sit on it. And I think, by and large, it's just been the answer all the way through.
[01:09:57] Speaker A: So when you get a matter tossed at you, you have to immediately think that way. That's one of the first lenses you have to look through. Right.
[01:10:06] Speaker B: Give me the name, give me the location so I can then run it up. The changes if you've got an issue. Yeah, okay.
[01:10:13] Speaker A: So many lawyers shift into the business side as they see their clients succeed in business transactions. My last interview was with Donna Schaefer, as I mentioned earlier, who joined a development firm, as in house counsel, and evolved there into a businesswoman.
Often the complaints I hear from some about some lawyers is they sometimes cross over into making business decisions or offer business advice.
Have you encountered this among your colleagues and what you know, how do you see that? I mean, were you ever cautioned by someone? Well, John Ryan, I, you know. Or have you seen other colleagues that kind of jump over the line there sometimes?
[01:10:57] Speaker B: Well, that's a more powerful question. And I think you even realize, I think, that of lawyers that I know that are, we'll call it successful transactional lawyers, they are providing some element of business advice, and more importantly, the client is engaging you to provide that business advice. No, they're not looking for me to run cash flows, but they want to get my judgment on an issue, and it's oftentimes a business judgment. So a question will come up and I will say, look, here's the legal answer and here's the business answer.
You make the decision as to what you want. And I will caveat, clearly say, look, I'm not in the risk business.
And so here's the answer from that perspective. But I don't think I'd be giving them the proper advice if I didn't say, but there is another way to look at this where you may be willing to take a business risk because I want you to have in your mind the alternatives. As long as you understand the risk and you're making the decision. I'm not, then I think that's a fair way to Approach it now. That doesn't mean that. And I've been asked to go in house on a couple of occasions. I wouldn't go in house for me because going back to my Colt and Boykin days, I've not had a boss since Wilkes Artist.
I've been my own personal at least. Maybe I'm blowing smoke, but I believe that I'm my own person for all these years, making my own decisions, finding my clients, getting to work with no one really over my shoulder. To go into an in house position and be responsive to a boss I think would rub me the wrong way.
That's just me.
[01:13:00] Speaker A: So you distinguish a boss from a client. How, how do you distinguish that?
[01:13:05] Speaker B: Because at the end of the day, no doubt the client gets to make decisions. But I'm here to provide advice and guidance.
But I can cut off that relationship tomorrow and just move on. They can cut off that relationship tomorrow and cut off and say what you want. The practice of law and the growth of your own business is not linear. There are ups and downs and I have lost clients. I had disputes with clients and decided to go our separate way. But I feel that I've done that. If I have done that, I've done that because I've made the decision that we aren't a good marriage anymore. And I don't think I could do that in an in house employment is.
[01:13:45] Speaker A: Usually at, what do they call it?
[01:13:48] Speaker B: At will.
[01:13:48] Speaker A: At will. So you can leave but it's a little harder to leave employment than it is correct.
[01:13:55] Speaker B: Once you move from, from partner law firm business to in house to go back out to another law firm, you're starting about all over again. But you're at a deficit now. I might be able to go to another in house position and maybe that's the right answer. But that's a big life changing decision.
[01:14:17] Speaker A: You're right. And it's interesting because I've talked to attorneys that are in house and they'd never go back to a law firm. They say why would I do that?
All the politics of a law firm and everything. I just, I don't want to deal with that.
[01:14:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I've got someone that I'm working right now, moved from law firm in house, loves being in house, just loves being in house. And I don't know. And maybe it's just a perspective. I don't know if she sees that she works for bosses as opposed to clients. And I know that many in house say my client is my boss, whatever, loves it and wouldn't go back I just don't have that perspective at this point.
[01:14:54] Speaker A: Understood. What makes a good real estate transactional or leasing attorney in your mind, Ron? What sets apart outstanding counsels from the pac?
[01:15:04] Speaker B: I would say a couple things. One is I think you've got to be quick.
You have to act quickly and decisively. Wow. You just don't act quickly and decisive without background to be able to make those decisions.
[01:15:21] Speaker A: Shooting from the hip isn't always wise.
[01:15:24] Speaker B: Not without a substantial amount of judgment and background. So for me at least it's having. And when I'm hiring someone, I'm hiring someone that I think has good judgment. I need someone with good judgment. I need someone with common sense. They could be smart as hell, but if they don't have common sense, there's a synapse.
[01:15:49] Speaker A: How do you determine that in a job interview?
[01:15:51] Speaker B: That's tough. That's tough. And you don't necessarily. Because I've made mistakes in hiring. That's the reality. You go with the questions, you go with the responses. And it's frankly a gut feel on many occasions.
And there are some answers that you could say that was poor judgment, what they just said or in a case. So for example, we just made an offer to somebody and it took three weeks to get back to us.
And frankly, without any communication, that's probably poor judgment.
[01:16:25] Speaker A: It's true.
[01:16:26] Speaker B: And how do I want this person?
I can think twice. But that judgment is manifested in many different ways. Have to sense.
[01:16:35] Speaker A: Oftentimes there's circumstances you don't know about too that why they didn't get back to you.
[01:16:40] Speaker B: No question. And so you have to explore that. But in this particular case, we all agreed it was bad judgment. So in any event. So I want someone who can communicate. In real estate transactional work, you've got to be able to communicate, you've got to listen. And maybe that's even more important than communicating. But it's a combination of communication, listening, exercising of judgment, and being able to make a decision.
Because ultimately the client, my clients want input, insights. They don't want it equivocated. They want unequivocal advice when they can get it. That's what they want.
[01:17:19] Speaker A: Sounds like to me. And I've heard this word, this phrase being used, quick study something. That's a quick study.
[01:17:25] Speaker B: I think that's right. That's what I want in the people that I'm hiring. That's what I expect my clients want.
[01:17:31] Speaker A: Right. So you get a whole series of stuff thrown at you and you can quickly assess it and Say, okay, this is what needs to get done.
[01:17:39] Speaker B: I think that's right. And again, going to that next, that last point you just made, which is more telling, getting it done. I'm a transactional owner. I'm not in civil rights. My client wants to buy something, they want to lease something, they want to borrow money. Right. That's what I'm there for.
[01:17:55] Speaker A: And there's a deadline for it.
[01:17:56] Speaker B: Oh, and absolutely, there's a deadline, which is one of the things that attracts me to commercial real estate transactions. There's a goal, there's an arc, there's a goal.
There's the game that you play in terms of negotiations. And then in theory, there's a closing.
[01:18:12] Speaker A: I can see why land use would frustrate the heck out of you, because.
[01:18:16] Speaker B: It takes litigation frustrating the hell out of them. I mean, because the lawyer on the other side, constantly, after continuances here, I've studied all night. I'm ready to go for the motion. And then they would ask for continuance for six months. I'd have to do it all over again. Very frustrating for me.
[01:18:32] Speaker A: So sounds like you're a very organized person that wants to kind of see things march along at a certain structure or organization.
[01:18:40] Speaker B: I think that's what the clients expect. Yep. Yep.
[01:18:44] Speaker A: So do you have a credo for your practice and your relationship with your clients?
[01:18:49] Speaker B: No, John, I don't. I will tell you as I told. And it depends on whether it's an associate or whether it's a client. Look, I want someone, as I said, with good judgment, sound judgment. I want. I want to deliver a product the client wants to have delivered. And I'll say with integrity. I'm not going to do something that I don't feel comfortable doing. And when I talk to the folks that I work with, that's what I want them to bring to the table. I want them to bring integrity, I want them to bring judgment, and I want them to do it quickly so that we get to the result as soon as we can.
[01:19:29] Speaker A: So negotiation is a key element of both real estate law and business. What tactics have you learned in quality negotiations? How does this set you apart from others in your career?
