Can Entrepreneurial Principles Make You a Better Lawyer? Part 3, 0320 COBJ, Vol. 49, No. 3 Pg. 18
| Author | BY RONALD M. SANDGRUND, ESQ., INQ. |
| Position | Vol. 49, 3 [Page 18] |
THE INQUIRING LAWYER
BY RONALD M. SANDGRUND, ESQ., INQ.
The harder you work, the luckier you get.[1]
Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation, while bad luck is when lack of preparation meets reality.[2]
This is the seventh article series by The InQuiring Lawyer addressing a topic that Colorado lawyers may discuss privately but rarely talk about publicly. The topics in this column are explored through dialogues with lawyers, judges, law professors, law students, and law school deans, as well as entrepreneurs, journalists, business leaders, politicians, economists, sociologists, mental health professionals, academics, children, gadflies, and know-it-alls (myself included). If you have an idea for a future column, I hope you will share it with me via email at rms.sandgrund@gmail.com.
This month's article is the last of a three-part conversation about whether entrepreneurial principles can make better lawyers. Thanks to my friends Phil Weiser, Sue Heilbronner of MergeLane, and Dave DuPont of TeamSnap, who inspired me to put this piece together. And many thanks to Vincent Dimichele, a Colorado Law 2L, for his help with the dialogue and the thoughtful questions he raised during the editing process.
Introduction to Part 3
In Part 1 we talked about a philosophy of entrepreneurship with Colorado Law Professor Brad Bernthal, director of the Entrepreneurship Initiative for the Silicon Flatirons Center; former Denver Law Dean Marty Katz, chief innovation officer at Denver University; and Lisa Hand-Graves, former chief innovation officer at the Colorado Attorney General's office. We learned that an entrepreneurial approach involves a growth mind-set, empathy, a polished interpersonal skill set, and a human-centered, trial-and-error toolset that fosters creative and agile thinking, calculated risk-taking, and a willingness to fail and learn. In Part 2, we visited with two lawyers, Rex O'Neal and Christina Saunders, who built successful law firms from the ground up by employing an entrepreneurial approach to their practices' operations, marketing, and legal services.
In Part 3, we find out whether a 40-year-old Houston lawyer with three children and a 16-year book of business can reboot his career in Colorado by applying the same entrepreneurial principles. George Berg grew up in Texas riding in a pickup between drill sites with his dad, an oil and gas company employee. He went on to play college football, grow a successful Houston law firm, and then watch that firm get bulldozed by the savings and loan crisis. If changing horses in midstream is emblematic of an entrepreneurial spirit, George is that spirit's personification.
Later in Part 3, the InQuiring Lawyer passes die interview baton to Professor Brad Bernthal, who explores whether a dyed-in-the-wool insurance defense firm can reinvent itself as a plaintiff's practice and whether an entrepreneurial mind-set can work for contingency fee lawyers who rarely represent the same client twice. With Brad's help, my former law partner and I look back on over 35 years of practicing law together and try to puzzle out whether we can truly call ourselves entrepreneurs.
Participants
George Berg is one of the four founding partners of Berg Hill Greenleaf & Ruscitti LLP. His practice of over 40 years emphasizes complex commercial transactions and litigation, personal and real estate litigation, real estate construction and development, banking, insurance coverage, business organization, antitrust, and bankruptcy.
Brad Bernthal is an associate professor at Colorado Law. He studies startups, entrepreneurial law, and early-stage finance (such as angel investment and venture capital). He is also the founder and director of the Entrepreneurship Initiative at CU-Boulder's Silicon Flatirons Center.
Ron Sandgrund was a founder of and principal in Sullan2, Sandgrund, Perczak & Nuss, PC. until its 2012 merger with Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh Jardine PC, where he is now of counsel with its Construction Defect Group. Ron is a frequent author and lecturer on construction defect, product liability, and insurance law, as well on the practical aspects of being a lawyer. He has taught Philosophy of Entrepreneurship and guest lectured on torts, contracts, and professional responsibility at Colorado Law. Along with his former law partner Valerie Sullan, Ron has handled some of Colorado's largest construction defect lawsuits and class action settlements.
