Market voices: Legal focus

Jamie Lawless

Executive Director Baker McKenzie

Our focus will remain on our clients and people. There will be no shift in our relentless pursuit to provide business-focused solutions for our clients across all of our practices while at the same time prioritizing the health and safety of our people as we emerge from this pandemic. What our in-house People Deal — our employee value proposition — suggests is that our goal is to be passionately client-centric and one high-performing team, as well as great global citizens. Everything we do is part of that mantra. It is intended to capture what it takes to be successful at Baker McKenzie. It’s about the expectations we have for our people and our firm and what that means for someone’s career journey here. The key to our success is rooted in maintaining the quality and commitment of our people, from lawyers to business professionals.

Maintaining the quality of our legal representation while growing the firm will be our top priority over the next many months and years. This year we plan to hire five to 10 additional employees, acquire more office space, build our social media influence in our respective fields, increase our organic ranking across the various web platforms, and continue to build our critical infrastructure to support our growth. I think we will start hitting the inorganic expansion very hard as well, including advertising and marketing. Drew McCulloch

Attorney & Partner McCulloch Carter, PLLC

Fred Schrils

Managing Shareholder – Tampa GrayRobinson

One of the foremost factors that we’re looking at as a firm is the question of office space requirements and how to balance that with our technological capabilities. I believe that people need to be together and young lawyers working remotely miss out on a lot of valuable training that might be available in the office. However, remote operation is the future and people will no longer need as much office and conference space. Many law firms are looking at downsizing. At GrayRobinson, we have implemented a lot of health-related processes, which has freed up substantial office space and might provide an opportunity to reduce the significant overhead that comes with renting first-class city center offices.

One of the most challenging situations has been to preserve the vital, constitutionally-protected and often liberty-saving due process through Zoom and the like, including a quirk in Florida law that many courts and public bodies are both protected and encumbered by Constitutional and statutory protections of citizens’ rights to appear and observe the demeanor of their opponents, not to mention their evidence, in a legible and dissectible form.

Ron Weaver

Of Counsel Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A.

Of the $6 billion in CARES Act loans that came into Tampa, $200 million went to 2,100 law firms

( ) that sees a hybrid model. While the verdict is still out, some early studies suggest that remote work does in fact lead to higher levels of productivity.

Another story emerging out of the 2020 pandemic year was the suffusion of federal stimulus money, passed by the CARES Act that came in the form of PPP loans. Many in the professional services sector — accounting and law firms particularly — had a busy year helping their clients navigate the new rules surrounding how this money and relief could be accessed.

Professional services businesses also received these loans themselves to help prop them up through the hard times. Of the $6.6 billion in loans that came into the Tampa Bay region, $200 million went to the region’s 2,100 law firms alone. Eight out of the region’s 10 largest law firms sought PPP relief. Loans could range from $500 to over $5 million, and more than 87% of loans were less than $150,000. Financial services, as well, received $310 billion nationally.

All that said, the Tampa Bay region does face its share of problems that it will have to overcome in order to reach its potential as a major center of professional services. Analysts looking at what a post-pandemic Tampa Bay recovery might look like have underscored the fault lines in its economy. There is a paucity of highly skilled human capital in the region and although it has a highly educated population, it lags in comparison to other similar-sized metros in terms of educational attainment (30.18% of residents hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, ranking Tampa Bay 19th of the 20 metros studied), according to the Tampa Bay Partnership’s State of the Region 2021 report. While the job growth rate is a respectable 4%, much of this growth is lowerpaid jobs.

Finally, New York financial firms lean toward relocating to Florida’s eastern coast, where there is, historically, a stronger cultural affinity. That may be changing because as more firms move to eastern Florida, prices will go up. Already there are signs that people and companies realize that there is the same quality of life in Tampa Bay at a fraction of the cost. “Tampa Bay is well-placed to perform well next year. There is a great airport that brings people here from all over the world on a daily basis. We have a good workforce with great educational institutions at both the high school and university level. We have probably the best hospitals and healthcare in the state, while there are also certain tax benefits that come with living here,” said Luciano Prida, president of Prida Guida & Perez, P.A.

Financial hub Why is the Tampa Bay region an emergent financial? The story painted by statistics shows a business

Silvana Capaldi

Founding Chair – Alliance of Merger & Acquisition Advisors of Tampa Bay

There has never been a greater need to be creative with your marketing than now. Don’t stop marketing. Promote your company. People still need to know you exist, and to do that requires allocating money into advertising and marketing. I advise my clients to reallocate funds to short-term tactical marketing strategies from which there is a quick ROI. I also advise them to expand their data or analytical abilities to better identify and serve customers and clients. In today’s market, you need to be innovative while constantly monitoring and adapting to a changing landscape. Don’t live in today. Look to the future.

community, and an entire city, that is trending upward. The region is one of the fastest-growing in the country and the city of Tampa is the ninth-fastest growing city. In terms of job growth, it is preeminent: according to the Paychex Metropolitan Jobs Index, Tampa ranked No. 1 for small business job growth, and a study by IHS Markit found it to be the leading metropolitan area in the country in terms of job growth. In 2018, in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area, there were 119,000 workers in the financial activities sector, up 7.7% over the year before. This number is expected to have risen since then as it indicates that financial services is the fastest-growing sector in the area. Fueling these high rankings is the state’s excellent business environment (as well as a willingness to stay open through the pandemic).

Also benefiting the region is its favorable year-round climate, diverse population, and excellent restaurant and entertainment options. The price of homes is not prohibitive, and people can enjoy outdoor activities with greater ease here than nearly anywhere else in the county. The area only continues to improve: the newly opened St. Pete Pier is garnering national attention, having recently been nominated by USA Today as one of 2020’s best new attractions.

By other metrics, too, Tampa Bay is an ideal place to do business. According to SmartAsset, a well-known fintech intelligence firm, the region is No. 6 out of 50 on a list of “Best Places for Female Entrepreneurs.” The region scored especially high on women-to-men pay ratio as well as for early startup survival rate. Twenty percent of businesses are women-owned, a significant improvement on previous years.

All of these trends are helping the region attract new business: tech firms, financial services companies, company headquarters, incubators, investors, venture capitalists, and law firms are arriving in droves to take advantage of Tampa Bay’s salubrious environment. Money is also being raised: in October 2020, Tampa Bay companies were able to raise over $64 million. In Florida at large, one report has found that the Institute of Florida Technology has created more than $740 million in economic impact on the backs of technology and startup companies. By one tally, in 2019, 10 technology companies came to Tampa Bay from other parts of the country, a trend that has only accelerated with the pandemic.

Accounting/advising/insurance A vibrant accounting industry is reliant on a vibrant economy. As seen, the Tampa Bay region is a growing financial and tech hub, activity which supports the city’s many CPAs. The Big Four – Deloitte, EY, PwC and KPMG – all have offices in Tampa, and there are many other smaller players in the field. The services offered by these firms include taxes, auditing, financial statements, anti-fraud work, money laundering, corporate accounting, management accounting and forensic accounting. According to one report, the market for accountants is so robust in the region, many are being recruited before they’ve even finished their college studies.

The pandemic helped ensure that the year would be a busy one for accountants in Tampa Bay: a raft of new rules from the government, PPP loans, tax planning, tax credits, solidifying shaky business financials, and navigating safety mandates were all among the help that Tampa Bay’s business community required of its