[01:19:39] Speaker B: I'd have to let others decide how I'm set apart. One of the things that I try to bring. This may sound strange to you, is a sense of humor. I figure if I can make them laugh, I can get them closer to where I want to go. I have no hesitancy. And you can talk to my associates, you can talk to My partners, when I'm on a phone call negotiating, I'll either start out and it's not like, have you heard about. It's not that kind of joke. It's just a circumstance. I will make fun of myself. I'll make fun of the situation. I'll make fun of the weather. I'll make fun of Liv golf. I don't care. I want to get people to like me. So if they like you, it's much more difficult to say no. It's more likely that they'll say yes, even if it's a yes. But. But if Ron's reasonable and he's got a sense of humor, hopefully this is my mentality. Please. Then if they like me, they're more likely to work with. And at the end of the day, as I said, I'm team oriented in terms of what I do behind my door and my people that I work with. I expect us all to put our energy together. I don't tell my folks what to do. I may give them ideas, but we all work together to come up with a product. Same thing in a negotiation. At the end of the day, my client discussion wants to buy. Their client wants to sell. Yeah, we can, but what good does that do? My client's going to buy, your client's going to sell. Shouldn't we do this in a way that makes sense? And I think, certainly I feel very comfortable in making those jokes and feeling comfortable and talking to the lawyers. I think I generally have a very good relationship with my opposing counsel. Maybe not if they're from New York, but it's outside of New York. Generally speaking, I think I've got a good relationship, but that's what I try. And together we. We work on a joint venture to get something done and we all feel good at the end of the day.
[01:21:29] Speaker A: It's interesting you make that comment about New York, because even though you grew up in New York, but upstate New York, I know it's different than New York City.
[01:21:38] Speaker B: And I've got New York lawyers, don't misunderstand. But honestly, it's interesting. I think I can say that the folks that I deal with in my New York office, they have a similar approach to my. They're not the golden rule type lawyer. They're not that we're going to tell you what to do because we're New York. They're there to make a deal happen. And that's why I'm at Cyphar. I want to be associated with people that have that same mentality.
[01:22:03] Speaker A: Well, it's the same on the business side. And Braveman's guest of mine, Ray Richie, has said that he does business here. He does business in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles. He said Washington's a friendly place to do business in general. Real estate.
[01:22:17] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's funny and you've been doing any number of ULI events where business people and lawyers get up and they tell their. I won't say secrets. Yes, but, but they, they, they, they're telling their competitors how to get something done. Yes, I mean that's a very unusual.
[01:22:33] Speaker A: They don't do that in New York.
[01:22:35] Speaker B: It's very unusual. No, it just is. But, but lawyers, you know, generally speaking, lawyers do that as well with all these cles, etc. And that's just very unusual. But it's appreciated. But that's how we approach each.
[01:22:47] Speaker A: That's great. What do you see as the biggest challenges today in real estate law?
[01:22:52] Speaker B: I'm going to say again, you've got two pieces. Real estate and law personnel hiring today very, very difficult to find. Well, our experience to find quality junior associate. Every couple of years there's a reason why people don't go to law school and learn real estate. You know, 2008, that took a bunch of people out of this 2000. Oh no, they didn't go into real estate law because tech. Yeah, tech issues. So every couple there's an excuse. But the net effect is there aren't that many associates out there who are in this industry of real estate transactional law. And if they are out, everybody wants them. So we're all competing for the same pool of associates. And that's difficult. Then you have the thing. I don't say the thing. It's a perspective. And I've seen it for years that when you look at the group behind you, whether it's four years behind you, two years behind you, or frankly 10, 15 years behind you, you'll hear in many cases, well, they don't have the same drive that my generation had or they didn't have this or that. I worked tirelessly or I was a sole breadwinner. So I had to put in the time and the effort and 2000 hours or whatever it may be. And the people behind us, they want work balance. Are you kidding me? So you've got any number of influences that are negative relative to producing a top notch focused associate. And I'm not saying it's bad on the life balance. Hey, I've got a daughter who's coming up for partner at Another firm. I want her to have life balance. I want her to see her children, my grandchildren. But I understand life balance more so now than I did 10 years ago.
Forget it. When I was in my early 40s, we work, baby, we're working hard. And if I'm working hard, you're working hard. I understand life balance now. But the effect, the cumulative effect at the end of the day is there's just something that, with a dearth of associates, the experience of those associates, and perhaps the drive or lack thereof that is concerning to us generally who are looking to hire behind it.
[01:25:28] Speaker A: Well, you know, you're selling your time. And so if, you know, if the model were different, would that make a difference? So for instance, instead of, you know, a fee based on an hourly basis, do a project, you know, we're going to, here's something that gets to get done and you identify it as. And you assess a price to that upfront. And normally you give an estimate on a transaction because it's a finite product, whereas infinite products in law, the uncertainty in certain things. It's really hard to put a price on something.
That model never has happened that I've never seen in the legal profession. And why has that not happened where they basically said like you hire a plumber to do a job and you're going to pay him X if it takes him four hours to do it, it's the same price he gets as if it takes him an hour to do it.
[01:26:26] Speaker B: I'm probably not the right person to respond because I haven't thought about these issues. John. There are others that sit there and get a lot of money sitting there at the chairman of the firm and they think that he's in issues. But it hasn't happened for a reason. Okay, and, and I'm guessing because it doesn't at the end of the day work out to the profitability that people are expecting. People who are making those decisions are focusing on at the end of the day, profitability. That's my expectation. But I don't know if it would work and I don't know how it would work if you did it on a project basis. Have I heard of discussions from time to time, Is there another way to do this? Yes. And in fact, this, this from about five, six years ago, tried to focus on what we call cypharth lean, putting a different approach. And it may work if you're doing rote work, leases that are just basically not churning leases, but leases of the same type over and over again, loan documents over and over. Again, you might be able to make it profitable because you scale down. You're not using attorneys, using paralegals, using computer programs. So there's a way to do that. But if you have to think through the fundamental issues and many times in real estate, real estate's unique.
[01:27:42] Speaker A: Every property is different.
[01:27:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So you can do it on. And I don't want to. We have clients that do this with leases that they churn out and they insist on these leases being used. Yes, some conduit loans, form loan, yes. But not where you've got to deal with the uniqueness of property, let alone people.
That's why I think we do have some areas where we use it and it can be profitable, but it's not enough of the law, certainly real estate law that you can just do over and over again.
[01:28:16] Speaker A: Well, the reason I ask is that it provides for telling your associates that we have this project to get done.
And you know, if you can do it in X hours, then you have more time for yourself and you don't have to provide hours. You're, you're getting, we're going to get paid this X amount. There's no, you know, it's not like an accumulation of hours. If you can get it done in a certain period of time, great. It's not like you have to bill a certain amount of hours to do that. So that, you know, some people are more efficient than other people.
[01:28:50] Speaker B: I just don't know whether at the end of the day is it profitable to the individual getting paid? It's a problem to the firm and those are not necessarily the same.
[01:28:59] Speaker A: Right, understood.
[01:29:00] Speaker B: So that makes a challenge at the end of the day for me, finding self motivated individuals who see a longer term and then going back to the judgment and the other characteristics that make for what I see to be a good real estate lawyer is critical. And so when we hire self motivated, we know that there's a long term, this is a long term project with a long term payoff. You get paid very nicely along the way, I might add. But at the end of the day, if you want to be a partner, if you want to share upside, then it's a long term endeavor and you just have to be prepared for it. Some people are ready for that and some people aren't.
[01:29:46] Speaker A: So you lead your local practice and consequently you might have the luxury of choosing your client base. Turn down some business that you decide isn't worth the aggravation. How do you discern your clients and how do you guide your colleagues in this process?
[01:30:03] Speaker B: First, I've got to like the client.
You learn by experience. I was a, I don't know, seventh year, first year partner. So either seventh year or seventh year partner. And I was allocated a client of the phone.
And it was 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning. I walk in, the phone's ringing, pick up the phone, and he starts yelling at me.
[01:30:25] Speaker A: Oh my God.
