Keith Halleland sent a ripple through the Twin Cities legal community last February when he and four lawyers, three consultants, and five staff members abruptly left Halleland Lewis Nilan & Johnson, the Minneapolis law firm he cofounded in 1996, to establish a new business. A preeminent attorney in the health care field, Halleland says he’s fed up with standard law firm practices surrounding billing and compensation.
He’s creating a new kind of law firm, he says, one that offers clients flat fees and other alternative payment arrangements instead of billing for the time attorneys spend on a case. In addition, he promises the attorneys who join his new firm an environment where compensation is based on more than what they bill out. Many firms pay lip service to that idea, he says; his firm will act on it.
“I believe in a law firm that is connected with the community, that values building teams in connection with the client, and that is willing to reward things beyond the billable hour,” Halleland says. “I want to look at an attorney’s whole value to the firm. It’s a hard thing to do, but it can be done. That’s my life’s goal.”
Halleland Habicht, the firm he launched in late February, will focus on business law and consulting, with a strong health care practice. Partner Bill Habicht is a former managing partner and 20-year veteran of the Messerli & Kramer law firm in Minneapolis. While most of Halleland Habicht’s work will be done locally, the firm is opening an office in Madison, Wisconsin, and exploring San Francisco and other locations as well.
Lawyers leave law firms all the time, but rarely does the lead name drop from the masthead, and Halleland’s exit, while portrayed on all sides as “amicable,” brings with it some irony.
The firm he left in February was also founded as an alternative to standard law-firm ways of doing business. Halleland and colleagues formed Halleland Lewis Nilan Sipkins & Johnson 14 years ago because they were disillusioned. At the time, they described a corrosive atmosphere of greed at their former law firm, Popham Haik Schnobrich & Kaufman, which ceased to exist within months of their departure. Popham Haik lost 200 attorneys in a 20-month period before it was absorbed by the Chicago firm of Hinshaw and Culbertson in May 1997.
