| Akerman Senterfitt LLP | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Downtown, Miami, Florida |
| No. of offices | 17 |
| No. of attorneys | Approximately 500 |
| Major practice areas | General practice |
| Key people | Andrew M. Smulian, Chairman & CEO,[1] Robert Zinn, President[2] |
| Date founded | 1920 |
| Founder | Alexander Akerman and John Moses Cheney |
| Company type | Limited liability partnership |
| Website | |
| Akerman.com | |
Akerman Senterfitt is a large law firm, BigLaw, based in Miami, Florida. It was founded in 1920 and has grown to become one of the largest in the United States. In 2008, the National Law Journal ranked the firm as 92nd largest in the U.S. by number of attorneys, and the second-largest Florida-based firm (behind Greenberg Traurig). In December 2009, Law360 ranked Akerman Senterfitt as 88th largest in the U.S. by the number of attorneys practicing within the U.S. The firm is headquartered at 1 SE 3rd Avenue in Downtown Miami.[3]
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Akerman Senterfitt, P.A. is a full-service law firm headquartered in Orlando, Florida. The current CEO is Andrew Smulian. It was founded in 1920 by Orlando attorneys Alexander Akerman and John Moses Cheney as Cheney & Akerman, with offices in the Dollins Building on 10 West Pine, Orlando, Florida.[4] By 1925, following the death of John Cheney a few years earlier, Alexander partnered with his first cousin Hugh Akerman as Akerman & Akerman.[5] By 1931, Alexander had retired and Hugh's brothers Emory Akerman and Joe Akerman joined the family-owned firm.[6] In 1933, Allison E. Palmer and William H. "Billy" Dial were hired. They were among the first attorneys to join the firm who were not related to the Akerman family. In 1936, Hugh Akerman and Billy Dial formed a partnership with Hugh's brother William Y. "Willie" Akerman. As Akerman, Dial & Akerman, these three men were largely responsible for the success of the firm up through the 1950s. Other figures in the firm's early history were George Garrett (1930s), Ed Shinkelzer (sp?) (1930s), Joe S. Kirton (1940s), Ben B. Moss (1940s), George T. Eidson, Jr. (1951), Ferg Monroe Alleman (1956), W. Stewart Gilman (1956), William G. Mateer (1957) and Donald T. Senterfitt (1958).[7] Name partners Eidson and Senterfitt played major roles in the growth and success of the firm from the 1950s through the 1990s. Some early clients of the firm included Orange County, Florida, the Gentile Brothers Company, A. Duda & Sons, and the Dr. P. Phillips Company. In 1934, a group of local businessmen, including Akerman attorneys Billy Dial and Allison Palmer, organized the First National Bank of Orlando (which later became SunBanks, now known as SunTrust Banks). In the 1950s, Dial was involved in bringing defense contractor Martin Marietta to the area. In the same decade, Billy Dial (as a member of the state Road Board) and Martin Andersen, owner of the Sentinel Star (now Orlando Sentinel), were instrumental in the routing of Interstate 4 through the Orlando area. Dial is also credited with bringing the Florida Turnpike through Orlando, but this was actually the result of a combination of fortuitous circumstances, not least of which was local opposition to the initial plans to locate the interstate through the eastern coastal counties of Florida.[8] The decisions to bring I-4 and the Florida Turnpike through the area literally made Orlando into the crossroads of Florida, one of the factors that later led to Walt Disney's choice of the area as the location for his amusement park, Walt Disney World.
Akerman Senterfitt acquired its first office outside of Orlando (in Winter Park, Florida) in May 1958 with the merger of Turnbull & Senterfitt. The Winter Park office was in business up until about 1963, when Nat M. Turnbull departed the firm. In 1982, a Miami office was opened, marking the beginning of the firm’s current sustained pattern of expansion.[9] Two short-lived offices were opened in Tallahassee, the first in the late 1970s and again in 1986;[10] however, a permanent presence in Tallahassee was not established until January 1991 with the merger of Moffitt, Hart & Herron. This merger also gained Akerman Senterfitt its Tampa office.[11] The 1990s saw Akerman Senterfitt’s greatest expansion, mostly through mergers and acquisitions of other law firms. New offices were opened in Tavares, Florida (August 1996),[12] West Palm Beach, Florida (December 1995),[13] Fort Lauderdale, Florida (June 1997)[14] and Jacksonville, Florida (late 1999).[15] At one time, the firm also had an office in Boca Raton, Florida (December 1998 to August 2003).[16] As a result, by the late 1990s, Akerman Senterfitt was recognized as one of the largest law firms in the state. In the early 2000s, the firm opened its first offices outside of the state in Washington D.C. (April 2004)[17] and New York City (November 2005),[9] followed soon thereafter by Tysons Corner, Virginia, Los Angeles, California and Madison, Wisconsin.[18]
(see below for documentation)[19]
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Akerman Senterfitt has recently had difficulties retaining attorneys. Several high-ranking partners had left the firm, including Robert Fernandez, who previously served as deputy general counsel to Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The firm has brought in executive search consultants to recruit new talent.[24]
Akerman Senterfitt's management had planned a merger with the 300+ lawyer Philadelphia-based law firm of WolfBlock,[25] which would have created a single 800-lawyer firm.[26] But on 7 August 2008, the two firms released a joint statement explaining that the merger had been put on hold due to “a client conflict that cannot be discussed publicly”.[27] WolfBlock later dissolved in March 2009 due to financial problems.
Akerman Senterfitt has the largest corporate, intellectual property, and litigation practices in the State of Florida. The firm also has large practices in construction law, real estate, bankruptcy, labor and employment law, and lobbying.[28][29]