[01:30:26] Speaker B: Just yelling at me. And. And I don't remember exactly why he thought something wasn't done or whatever it was. Something done? Yes. Shit. Whatever it was, I hung up the phone. I walked down to Peter Siegel. I said, peter, Don called. I don't want to deal with this guy ever again.
And he said, okay, Ron, we'll get it to somebody else.
May have great work.
And he did. He had a very nice business that went off and did very well. But I'm not going to sit there and take that. That's not what. I don't need that. Or is it wonderful to this day, if I feel that I'm not going to get along with that client or the client is going to be nasty or treat my associates in a nasty way, or take advantage of my associates or the firm, I'll take the position. I don't want to represent this person.
If you down the hall want to represent them, that's up to you. But I don't. And then there's some cases where I said, I don't think we have it.
[01:31:28] Speaker A: The firm shouldn't.
[01:31:29] Speaker B: I really don't. And that's, as I said, largely personalities of folks. Because either they're going to be aggressive or they're not going to pay, or they're going to ask for a discount all the time or they're going to complain.
Those are difficult folks. They may have great practice or they.
[01:31:45] Speaker A: Ask you to do something you don't feel comfortable doing.
[01:31:47] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. And that's just not something I'll indulge it. And I wouldn't want anybody working with me to do that.
[01:31:58] Speaker A: Since you're both respected as a leader in the industry, I assume you enjoy mentoring young attorneys. What advice do you offer to your mentees?
[01:32:07] Speaker B: I'll tell you the very piece of advice that I've given every single one of the folks that has worked for me. And I don't know if it's going to translate in this environment, as it does when I'm sitting down with the associate. But I tell every associate, when you are working for, in this case, Cypharth, whatever the firm may be I don't want you to think about what Cypharth wants you to do. I want you to think out, think what is best for you. I want you to go out and find out what works for you. The firm will benefit. But if you try to alter your mentality or your actions so that you are satisfying what you believe the firm needs, then you're not going to be true to yourself. And you know what? Over time, you'll resent it, you're not going to like it, you won't enjoy what you're doing, and that will negatively impact you and the firm. So if you can find a way to make your work fun, I try to bring a sense of humor. For me, if I make you laugh, I feel good about it. But if you do something that makes you feel good, when you're going out for, quote, client promotion, you don't have to go to the ULI and hand out your car. Go to your synagogue, go to your church, feel comfortable with where you are. And if something happens, it works and you'll generate the work. But in the meantime, you'll learn how to network.
You'll learn how to listen. Because at the end of the day, if you're not listening to what that person is saying and wants, needs, hopes for, then you can't deliver. So it's a growth, an approach to growth that I've tried to offer and I'm talking first year associate to eighth year associate. Do what's best for you and the firm will benefit. Become a better public speaker, firm will benefit. You become a better writer, the firm will benefit. Sure. And that's to me, I think that's the strongest advice as a mentor that.
[01:34:12] Speaker A: I can make the most of yourself.
[01:34:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[01:34:17] Speaker A: That's great, Ron. So turning to the real estate markets, particularly for law firms, how do you see the pandemic influencing space use in the legal profession?
Will the demand for space contract as attorneys may not come into the office as frequently and perhaps at flex offices when they do.
[01:34:35] Speaker B: 2 Responses Personal and what I've observed Yes, I think we're in trouble. If you're an office owner, I think you're in trouble. Maybe you've got the new best trophy building with the most amenities, you're fine. But for years we've seen tenants move. They haven't grown necessarily. They move from one building to another based on whether it's economics, amenities, whatever it may be. So in terms of law firms going back to the other point about finding associates and being difficult, and today there's Not a rush to merge that I've seen from time to time. But today there isn't. No. I think the real estate market, office market, is in trouble. I think that you will see downsizing when that. When the leases roll, if not before. I think that remote work is largely here to stay, no matter how much you try to impose. We have strongly encouraged folks to come in three days a week at SiteCar.
John, we're not making three days a week unless you are office services, perhaps a secretary, you know, secretarial services or providing institutions. But the lawyers themselves. No, no. And it's not a function of COVID anymore. Maybe if you're over 60, 65, you know, you still have Covid. I now have a new grandchild. You know, I want to be careful. So I have to wear a mask wherever I'm in the office, and that's uncomfortable. So, gee, maybe I won't come in as often. But when largely it's not about convenience, it's the commute. It's also about the fact that we are able to be very productive at home remotely. I've got an associate that moved from Atlanta by herself. She's now working out of Denver. She's associated with the Atlanta office. She's working in Denver. She's working 2,000 hours a year. The clients love her work. She's getting her stuff done now. Downside of that. Yes, there's a cultural element that she may miss. There's the mentoring element she may miss. And that is what concerns me. Not space use. We'll figure out. Space use. Yeah. Whether we shrink by a third or we have offices that are. That may be used interchangeably by people when they come in and come out. We'll figure that out. It's the cultural element, it's the mentoring element that I think is where the law firms may very well suffer if they don't get back into the office.
[01:37:11] Speaker A: So with your associates, does it make a difference whether it's physically with you or not, or can you do zoom? And that's the same.
[01:37:18] Speaker B: It's probably 90% of the same. It's not 100%. Say what you want. Being able to walk down the hall or having. In this case, I've got a fourth year associate two doors down. His ability to come down and say, ron, what do you think? Or mark this up. Or even just seeing me and how I work.
It doesn't have to be direct, it could be indirect in terms of the influence one may have on another. That I think is still pretty important. I'VE got a first year associate joining me in September. Joining us in September. Imagine if all of us are home. How does he feel? A part of a team.
[01:37:56] Speaker A: How do you recruit from law school if you don't have anybody in the office?
[01:38:00] Speaker B: So that, that. So I will have to come into the office more often. I'm going to ask my other partners to come into the office more often because it's unfair to that individual.
[01:38:09] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:38:10] Speaker B: Just unfair. Yeah. But in terms of going back to your point, do I think that we're going to come back to five days a week taking more and more, more space? No, I really don't. And then the second part of that, I said there are two parts. I attended the real estate roundtables meeting, June meetings, and I read like you read. Everything points to an office market downtown office market here in D.C. but in other urban environments, seeing much more vacant space and trying to figure out what they do with it. Not everything can be converted to multifamily. Not everything can be retrofitted. That makes sense. So I think, I think office market is.
[01:38:52] Speaker A: Are any of your clients coming up with innovative solutions that you've seen, just out of curiosity?
[01:38:57] Speaker B: The most innovative is finding a property that can be converted to multifamily. And as I said, given floor plates, given location, given the lack of infrastructure, it is not as easy as it sounds. It sounds like, yeah, we ought to be able to do that, no problem. No, it's not so easy. So if you can find the locale, great. Do I think that that ought to be the answer and that will help bring more vibrancy downtown? Because you walk around the town now, John, it's dead. Our retail establishment. There's nobody out there. And in fact, more often than not, you'll go to a restaurant, you'll see a sign that says, hey, we're closing early. We don't have the labor provide dinner after so many hours.
That's the environment that we're in. And that's a combination of remote working. It's a combination. I don't know who these people are who say they don't want to work anymore so they're quitting jobs. I don't know how that works, but I think from a downtown perspective, we are in trouble until we can find truly an answer that works. And I don't know what that is at this point.
[01:39:58] Speaker A: I mean, what are you guys going to do with your lease when it comes up? Are you going to renew or.
[01:40:06] Speaker B: We're many years. We just renewed.
[01:40:07] Speaker A: Oh, you just did. During the pandemic.
[01:40:10] Speaker B: We just. Yes. So right before COVID hit, we had renewed our lease and cut a deal with the landlord to give up space, take new space and renovate. So you're looking at all. We didn't have this floor before COVID And we put the money in, we have our infrastructure, we're not going anywhere. And I haven't heard any desire 10.
[01:40:29] Speaker A: Year lease, 10 yearly shit.
