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Market voices: Adapting

Lee Bell

President Saltmarsh, Cleaveland and Gund

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Many of our service offerings are consultative in nature, and they were developed in response to fit what legislative compliance has presented to our clients. Our business, no matter how we describe it, is compliance-driven. The way we distinguish ourselves is through the level of consultation in which we wrap that compliance. Our clients need us to deal with the regulators. Those that require compliance select us because we are providing deeper insights and service, more than they can get from another provider. That ability to provide more has increased in the last several months. Our people are more comfortable in providing more because they have more time to do so. Less travel means more time to be able to communicate directly with clients.

Risk assurance continues to be a huge piece of our growth, especially in the Tampa Bay area. Our risk assurance professionals are working at a national level with companies all over the country. It is not ideal to be doing it from a remote location but, between our professional staff and the staff of the clients we work with, people have adapted and continue to do the work. Our business has grown and we are highly cognizant that we are fortunate in that respect. In fact, the topic of risk is more on the minds of our clients and marketplace than ever as a result of increased dependence on technology and systems. Dan Dowell

Office Managing Partner Marcum LLP

Richard Huckaby

Office Managing Member Warren Averett

We got really involved in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), becoming serious advisers. We spent a lot of time forming a firm-wide team of experts, produced a lot of content and we were able to generate new opportunities from companies all over the country, not just in Tampa. Our transaction advisory group probably slowed down a little bit compared to the last three years because a lot of deals were put on hold, although some still had solid growth. Our wealth management practice, focused on investing assets for our clients, had its best year in history.

In our advisory space, we were able to find new services in certain areas. One was around the Paycheck Protection Program, helping to consult around the introduction and now with the forgiveness of the program. Cybersecurity has been an increased risk, with companies trying to go from their offices to a remote format and having a lot more shops to keep safe. Another area that’s been interesting for us is data analytics, specifically around COVID. Our data science and data analytics team was engaged by our executive team to track the trends and build out data tools as we were contemplating which offices we could open and when. That was so successful that we were able to turn it into a service offering as well, where we were helping companies manage their own reopening process. Adam Thomas

Managing Partner - Tampa Dixon Hughes Goodman

Harley Riedel

Managing Partner – Stichter, Riedel, Blain & Postler. P.A.

I think the legal profession is always going to have the same general model. There will always be consolidation as firms merge and lawyers form partnerships. And, at the same time, there will always be lawyers leaving firms individually or in groups and going out on their own. I don’t see anything right now that will change this pattern long term. I do expect a more cautious approach on both fronts as firms and individual lawyers assess the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our firm is a bit different because our insolvency lawyers get busier when the economy’s bad. That’s the reverse of a lot of firms and practice areas. And I do expect that we’re going to get busier. For law students, insolvency classes should be a popular choice as a potential career choice or simply because bankruptcy can affect every area of practice ranging from domestic relations to personal injury to civil litigation to transactional law.

( ) to pick up. The Tampa Bay region started seeing some major deals occur across all sectors, including banking, software, architecture, insurance and infrastructure. For the year, the largest deal by far was in healthcare and was finalized at the beginning of 2020: it was the $17.3 billion acquisition of WellCare by Centene. Prior to the acquisition, WellCare was the third-largest public company in the region and the sixth-largest in the state. It will be keeping its headquarters in Tampa Bay moving forward. The second-largest deal was Roper Technologies’ purchase of Vertafore for $5.35 billion. Roper itself was involved in four out of the 10 largest M&A deals in the state in 2019.

Insurance has had a tricky year in the region. Faced with fallout from the pandemic, recent natural disasters, and property damages brought on by civil unrest over the course of the year stemming from police brutality, insurance companies are facing a difficult landscape, including potential credit rating downgrades. In early 2021, rating agency Demotech, which rates insurance companies in Florida, said it could downgrade up to 18 of 46 domestic insurers citing assignment of benefit claims and first-party litigation. Good news for the industry emerged later when Demotech affirmed the ratings of 37 insurers, leaving less than 10 subject to a potential downgrade. The legal industry has also had a busy year of adaptation, from creating a safer office environment to establishing decentralized work-at-home. Trial work stopped for three months at the height of the spring lockdown, but the sector, which is notoriously conservative, proved surprisingly nimble in implementing technology to facilitate remote depositions and other courtroom elements.

In fact, the digital strategies of law firms have been pushed into fast forward. Digital marketing has fast become the norm for firms that used to advertise their services in-person at events. “We are looking at ways to best use our marketing budget to further consolidate our Tampa footprint. Our marketing budget for 2021 matches that for 2020. Considering in-person networking events are off the table until further notice, we are looking at other inventive, effective ways to make our presence known and grow our client portfolio,” said Harvey Kauget, managing partner for the Tampa office of Burr & Forman, LLP. “Given the prevalent uncertainty that the pandemic has caused, our only certainty for the foreseeable future is to remain nimble and flexible to adapt and accommodate the changes in the market brought about by the dynamic and volatile nature of the virus and its effects across the economic, health and social spectrums both nationally and globally.”

Generally speaking, the shift to remote work did not adversely affect the amount of attention law firms can pay to their clients. In certain respects, the pandemic

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