Interview: David Simmons

David Simmons

Founding Partner DSK Law

What were some highlights and takeaways for DSK Law in 2020?

For us, it has been the challenge of maintaining our efficiency through the pandemic, though particularly at the very beginning, when all of our employees went off-site. There is a certain amount of loss of productivity that can occur. We have 130 employees. The challenge was the change and transition of making sure they were doing their jobs properly and working together, then juggling that with a core group of people in our offices, and then dealing with the issue of people actually getting sick. It’s a new world.

Have the businesses you work with changed the way they operate?

I would say that there has been an increased interaction with local governments in terms of how they are dealing with all this, especially in regard to eminent domain and inverse condemnation. I think local governments are doing things now that they probably weren’t doing recently. There are a lot of challenges and difficult decisions that local governments have to make at this time. With respect to businesses, it is too soon to see how this has affected the personal injury side of our firm, but likely it will, as there are fewer people on the road. We have a large defense practice and represent some very large insurance companies. We’ve seen the changes as far as the plaintiffs are concerned.

What makes Central Florida an ideal location for your firm?

Florida is the best place to live, not only in the United States, but the world. We don’t have an income tax; we don’t have the challenge of too much government regulation. We have a fine environment that we need to keep clean. One of the worst things a government can do is borrow, because borrowing puts the tax burden on the people, the people’s children even. Florida has a balanced budget and it is an excellent scenario for people. be in a growing market. In essence, that is why we are here, why we invested early on several years ago and continue to invest in this market,” said Michael Fichtel, CEO of Kelley Kronenberg.

Still, the pandemic did not leave the sector untouched: in Tampa Bay, employees at services firms were laid off due to the termination of client contracts, salaries were slashed, and, for a time at least, there was a crippling sense of uncertainty as to where the economy would go from one month to the next.

Now that the vaccine is beginning to bring the pandemic under control, the question becomes whether or not Tampa Bay will be able to leverage its strengths in a way that can transform its professional services offerings. In Tampa Bay (and all of Florida), one of the most important trends for business has been the arrival of companies from out of state, especially financial firms from the high-density and over-taxed Northern and Midwestern cosmopolitan centers like New York and Chicago. BelHealth Investment Partners, a $500 million healthcare private equity firm, exemplified this trend when it moved the entirety of its office to Tampa Bay from New York.

Already enticed by excellent weather and a businessfriendly environment — not to mention a reluctance by the state political leadership to close the economy at all — the shift to remote, at-home work was the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of relocation. People largely working from home expect more out of their domicile than a shoebox apartment. They want outdoor space and an office that is fairly sequestered from the rest of the house. In this regard, Tampa Bay has proven to be an attractive alternative.

Another positive for the industry during the pandemic, was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ declaration that the professional services — especially when needed to assist with legally mandated activities — were essential activities. Despite this allowance, the year saw innumerable firms move their operations away from physical office environments to online, remote work. Companies that invested in their digital strategies prior to COVID benefited substantially by being able to make the move from physical to remote work relatively seamlessly. The most serious drawbacks of this move have been the difficulty of doing team-led collaborative office work and, for law firms specifically, questions surrounding the efficacy of the remote work model in a trial setting.

On the whole though, the professional services lend themselves well to remote work, and, moving forward, many are wondering whether or not firms will keep their workers remote after the pandemic or have them return to the office. A consensus may be emerging ( )