[01:40:31] Speaker B: I haven't heard any rumors that oh, we ought to get back a floor. That may come at some point, but certainly not now and then. In talking to my colleagues around the country, my sense is that if and when the time comes. Yeah. Let's face it.
[01:40:44] Speaker A: Well, real estate costs for a law firm are down the list as far as total number, whereas personnel is obviously critical. So the key is the space has to attract lawyers, has to attract people because why even have the space unless they're coming here, you know.
[01:41:03] Speaker B: So I had a meeting last week and we were asked to come to the office. And we get to the office and three people are in the conference room, five people were on the screen remote. And one of the attorneys showed up and said, wait a minute, we were asked to come in. Why come in if you're going to still be remote? Yeah. Whether you're in your office or whether you're home, you ought to be here. And that's true. But there's that, there's that mentality. Some people accept it, some people don't. John. I bet folks, and I understand some of it may be age.
[01:41:36] Speaker A: Is it generational?
[01:41:37] Speaker B: I was going to say some of it may be age related. In all honesty, you're over 65. Do you really want to expose yourself to this potential? You got the newborn like I do. Do you want to expose yourself? Especially when you know you can get the work done and then you add the commute and you add the cost and now you add inflation of cost. I mean, I'm not going to feel bad for any seasoned partner paying $2 million for gas, but nevertheless, you add all this stuff together and the answer becomes, well, if I don't have to, what are they going to do? Fire me if I don't commit? And I think that's going to take hold. But there's an underlying issue that in address. I still think for D.C. the government, U.S. government still holds a big key talk. They talked about having everyone come back. It hasn't happened. Until that happens, you don't have the mass support, the infrastructure of retail. When that does happen, I'M hopeful then you'll see more drivers to come into town. I mean, not drivers, but striving for right for development, a more vibrant urban area.
[01:42:53] Speaker A: It's an interesting challenge.
[01:42:55] Speaker B: It's the most interesting challenge that real estate has faced in forever. Yeah.
[01:43:00] Speaker A: I mean, we've never. Demand has always been there. Now demand is different.
[01:43:06] Speaker B: Well, and interest rates can go up and down and demand go up and down. And you and parties adjust. I mean, our industry adjusts. We can complain, but we adjust. This is not something that you're going to have to adjust to have a real effect. Yeah, it's a major sea changing, no question.
[01:43:25] Speaker A: So relationships are key to our industry. And you've already talked about several of them. How have you been able to retain your relationships for a long period of time?
[01:43:34] Speaker B: Ryan, I'll go back to that sense of humor. Not everybody likes my sense of humor. You know, it's work. It's any. It's like any relationship, John. You sit down and you have to. Again, listen, Kristen and I have been working together since 1993. We've had moments where we haven't talked to each other for six months. We have a dispute.
[01:43:53] Speaker A: 30 years. It's a long time.
[01:43:54] Speaker B: That's a long time. And I'm sorry. 1997. I apologize.
[01:43:57] Speaker A: So whatever, 27 years.
[01:43:59] Speaker B: Whatever, whatever.
We're in a relationship.
Yeah. I didn't talk to my sister for two years. It happened. Hopefully it won't be with my wife. But, you know, there are moments. But at the end of the day, you've got to communicate. And that's the critical part. Communication across the table, down the hall, that's a critical part. Even if you disagree and you can disagree frankly today, politics.
[01:44:23] Speaker A: And then don't even go there.
[01:44:26] Speaker B: Right. So you got to maneuver your way around those relationships to find what works. And that's what you do.
[01:44:36] Speaker A: So without disclosing any secrets, share some of your favorite, some stories of your favorite and not so favorite experiences. You've already talked about a few and what the major lessons you were from them, if there were any lessons learned and things that you know, I won't do that again.
[01:44:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:44:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:44:53] Speaker B: I'll give you a couple of negatives and I'll give you a couple positives.
Excuse me. First year lawyer and I'm working at a law firm and I won't identify people, but I'm asked to do a memo on something and I turn in my memo and he happened to be a Harvard law rep and he ripped me apart. I mean, every line Dangling part of sympos, whatever. Make a long story longer at the end of the day. By the end of the summer, he ends up saying, Ron, you'll never be. Never make it long. Which gave me a little motivation, frankly, to become a better writer and to care more about my writing and to make and to prove this person wrong, which I think I have.
[01:45:39] Speaker A: You were a first year law student.
[01:45:41] Speaker B: At that point, at the end of that summer. And I was terribly embarrassed and I went home. I was defeated. I really was. I couldn't believe that somebody would.
That's the first person that I could remember that treated me like that. Law school, I did okay undergrad, I was top of the high school. I was one of the top of the class, you know, getting A's and you get A's. Oh, I'm gonna be well, no, I looked at his writing. I have ever since been focused on being a better writer and making people who work with me better writer. So I will say I learned from that experience, notwithstanding that for a moment in time, I want them to take a. Yeah, say goodbye to the. Okay, yeah. So. So that would be one another circumstance. So I'm working opposite a gentleman by the name of Bob Fowler. I've mentioned him a couple times. Yes, Bob represented Giuseppe Czechy, I think on the two deals that I worked with Bob in particular, and then we worked and we worked together as co counsel when RTC Times were taking over Perpetual Relationship and I was in a joint venture. Perpetual was the equity for Giuseppe's deal. On the tech world in particular, and watching Bob outmaneuver a lender at the time, how he handled things, how he prepared, how smart he was, how quick he was. All I can tell you is I said to myself I wanted to be like Bob Fallon. And I also wanted to join him if I ever got the opportunity. And years later I got the opportunity to join him and I almost did. He was at a firm that no longer exists, that was litigation oriented and it had a small transactional process.
I went out to the mothership, passed all the interviews ready to go. And then Bob's number two, who I worked with, also work with Bob, came to me and said, ron, you don't want to join this firm. It's awful.
Bob didn't tell you that X, Y and Z.
I never told Bob why I never joined, which is probably a mistake. But I didn't join.
And so the experience, I really lost an opportunity to work with someone who I truly, truly respected. And to this day I think he's one of the best lawyers I've ever worked opposite and with. And Bob reached out to me 10, 15 years later, Ryan, can you handle a matter there's a conflict, blah blah blah. And that was nice. But I never explained to him. And if I saw him tomorrow, you.
[01:48:20] Speaker A: Know Bob, he might hear this interview and wonder.
[01:48:25] Speaker B: He's still out there, unfortunately.
So that was an experience I'd be happy to share. I've generally had very positive experiences. Joe Freeze was wonderful when I worked with Joe Opposite.
But he was fair and reasonable. I truly enjoyed that. I worked opposite Dave Osnos on the Camfords matter with perpetual. And Dave didn't scream, he didn't shake. He just tried to reason why my interest, my clients interests were being protected. Now you hear that you, oh, you put your hand in your pockets when someone tells you that oh, we're gonna make things better for you. But Dave had a way of explaining things that at the end he served his client very well. So to watch that happen, it was a polansk. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Supreme business would very well respected and for good reason because it wasn't an all or nothing. He knew to get something done you had to have X. I had to X. So at the end of the day, John, from Dave, from Bob, I think and then from the folks I work with, I've always maintained that what I want to have applied in any transaction, what I hope makes me different from some others or at least people that you've interviewed, we may all be the same relative to others and that is to have a strong sense of perception, to understand the other side, where they're going, why they need to do it, what can make it work so that you can answer their needs and still provide for your own clients goals. And then you get there fast and hopefully not acrimoniously. I don't. Bob was not akromotive. He was tough.
Strong willed. Dave Osmond strong willed. He knew where he wanted to go.
But they were reasonable. I mean they had a reason to get there and they showed you that reason and those reasoned arguments made sense. So you tend to agree with these folks and that always impressed me. Hopefully I bring that after all these years.
[01:50:38] Speaker A: Well, in business law there's a goal that's usually positive. In litigation it's a different. So I imagine if you were dealing in a litigation side, you'd find personalities that were a little more difficult to deal with.
