Change of fortunes
By Jeremy Harrell
Friday, September 15, 2006

The law firm’s client roster reads like the real estate equivalent of Murderers’ Row.

Taubman Centers’ bid for a mall in Syosset. Cherokee Arker’s push to redevelop the Kings Park Psychiatric Center. Apollo Real Estate Advisors’ potential $500 million overhaul of downtown Riverhead. Even Roger Tilles’ Melville “Pumpkin Farm,” the likely future site of Canon USA’s headquarters.

What makes the list more impressive is the law firm that represents these high-profile clients numbers seven attorneys. And perhaps most impressive of all is the Weber Law Group was nearly left for dead two years ago, when five associates of founder Morton Weber – along with the office manager – walked out late one summer afternoon to start a new firm up the street in Melville.

The firm has clearly rebounded, and further cemented its return to glory with the addition of Mitchell Pally – the longtime No. 2 at the Long Island Association and one of the region’s premier behind-the-scenes players, who joined the firm Wednesday as the partner in charge of government relations.

“It raises us to another level as a law firm,” Weber said of Pally’s arrival.

“The timing is perfect for us. It’s just exquisite.”

Quick comeback

Things were a bit bleaker on that Friday evening in July 2004, when Weber and his son – Bram Weber, who joined the firm in 2002 – shared a pizza in their deserted office and tried to figure out how they would recover. They had a few options, including retirement for Weber and a return to the New York office of megafirm Greenberg Traurig for Bram, but they really only had one choice – and it wasn’t to fold up the tents.

“I never even allowed that to be a possibility,” Weber said.

With little delay, Weber asked an old friend, Jack Libert, now the commissioner of the Town of Oyster Bay’s Planning and Development Department, to leave behind his solo real estate practice and pitch in. Another old friend, Arthur Kaufman, whose labor practice was next door, volunteered his firm’s office manager for a few weeks.

The firm was up and running the following Monday, and by working seven-day weeks for the next several months, the lawyers “never missed a beat,” Weber said.

“All of the major clients stayed,” he said. “They said, ‘Morty, you’ll have the attorneys to get it done.’ ”

“And some of the clients we lost – they came back,” Bram Weber added.

Later that summer, at Bram’s prodding, the firm underwent a re-branding, transforming itself from Morton Weber & Associates to the Weber Law Group. Now, father and son – the firm’s only partners until Pally’s arrival – have built what they consider a dream team of four environmental, zoning and litigation specialists.

“We’ve never been better,” Weber said.

The partners of Harras, Bloom & Archer – the firm founded by Weber’s former associates – declined to comment. Weber attributed their departure to “a change in business philosophies.”

Building something

Weber built up one of the Island’s most prominent real estate practices more or less from scratch. Fresh out the military, he started in the law firm of Richard Guardino, whose son of the same name went on to be Hempstead town supervisor. Weber opened his own shop in Farmingdale as a general practice lawyer specializing in matrimonial work.

His focus began to shift in 1975, when Weber completed his first industrial revenue bond transaction. In the following decade he followed that up with 46 more.

Weber was involved in some of the biggest deals of the day, particularly along the Route 110 corridor in Melville, whose emergence he helped shepherd.

“You sort of can’t remember a time when he wasn’t advocating on behalf of somebody,” said Gary Lewi, an executive vice president for public relations firm Rubenstein Associates and a veteran of Long Island’s development wars.

Weber’s practice grew through the 1980s and ’90s, at one point maxing out with a nine-attorney firm. He chalks up his success to his longevity.

“Land use, to a large extent, is about the relationships you build up over many years,” Weber said.

To be sure, Weber has built up more than relationships over the years. High-ranking government officials and civic leaders can often be heard cursing his name – Taubman’s project in Syosset alone has been a litigation-filled, 10-year affair – but that’s par for the course in the world of Long Island’s bitterly contested real estate industry, which tends these days to involve as many committee meetings and public hearings as back-room deals.

“Any effective advocate is going to be both respected and loathed,” Lewi said. “You can’t do your job as an advocate if you don’t inspire that level of passion.”

Still, Lewi acknowledged that Weber has softened over the years, adopting an approach that is “less confrontational, more diplomatic.”

Everybody’s Pally

Nothing is more emblematic of this than the hiring of Pally, whose 21 years at the LIA and 10 years working for the state Legislature before that taught him how to reach consensus with just about anybody. Any time an elected official assembles a blue-ribbon commission to review an important economic-development topic – from transportation to housing – Pally is there. Even when the LIA wasn’t directly involved in transactions, Pally was often recruited to get people talking.

“He does engender that type of trustworthiness,” Bram Weber said. “We’re bringing in someone with an impeccable reputation. This is an opportunity to add what we thought was a superstar. We’ve done government relations on a small scale, but this gives us a chance to expand.”

Pally holds a J.D. from Albany Law School, but his portfolio at the Weber Law Group will be less about practicing day-to-day law and more about working his magic with governmental and civic groups.

“Real estate has two aspects,” Pally said. “One is legal. The other is relationships. If you have one without the other, you don’t accomplish anything on Long Island. A client wants to know that it can get all aspects of representation.”

Both Webers have been courting Pally for months, after he started putting out feelers with several law firms. Weber and Pally sealed the deal over the summer at a golf outing fundraiser for Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy.

Now Pally joins a family that has made room for him in the partnership. And Weber, who’s on the far side of 60, said he can start thinking about a future for his firm that doesn’t necessarily involve him.

“We’re going through that torch-passing time,” Weber said.

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