Fisher, Tousey, Leas & Ball marked a milestone Monday when the law firm’s founding partners celebrated their 40th anniversary of practice together.
Established Oct. 1, 1978, the firm began with Michael Fisher and Clay Tousey Jr. specializing in estate, probate and tax law with an office in the Independent Life Building, now Wells Fargo Center.
The firm has grown to 24 attorneys and 40 staff members in offices in the TIAA Building in Brooklyn, Ponte Vedra and Amelia Island.
While much has changed, the firm’s founding principle has remained the same for four decades.
“Our motto is ‘building businesses and protecting wealth,’” said Fisher.
The partners credit the NFL, in part, for their early success in the profession, even before they became law partners.
Tousey said that in the mid-1970s, Hugh Culverhouse was the leading tax lawyer in Jacksonville. When Culverhouse bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he left the city and his practice.
“Jacksonville needed a tax specialty law firm. There was a gap,” Tousey said.
In the beginning, expanding the firm wasn’t on the list of priorities, but that changed.
“When we had more work than we could handle, we added people,” Tousey said.
“We started off saying we would never be bigger than the number of attorneys that could sit around our conference table, but we broke our rule.”
Fisher and Tousey have witnessed how the regulations that govern their practice have changed. That’s “one of the fascinating parts of the business,” said Tousey.
They’ve also witnessed how businesses do business, from adding machines to computers.
“I remember we had a lengthy firm meeting one day discussing whether a fax machine was technology we really needed,” Tousey said.
For more than 39 years, the firm focused on the transactional side of practice, but that changed about a month ago when a litigation specialist was added to the attorney staff.
“We think that contesting wills and trusts will be the wave of the future,” Tousey said.
“The millennials have a sense of entitlement,” he added. “Despite the fact that children are entitled to nothing under the law, they feel entitled. Contests are what people do when they’re not happy with mom and dad’s will.”
Another practice area for the firm is helping small business owners through the life cycle of their companies.
That starts with forming the business, continues with growing the business and ends with helping develop the plan to sell or bequeath the business.
“Every business owner has to have an exit plan,” Tousey said.
He and Fisher are not immune from having to plan for that eventuality.
“We have a great cadre of young partners. We are very fortunate. They could take over tomorrow if they had to,” Tousey said.