[01:50:52] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. And in fact, one of the reasons I was so frustrated with litigation in the very first deposition I had this guy shoulder. My name is professor at Howard Law.
And like most recently, deposition that former president took, after I got his name, he objected his client's name. He objected to every question, where he came from, any background, historic, no reason to object. And 99% of the lawyers, he objected to everything. So to the point where after 45 minutes, not giving me answers, I cut off the deposition as I'm going to court, I'm going to seek sanctions and an order. And I did, and I got sanctions against that lawyer, a professor at Howard. I was shocked that he would operate this way, but he may have felt that he was protecting his client's interest. I don't know. Very frustrating. So, yes, different personality in litigation than in the commercial. And in fact, in all fairness, my competition is everyone that you've interviewed. But I don't know that any of us feel that we are competitors or nasty to each other, knowing which is ill.
[01:52:05] Speaker A: Even if you're across the table, the goal is always the same, to try to get a deal done for your clients.
[01:52:10] Speaker B: Basically, absolutely. That better be the goal.
[01:52:15] Speaker A: Unless there's something that comes up that you want to protect your client against, something that happens.
[01:52:21] Speaker B: If there are issues that come up and even some embarrassing issues or something that that occurs outside your control, that happens and you deal with it. But even when you deal with it, hopefully you deal with it in an upfront way, an honest way, and with integrity, and you move on. There you go.
[01:52:36] Speaker A: So you've been very active in the community. Board memberships, real estate organization, leadership and volunteer activities. You participate in this to keep yourself visible for legal work, or do you find personal satisfaction in contributing?
[01:52:50] Speaker B: Or both. It probably changed over the years. When I first started out, I got involved in DCBA when the ADA legislation. I wrote an article on the ADA for dcbia. No one had focused on ADA and how it might affect construction at that point in time. And then because of that article and its reception, they asked me to be on the board. So put two and two together. Higher profile, higher opportunity to do client promotion, networking. And that was my goal 30 years ago. Today, my involvement is much more about meeting people such as yourself, talking about the environment, what can be done better, mentoring others, more junior to us. So it's morphed from where I had to go and do client promotion to the point where I now, I don't want to say secure, you're never secure, but feel more comfortable in terms of the work that I have. I'm not there to do client promotion if it turns out that you want to hire me because I impress you. Bless you. Bless me. But otherwise, no, I'm there to. Especially for the Ulis of the world, to make a better presentation to the community and to make the community better.
[01:54:05] Speaker A: Was there some passion that you have personally that you're trying to give back to Ron?
[01:54:10] Speaker B: You know, the right answer is no, with one exception. I like to mentor other people, and they don't have to be my associates. I've always told of the other things that I tell junior associates. Find someone in the community. It doesn't have to be real estate community. Whatever your community you're in, who's older than you? Every older person that I know who gets approached by a more junior person wants to help that junior person out.
Find someone who wants to take an interest in you because they're there and it's sincere and I'm sincere. Someone asked me, hey, Ron, can you talk to this person? They're going to law school. They want to understand what law school's about or they want to look for a job. Would you mind taking that? Absolutely. And I'm going to give them my honest perspective. It may not be your perspective. It's my perspective. And I'll say, I hated law school. I'm gonna let you know right now, I hated law school. You want to go to law school, you better want to go to law school, because it's a grind, you know? And don't just go to become a lawyer because it's a step down to someplace else, unless you're prepared to put in that time and effort in law school because it can beat you up. And you've got to really dedicate your time. So to me, having the ability to mentor, assuming that's your view of mentorship, but being able to have input. How about input with more junior folks? Whatever it may be, that's sort of a passion of mine. You ask me a question, I'm going to give you an answer. You want something? I'll see if I can get you to the next step.
[01:55:44] Speaker A: Can I share that?
[01:55:46] Speaker B: Just something I like to do.
[01:55:48] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:55:49] Speaker B: And I think I benefited, obviously, along the way. I benefited from older folks who helped lead the way.
[01:55:56] Speaker A: Over your career, what have been your most surprising events or transactions, actions you participated in? How did they play out something that just really surprised you?
[01:56:08] Speaker B: Well, that's a tough one, John. You're in this environment, there aren't too many surprises. I will tell you. Here's one surprise that I had.
I'm in a transaction, I'm representing A lender.
And I had local counsel in Indianapolis and got along great with Chuck. Excellent lawyer, helped me out tremendously.
Next transaction in that area is such that the borrower needs counsel. So I say, hey, Chuck, would you be interested in representing the borrower? Sure. And it's the same type of deal. He knows the deal, knows the drill.
We go out there and we have actually a physical presence. And my client lender did something I'll call shady that I didn't know was coming that really adversely impacted the borrower. And Chuck comes to me and says, ron, did you know about this? What do we do? And I said, chuck, of course I didn't know about it, but I want you to do what you think you've got to do to serve your client. This is outrageous in terms of what my client tried to pull, in my opinion. I don't remember all the details.
[01:57:28] Speaker A: Did you have a time to talk to your client before they tried to pull it or not?
[01:57:31] Speaker B: No, no, no. I didn't know anything about it. It's business as opposed to law.
[01:57:35] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[01:57:35] Speaker B: But it was putting a tremendous burden on, on the borrower at that point and totally out of left field. And we're all there for a closing. It was at the closing table and I felt terribly embarrassed. It turns out that I never worked with Chuck again. And I don't know if it's because he was upset that he thought I might be part of this, but I wasn't. And I didn't want to work with that group within that client. And I don't think I did ever again. Did I go back to my firm and say, hey, look, this happened because it wasn't my client. Right. I'm more junior person. And it wasn't for me to say, I'm terminating a client. That's not going to happen. But I reported it felt awful. That was embarrassing. And what you do see, I think, John, over the time where there is something that can impact your integrity, there's nothing like it. Because when you're a professional, I don't care if you're a doctor, a lawyer, if you don't have, or people don't perceive that you have integrity, then you're no longer a professional. You're something. Or at least that's my perception or feeling. So that's critical to me. And that impacted my integrity. And I felt absolutely awesome. And it affected me. Here I am years later, still remember. I can even visualize the conference room where we all were and the running around and what was going to happen was ultimately resolved because we actually closed. So. But I don't remember the issue.
[01:59:11] Speaker A: Did you ever have an after the fact conversation with your client to say what the hell were you doing?
[01:59:17] Speaker B: You know, I was not senior enough to do that.
[01:59:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:59:21] Speaker B: I brought. I brought it to the attention of the partner for whom I worked.
[01:59:25] Speaker A: Right.
[01:59:25] Speaker B: And it was up to him at that point to speak to someone.
[01:59:28] Speaker A: Did he?
[01:59:29] Speaker B: You know, I don't know. I don't know.
[01:59:32] Speaker A: That would have made you feel good, I imagine, just to know that was resolved.
[01:59:36] Speaker B: Yes.
And I'm not certain how long after that I stopped doing that loan work because then I moved on to just doing purely commercial real estate as opposed to, at that point doing the 223F lending work.
[01:59:51] Speaker A: It's a HUD deal.
[01:59:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
So combination of things. I don't think I work for that part of that client. I may work for the commercial development side, but not the lending side.
[02:00:03] Speaker A: Again, interesting. So do you advocate for ESG sensitivity on your clients projects?
[02:00:10] Speaker B: Good news is I don't have to. I'm working today with institutions and they've all adopted esg.
It's now in there using more letters. It's in their DNA. Yeah, I don't have to. Unfortunately, I don't have. Today I'm working with, as I said, institutional clients, more on the acquisition, disposition, lending, joint venture work, as opposed to pure development work where it would affect you. Especially if there are more laws that come into play and fines that are associated if you don't follow certain things. But I will tell you that all of the folks that I'm dealing with have made strong announcements about esg. And I suspect that it's not just an announcement. It's sincere. It's sincere. They all have adopted policies.