Valerie Marie Sullan was a founder of and principal in Sullan2, Sandgrund, Perczak & Nuss, PC. until its 2012 merger with Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh Jardine PC, where she is of counsel. She was lead trial counsel in a number of landmark residential construction defect cases beginning in the 1990s, including one of the few Colorado class actions ever to be tried to a jury, and was appointed class and sub-class counsel multiple times. Valerie, along with her former law partner Ron Sandgrund, helped negotiate Colorado's largest home builder construction defect related settlement on behalf of more than 12,300 homeowners, and also reached a $32.5 million settlement on behalf of the owners of more than 12,000 homes with defective and leaking windows.
George Berg's Entrepreneurial Journey
Origins
InQ: George, soon after our paths first crossed at a CLE many years ago, I learned that you had been a partner in a prosperous Houston law firm for 16 years, but then moved your entire family to Boulder and started a new practice from scratch, eventually building a well-respected and successful 40-attorney firm. I always wondered about the backstory of that career trajectory, and this interview gives me the excuse to delve into that. Let's start at the beginning: paint me a picture of your family life growing up.
George Berg: I grew up in Houston. My mom had a year of college and did substitute teaching. My dad grew up as a farmer, joined the Army in WWII, and did not attend college. After the service he didn't want to cotton-farm anymore, so he got into the oil field service business. I grew up going into the field with my dad. He would, among other things, put on oil and gas production equipment called "Christmas trees." I met a lot of wildcatters and other lively characters. "Wildcatter" is an apt term for folks who were willing to bet it all on one roll of the dice.
InQ: Was your dad a small-business owner?
George: No, he was an employee of a large oil and gas service company. InQ: What was one of your first jobs? George: As a kid, I sold soft drinks at college football games—folks used to pour a little whiskey in their cups, so the sodas sold fast in the high-dollar seats. I lagged coins with the other kids before the game, sold Cokes for a half, and then sat and watched the second half. I started working when I was 14 and basically worked whenever I wasn't at school. I was always working a job in the summers and on holidays. Even between football or track season practices.
InQ: What steered you to law school?
George: I was recruited to play football at a number of universities and met some really great people during that process. College football coaches obviously have to have a dynamic presence in recruiting. As part of the recruiting process, the coaches at Rice University had you meet up with alumni to talk about the avenues to attain success. I happened to draw a well-known federal judge, Phil Peden. At the time, I thought the smartest guys on earth were petroleum engineers, so I was looking at going into engineering and the petroleum business. But Judge Peden said that if you put a law degree on top of an engineering degree, you can do whatever you want. I was just so impressed by the judge’s ability to articulate his thoughts, his demeanor, and how he carried himself—he influenced me a lot. I never forgot that, and when I figured out that combining engineering with playing college football was complicated, I switched to accounting and business, with an idea of going to law school. When I got my LSAT score I decided to make a run at law school. By then, my college junior year, I was married.
InQ: What was your first exposure to the practice of law?
George: My wife’s father was an attorney and he had been in-house with a large gas pipeline company. Pretty much everybody in Houston seemed to be tied, one way or the other, to the oil and gas industry. I had him as a role model, along with his law partner, who had done a lot of real estate development. I started clerking for my father-in-law’s firm my first year at law school and then later spent a short time clerking with a large Houston litigation firm.
InQ: At this point, did you start to form a vision like, After I leave law school, I’ll become an associate, then I’ll put my time in and become a partner in some big firm, or were you thinking I want to create my own firm, and I want to do that as a soon as possible? What was your ambition when you graduated?
George: In my second year of law school, my mother-in-law passed away and my father-in-law stepped down from the firm. His law partner at the time, a very dynamic man, asked me to become a named partner at the end of my second year out of law school! In addition to his law practice, he also did real estate development, had a title insurance company, and had ownership interests in banks. He needed someone to supervise the day-to-day business of the firm.
InQ: You really hit the ground running—what was your first order of business?
George: I became the day-to-day administrator and brought in additional lawyers as we needed help. I helped expand the real estate practice into a number of large Houston home builders. And those home builders were serviced by both the title company and lending institutions associated with the law firm itself.
InQ: How did...
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