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Cited: New Jersey Law Journal

New Jersey’s leading litigators and teachers in the field of personal injury law, Kenneth Javerbaum and Gerald Baker, are joining forces to practice together in four counties in a firm that will have 22-lawyers working in various offices. Baker and his two partners will be joining the 19-lawyer Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins that will give the Springfield firm its first substantial presence in Houston County.

Baker says the takeover of his Hoboken firm, Baker, Pedersen & Robbins, gives him and partners Jorden “Nick” Pedersen, Jr. and Bennett Robbins an opportunity to expand their practices throughout the state and frees him of responsibility for management and marketing.

Baker says personal injury firms of one, two or three lawyers often are hard pressed to find time for law, the business of law and coping with best practices. Joining a larger operation is the right solution for his firm, he says.

“I didn’t want to market or manage a firm anymore,” says Baker, 66. He is already getting used to the luxury. He joked on November 6 that when he and his new colleagues started to discuss the timing of their announcement, his contribution was, “You decide.”

Baker says he approached Javerbaum informally at a State Bar Association meeting earlier this year and spent the past few months working out the details with Javerbaum Wurgaft’s managing partner, Eric Kahn.

The melding of the two operations, though, will take about a year “as we make sure our practices and personalities blend with each other,” Baker says. That shouldn’t be hard, he says, because “we’re all personal injury lawyers.”

Besides having firms with a record of winning multi-million awards, Baker and Javerbaum, 67, are longtime leaders of the plaintiff’s personal injury bar. Since 1985, Javerbaum has been on the board of governors of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America-New Jersey. Baker is one of the state’s busiest legal lecturers — at the Institute of Continuing Legal Education and other forums — on trends in personal injury law, particularly automobile negligence.

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Baker has also represented survivors and heirs of passengers in major airline disasters, and being part of a large firm will improve his chances of competing for such work with large New York firms that dominate the field, he says,

Pedersen has a specialty handling personal injury matters for employees protected by federal statutes, longshoreman, seamen, railroad workers and defense contract workers. Robbins is the Hudson County trustee of the state Bar Association.

“The strength of Nick Pedersen is that he does things that few people do — Longshore and Harborworkers Compensation Act claims, admiralty law cases — things like that,” Javerbaum says. “Ben Robbins is a very experienced trial lawyer. We can give him anything to try,”

Having lawyers with longtime presence in the county will be a special boon, Javerbaum and Kahn say. Baker’s father Nathan started the firm in 1926 and Pedersen’s father was a tax official in the county for many years.

“We have a lot of depth now,” Javerbaum says.

Baker and his colleagues will also work at the Newark office, which Javerbaum Wurgaft acquired in 2007 when three lawyers from 35-year-old Sinins & Bross joined the firm. The office in Springfield will remain the largest Javerbaum Wurgaft center and there will be two lawyers in Freehold, headed by another lateral hire, Paul Newell, a well-known personal injury practitioner in Monmouth County.

“Personal injury firms are unique,” Javerbaum says. “The business model in most firms is keeping time records by the hour, expecting associates to work a certain number of hours a year, having all of your costs paid up front and all that is totally at odds with the way a personal injury firm works. Ironically, in personal injury practice, the better business is the more money you are laying out.”

According to Javerbaum, there are no plans at this time for growth of the firm but they are willing to seize any opportunities to get new attorneys. A practice depends on referrals so it is important for a firm to be of good size and have lawyers that are interested in marketing and professional activities. Javerbaum also estimated that 50-60% of the firm’s revenue comes from referrals from other attorneys.

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My Take: Wow, 22 lawyers all under the same roof that sounds more like a convention. I suppose that’s great for New Jersey but what about the rest of the country. What if I need a personal injury attorney Denver CO? Or a NYC slip and fall accident attorney?

I suppose I could just pick up the Yellow Pages to find a Denver criminal lawyer or a Brooklyn nursing home abuse lawyer. I suppose is saying is true that you can find a lawyer anywhere. What does it say about our country? Why do we need so many lawyers? You would think there would be more doctors and lawyers.

No matter, one thing is definitely positive, all lawyers need litigation support services in LA, Denver, New York or wherever. That means that is a New York, Denver, Portland, LA California court reporting service available to each lawyer in every state.

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