[02:00:57] Speaker A: So, Ron, what are your life priorities among family, work and giving back.
[02:01:03] Speaker B: Changing, evolving. So I can honestly say, assuming my wife's not listening, there's probably a point in time where work was the priority over family. And family. That's changed over the years, fortunately. More balanced and families, without a doubt, number one. But when you're doing this, as long as I'm doing it, and the folks that you've interviewed, I can't imagine they don't say that sort of the same thing. Work drives you just today, giving back is part and parcel of the work.
It's part of what I do now, in my opinion. And it's not just here I'm involved with the ulis.
[02:01:47] Speaker A: Or are you doing pro bono work?
[02:01:49] Speaker B: I have done pro bono work I'm not doing anything currently. What I find John, is that I don't feel comfortable taking on pro bono work where I'm not an expert in what I'm doing. And often the stuff that the work that comes in is more immigration oriented. Certainly at the firm I've been involved in some real estate matters which then are generally working opposite other landlords where I normally represent landlords. So there's been an uncomfortable feeling in that regard. So no, not lately. In terms of pro bono, do I encourage others to work on pro bono where they can? Yes. Do I think it's important? Yes. But I don't personally where I felt inflicted on the real estate side or unprepared for the non real estate. That's not where you want me. That's not where you want me. So I'd stay away from that.
Okay.
[02:02:41] Speaker A: What advice would you give your 25 year old self? Ron?
[02:02:45] Speaker B: I think that and it's a combination of hindsight and not I think you've got to work hard if you want to succeed. You're to define what success is for you. For me it was partnership was a goal of my. I told you since I was a kid I want to be a lawyer. Right. So partnership was success but not just partnership. I wanted that input. I wanted to be on the board and I was on the board for Valent Golgi. I wanted to run the real estate group, I wanted to be able to provide my ideas. So for me at 25 it would be put your nose to the grindstone, get out there to network, to learn how to network. It's a business as well as a profession, but at all times act as a profession. I am very upset with our industry, how it's become more of a business than as a profession. And I think one of the things that did draw me when I was a kid was the fact that if you're a professional, you're something else.
I don't know if I can explain it but it's a combination of expertise but a presence of not just being a widget but to be at the pinnacle of a profession or of a career. Excuse me. And law, for me it was always about being a professional. I didn't want to just be a jeweler like my dad, I wanted to beat me professional with an expertise, with an ability to provide input at senior levels. Well, to get there at 25 you've got to do the work, you've got to understand, you've got to listen all those things that I've mentioned Before that, I want people that I hire. I want that to be the case. But would I want to be a lawyer? Yeah. I truly enjoyed the practice of law. I've enjoyed, generally speaking, generally speaking, my partners, not all, but generally speaking, but I really enjoy the practice of law and being a lawyer.
[02:04:50] Speaker A: That's great. So if you could post a statement on a billboard on the Capitol Beltway for millions to see, what would it say? Ron?
[02:04:56] Speaker B: Well, it's going to be different, John. I'm going to come at you because it's something my father told me. There's a story behind it and it's got nothing to do with law per se. So I'm going to give you the story first and I'll give you the line. The story is that growing up in the 60s, my sister, older sister, six years older, was dating a non Jewish boy in high school and ultimately wanted to get married to him and ultimately did marry. And I remember the shouting matches, the door slamming between my father and my sister, my mother and my sister. And how could you marry outside the faith? Jewish faith, of course.
And as a 12 year old, 15 year old, just listening to this stuff like, holy mackerel, what's going on here? Okay, fast forward. Years later, my mom dies When I'm 28, my father is 56.
A year and a half later he marries Mary Dobbs, a very religious woman of the Christian faith, goes to church every Sunday, reads the Bible every night, and frankly, a wonderful person and the grandmother of my children. And Maybe it was 10, 15 years after they got married, I go to my father and I say, dad, how do you reconcile? You're marrying Molly, known as Molly. And all the yelling and screaming that went on with Terry. And he says to me, he thinks about it for a few minutes and he says, you know, Ron, I think at the end of the day, people are just people.
And John, to me, maybe it's just, to me, that statement is what I put. People are just people. Black, white, male, female, gay, not straight. People are just people. And people just realize. That's right, that there just, there'd be so much less conflict in the world. So that's what I put up on a billboard, has nothing to do with law.
[02:07:01] Speaker A: That's great, Ron, thank you very much for your time and a very insightful interview. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.
[02:07:08] Speaker B: You're welcome.
[02:07:09] Speaker A: So we just listened to Ron Gart of Seifarth Law Firm, and he's my fourth attorney that we've interviewed on the Icons podcast.
And as I Normally do. We have a postscript today and my guest, my normal guest for that is Colin Mann. Colin, welcome.
[02:07:30] Speaker C: Hey, John, Good to be here again.
[02:07:31] Speaker A: Thank you.
[02:07:33] Speaker C: I definitely enjoyed listening to this one. It was much more conversational than I think a lot of them, a lot of back and forth and more philosophical in nature, I would say. But yeah, I thought is very interesting hearing his career and his kind of viewpoints on work life balance and generalist first expertise. And that's something I definitely wanted to hit on. So you and I have discussed in depth in previous postscripts, but also just kind of outside of it and in our iconic journey about being an expert versus generalist. That definitely came up in this podcast and I think in my career trajectory I've somewhat heavily placed chips into the generalist camp.
So this podcast definitely provided some more confirmation bias support to me to continue that journalist path. But I wanted to, you know, get your thoughts on generalist versus expert, especially in the field of law. Sounds like he's definitely a journalist. He kind of discussed. He knows when he's not the expert in the room and knows when to call and help. So I think he's. He's very good at delegating that expertise. Then I kind of checked out his website and you know, he's had experience with owners, operators, lenders, tenants, developers, investors. So he just has such a wide breadth of knowledge, I think, across all real estate transactions, but also all stakeholders in that. And yeah, I just wanted to open up the floor for you to kind of riff into general expert in real estate and in a career, but also in life.
[02:09:02] Speaker A: Yes. Well, let me start with the law side of it first. I tried to drill down on different specialties in real estate legal practice. And so there's transactional law. And that's the generalist part of what he does because he does just about everything with regard to transactions, all the different legal documents for loans and acquisitions and due diligence and all the things that lead up to transactional work.
But he avoids the land use issues. And I drilled into that as much as I could, but he said no. When that comes up, I try to bring either one of my partners or we refer to other law lawyers in the market. He cited Wilkes Artists and Holland and Knight, which being a big in the land use area. And then I talked a little bit about Steph Tucker was another guest of ours that did primarily tax law and organizational law related to taxes, which is a specialty in and to itself.
So yes, he is a specialist or I mean, he is a Generalist, I should say, but it's in the transactional side of the business. And he also is obviously very interested in mentorship and teaching, that kind of multidisciplinary approach to a lot of things and encourages people to have as a broad of perspective as possible.
So that's my thought about that from, from the legal side and on the general real estate side, you and I of course, have talked about multidisciplinary approach to things and being able to look at things from as many different angles as possible. And it's, it's, I think it's critical in our industry, especially now, to kind of put yourself in the shoes of the people that are using the space that you're developing, operating, leasing, whatever, and think as if you're a consumer as you're delivering product or designing product or financing product. Today in real estate, you have to think why is, why is, why am I doing it? And who is it for and what makes sense and what doesn't make sense as far as investment in time and money.
[02:11:32] Speaker C: So I guess one question, we discussed this before, that you know, if you, you have to have a surgery, you definitely want an expert. So you want to hire a surgeon, not a generalist. When it comes to law, if from your perspective, when you're hiring a lawyer, would you rather hire expert or a journalist? And I know that's a very broad question, but specifically for transaction law and real estate, what do you think are the pros and cons of both?
[02:12:00] Speaker A: Well, in if it's a trans. Depends on the transaction. So for instance, again, context is critical. So if it's a very complicated mixed use development deal that it's going to take a year to two years to three years to just put the deal together, you're going to want somebody that has really, really broad and deep experience in complex legal issues, integrating all the aspects, the contract side, the land use side, the finance side, all the different pieces that attorneys inject themselves in real estate transactions. You really need somebody with the breadth to understand complexity of the various aspects of things. Particularly if there's a ground lease or special type of financing that is unique. Like some of these deals, you really need to have people that, that particular experience, but you don't need a specialist in that. Otherwise you'd need, you'd have to have five or six specialists to close a big complex deal. You need a generalist to kind of manage the team. And then you bring, you bring in the specialists when you need them right moment.
So you might have a team of lawyers On a very complex, large transaction, because there are different disciplines you need the specialist for. You know, I look at that in any profession. In the medical profession, you have a general practitioner you go to and then he delegates a specialist. If you have a specific issue with your body or perspective, you know, something happening. Same nation of resources, it seems to me.
[02:13:48] Speaker C: Switching topics, he kind of talked about Gen Z, first Millennial and Gen X in the workforce and how maybe work life balance is becoming more important for the younger employees. Have you seen this trend in the past? I feel like if you look at, from a historical standpoint, the older generation is always kind of about the younger. What's your take on that, do you think? Sorry, can you pause real quick? Did you miss me right there to switch gears a little bit?
There is a bit of discussion of the Gen Z versus Millennial versus maybe Gen X in the workforce. And the younger employees are entering the workforce from that Gen Z generation. And I think in the media and I guess in some personal experiences, the Gen Z is getting a pretty rough, rough picture painted on their work ethic. And I think they value maybe work life balance a little bit more. Is this a trend that's happened historically in your experience, like in the 80s or 90s or 2000s? Is there always a fresh crop of younger employees coming into the workforce, but the, you know, the work ethic is maybe dismissed a bit by the older generation?
[02:15:00] Speaker A: Well, I mean, this circumstance of the last two, two and a half years, what we've experienced in the worldwide pandemic, has had a jolting effect to everyone, to the soul, just about. But people that I think have the most influence are the very young and the very old.
You know, young people, very young people and Gen Z and even younger. I don't know what the next generation after Z is. I guess they start the Alphabet over again. But Jenna.
[02:15:32] Speaker C: Yeah, it's.
[02:15:33] Speaker A: It's a shock. I mean, they were, they were remote on their class for two years almost, and they start to wonder, no, we can't go in physically.
And they saw their parents, how they reacted to it, and they said to themselves, you know, it looks like there's no reason to go to an office. Why should I? Because people were affected.
It's a psychological thing. And so then you say, you know, older people say, well, Nora, that's the norm. I said, well, why is it the norm? I mean, you told us to stay home.
You're now speaking out of two sides of your mind.
I don't get this.
[02:16:22] Speaker C: Because they're right.
[02:16:23] Speaker A: Young people don't, you know, they don't get the whole picture. You know, their brains haven't developed, et cetera, et cetera. They're. There's a lot of issues there. When you're a teenager and you see two completely dichotomous societal changes, you say to yourself, wait a minute, what's really right?
So I don't think there's a real certainty yet among the young people as to what really means something and what's important.
[02:16:48] Speaker B: And that's hard.
[02:16:50] Speaker A: And I think the political environment we're in right now exacerbates that because there's just these extremes out there and no one really has. There's no iconic beacon to look to to say, you know, that guy or that woman is doing it right, and let's follow that lead and have a societal movement that gets people going the right way. My fear is that we'll have a jolt, another jolt of some sort, and that really will cause more angst out there, which we don't need right now. So, no, I hope that, you know, we can come together somehow in this country. We need leadership. That's going to help with that. And my honest, getting back to your specific question, I think that young people are thinking there's no real reason to have to go in.
So I'd like to be able to do the hybrid thing on the other side is how do they learn, how do they train, how do they network, how do they stay active without being with other people? And can you do that in a non office environment and still keep bonding and training?
Well, I think the jury's out on that. We don't know yet.
[02:18:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I would agree. I think the jury's still out. I would say, personally, my sentiment has totally shifted. I think when we first went fully remote, I felt totally productive and I was productive on just what I was working on. And then we're now essentially fully back in the office and having the like comparison of fully remote back to fully office. There's a ton, like reflecting back that I would have missed. I think just sitting, you're a bunch of people who are working on stuff you're not working on, but you're just overhearing discussion, overhearing strategy where you just miss that in the remote environment. So it's easy to like work on a project with a team specifically for one project over zoom and stuff like that, where everyone has set goals and tasks, etc. But it's that like tangential experience that you completely miss out on.
The kid, the person I work Next to directly is working, just grinding on one deal right now, and I'm not involved at all. But I feel like I've learned a ton just witnessing what's going on with that deal. Whereas if I was remote, I would know I would never be looped into calls, never be looped into strategy. So I think that's totally shifted my sentiment. I think especially for young employees, you need to go in the office for that. But I agree, like, work life balance is also important. It's very. I think we've kind of shredded the to do nature of working from home. So I think as long as it's not overdone, I think it's a very beneficial thing that you can have that flexibility. It probably does increase productivity for a firm in general just because people are working the best way they can. But yeah, I think when we were fully remote, I was like, this is great. I think I'm super productive. But now being fully back, it's like, oh, wow. I probably missed a lot of, A lot of learning experience in the past two years because I wasn't just bumping into, you know, experiences or kind of went on a rant there.
[02:20:11] Speaker A: But environment, you're at a development company and a real estate operating company. It's, you know, there's the reason you have a whole large amount of people is you have disparate skill sets among people, disparate roles, and there's a lot of teamwork because a project, you know, a sophisticated commercial real estate project, takes a team of people to acquire, develop, operate, manage, finance, plan, whatever. You know, all the physical side of things, the financial side of things and the communication, the marketing side of things are all, all are collaborative environments. And then the project manager is responsible for all those things on a single asset. And then of course, with a portfolio, it gets much more complex.
And it's hard to do that on a remote basis. I think effectively seen it being done, but it's really hard to plan a major development deal and operate one and manage it remotely. It's almost impossible to physically develop something.
Overseeing it or negotiating that you have to do. So, you know, a lot of the construction people we've talked to, they never stopped. They were, they were blinked. They were in the office. They were on this job site.
Nothing changed except that the protocols on site where they. They had to protect themselves physically, but other than that, they kept going. So in a lot of way. And property management really didn't stop either, although slowed down dramatically because there weren't anybody there to use it. In the office side and in the retail side, it was. They had a lot of shutdown. So, you know, as I said, getting back to what my original answer to your question, we went through a societal jolt like we never seen the only other one like it, and it was much shorter was 9 11. In my, in my life, in my business experience, I mean, we shut down the country for a week, as I recall, right after 9 11.
This was months of shutdown.
[02:22:25] Speaker C: Years.
[02:22:27] Speaker A: We didn't have total shutdown for years. Yeah, it was months, you know, that went back. But in March of 2020, in the mind of every human being on the planet, just about, or certainly in the United States, no one knew what they were coming into.
No one.
We had no clue. Our president said, oh, we'll be done with this in a couple of weeks. You know. No, that didn't happen.
[02:22:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:22:56] Speaker A: So, you know, it's going to take time, Colin, for this to all play out, I think.
[02:23:04] Speaker C: Yeah, might not even play out. It might just be a total change. So I wanted you. You had a question about kind of billable hours for billing for a project, specifically listening, it kind of sounded like you're getting at something like, do you think the law industry will change to that model or. Unless I was trying to lead him, what you're trying to say. But yeah, that's what. Did you have anything in mind or we seen anything like that play out. And is it more of like, do you think it's going to become more globalized where sort of like I look.
[02:23:39] Speaker A: At the whole AI movement in this country.
[02:23:41] Speaker C: Right.
[02:23:42] Speaker A: And I think, you know, are there certain tasks in the legal profession that are automated, automatable?
Yes, I believe there are. I mean, there's a whole legal side online called Legal Zoom and some of these other practices. I mean, for instance, we did our wills on, you know, downloaded documents.
I didn't even have an attorney review them. We just did them all. I looked at them pretty carefully and read whatever law I could myself, and I never had an attorney. I never paid any attorney to review them and do them.
They were provided to us by, you know, somebody who has Maryland law experience. And I read about their background, etc. And I said, you know, this. This seems to be appropriate. Registered the will and that was it.
[02:24:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:24:38] Speaker A: But in real estate transactions, particularly commercial real estate, every property is a different animal as a different site, different legal aspect. When you look at the land use issues of every piece of real estate, there's different easements, there are different things that go with the Land you can't cookie cutter commercial real estate deals. Residential is much easier to do that and that's why you could securitize residential mortgages, single family mortgages, much easier than you can commercial mortgages because there's so many much more parts in a commercial deal. You know, you could see commoditization occurring in the residential legal space much quicker than you would because every property has a different aspect to it. You know, if it's a hotel, it has operating agreements and all that. If it's an office building, it has leases as you know, different constraints.
Retail shopping center, same thing, has leases, leases industrial buildings. They're income properties, they have different aspects to them. So you can't commoditize. But getting to your point, it seems to me that there should be more of a framing of legal fees on a transaction.
So in essence, when I did financing, we'd get an estimate from an attorney up front. The borrower always looked for that. That was usually on the lender side as we were managing the lenders costs because we, that was part of the terms that we would offer to the borrower. And so we'd put the legal costs and I, we'd get a number and he'd have to say okay, well it's subject to any changes in negotiations that go beyond what our estimate takes.
So that's what you do. You set a. Not you set a bar and then you put a top on it. And you know, if they show up at the closing table and the lawyer comes up with a number that's twice what they've estimated, there's usually negotiation. Yeah, in my experience they don't, they don't normally get what they bill.
[02:26:56] Speaker C: It's interesting that you discussed artificial intelligence because I'm definitely more of a technologist and probably have a faster timeline to what I think the future is going to look like than those. But if you've been paying attention this year, artificial intelligence, especially what open AI has been doing, I think it's going to change everything. I don't know if you've heard of GPT3 at A. Essentially like a language model.
[02:27:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[02:27:25] Speaker C: So I think that'll disrupt everything, including law. But that's more just like language based. The same company developed Dalle, which is like D A L L dash E. I don't know if you've seen that, but it's like a design based artificial intelligence where you can just type in like John Coe riding a moped in Italy and it'll just. The intelligence will draw that into Like a picture. So that I think will disrupt the creative industry where, like web designers and that, that sort of thing. So before I was like, it's going to be easy to like automate with artificial intelligence stuff like accounting and booking journal entries, etc. But now, like, everything's off the table and maybe even flipped. Like, maybe the creative industry will get disrupted first with this type of technology. And I don't know where like the legal industry fits into that, but I just have to assume things are going to change in the next 10 to 15 years based on this intelligence. But I agree, like, I think this type of work transaction of real estate is super niche. Every deal is different. So it's very hard to automate stuff with that. The iterations you have to feed a model like that. But when you said artificial intelligence, it got me thinking.
[02:28:40] Speaker A: I think AI will support, just like robots do. They'll support, they will respond. They are binary.
The entire intelligence behind them is a binary code.
[02:28:54] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[02:28:56] Speaker A: So my belief is the human brain with neurons is not binary.
There's, there's much more complexity there.
And so I doubt that even in a hundred years that AI will equate to human beings. Now they may exceed human beings in reasoning capability and exceed human beings in certain things that can control our lives to some extent.
I think as far as human imagination, I can't imagine that being ever replicated by AI.
[02:29:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree with that.
I wouldn't say 100 years, though. I just think, I don't know. I don't know the answer.
I just know AI is exponential and I never want to bet against exponential.
[02:29:48] Speaker A: I know, I understand it. But again, that's quantitative.
[02:29:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:29:52] Speaker A: How do you measure qualitative? It's not easy to measure.
So that's the question, you know, is there a qualitative aspect of human existence that will never be overcome by binary and, you know, mathematical computation?
That's the question to me, that's the big philosophical question in human. In the human future. So, yeah, I don't want to get down that road because we go out.
But in the legal side, the legal side, every deal has its own idiosyncrasies.
You bring experience from what you've seen elsewhere, there are tendencies. The tendencies can be automated.
Things that are consistent with every transaction, certain consistencies.
That's the case with any automated process. Just like, you know, manufacturing a product or anything that's replicable. Perhaps up to 75 to 80% of a process can be replicated, but that's that. That 20% I mean, every human being has 98% the same DNA.
You know, it's that 2% that makes a difference, you know.
[02:31:15] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good transition into his billboard because he said people are people. I thought that was a good one. Maybe one of my favorites of your guests. But it's very true. It's like once you, once you boil everything down to people are just people, then you can just kind of start with fresh. Fresh eyes kind of reminded me, have you ever read Sapiens or. Yes, Guns, Germs and Steel? I think those two books. I think Sapiens is more of a hot, hot topic book and people disagree on it pretty heavily. But I think, yeah, read Homo deus as well. I, I like him. I think some people hate them. But I think some people maybe take everything too literal in some of his theories. But I think the crux of both of those books is that people are just people. Like we're all essentially the same. So whatever differences we have is based on just more environmental than anything. So, yeah, I just like that, that message because it is. It's one of those razor kind of filters that just cuts to the crux of everything. So good or bad, people are just people.
[02:32:22] Speaker A: It's.
[02:32:22] Speaker C: Then you can. If you're doing a real estate deal and you know people are going to be involved, you can kind of set expectations and start at the ground level there.
[02:32:29] Speaker A: When you think about it, everybody's trying to get to the same place, at least most of the time, you know, they all want to have a deal that's going to close and not too much angst to get there.
In the real estate side, the goal should all be the same. You know, you shouldn't be have somebody that tries to throw up roadblocks and try and kill some. Now, attorneys have always been accused of that, but they're trying to look out for their client.
[02:32:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:32:55] Speaker A: Sometimes their client will point them in a direction that isn't necessarily the right thing to do do. And so that's when you kind of corner people that are that way. They do it for their own power. Power reasons or some egocentric purpose that isn't necessarily to the best interests of what most people want, you know.
[02:33:19] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[02:33:21] Speaker A: And that, unfortunately, is the dark side of human nature.
And we all have it.
[02:33:27] Speaker C: So, yeah, we're all flawed in the same way.
[02:33:31] Speaker B: Exactly.
[02:33:33] Speaker A: So you just have to try and do the right thing. And, you know, I think that's where his, where the real point was, what he had to say.
[02:33:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, I think those are the main topics I wanted to discuss. Is there anything you wanted to reflect on or ask me?
[02:33:52] Speaker A: I've known ron for probably 25, maybe 30 years. He and I served on the ULI board, advisory board together.
I've always liked to be with him personally. As you could tell in the conversation, we enjoy each other's company and he's very bright, insightful. He manages a whole crew of people. I think he's one of the global heads of real estate for them now in the law firm. So he's well respected. He's very matter of fact. He grew up in a very poor, poor environment in upstate New York. He's, I'm sitting very close to where he grew up actually right now. But he, you know, his dad, he lived in a one in an apartment as a kid. Now he's doing well. So he's very appreciative and grateful for what he's been able to accomplish, which, you know, I think it's hard work and dedication and that was a good.
[02:34:40] Speaker B: You know, I think he kind of.
[02:34:41] Speaker A: Laid that out a little bit. So I thought that was a very good conversation. And listeners, thank you for joining us for another episode here. Looking forward to bringing you. Chuck Waters of Heinz will be the next episode with Vicki Davis. I said that was Chuck bringing Ron before Chuck this time. So we're going to have Ron and Chuck Waters for the next episode.
[02:35:03] Speaker B: Hope you enjoy it.
[02:35:05] Speaker A: Thank you for listening.
