Mat Tully has big and aggressive plans for the military veteran-owned law firm he founded with Greg Rinckey more than a decade ago.
Tully Rinckey PLLC recently completed a five-year strategic plan, called Mission 2020, and as part of it, the firm plans to expand by almost 50 attorneys and eight offices, including an international location, by the start of 2021. The plan includes tremendous expansion in the firm’s Buffalo-area office, which it opened in 2013.
The firm opened its Albany headquarters in 2004. It now has approximately 70 attorneys and focuses in military law. In all, there are seven offices, including five in New York, one each in San Diego and Washington D.C.
In a phone conversation, Tully said he expects that the Buffalo office, which is located on Sheridan Drive in Amherst, will double or triple in size over the next three to five years. Tully’s goal is to see the local office go from six attorneys to 25 by 2021. And he now realizes they are not going to get there by just going after real estate closings or criminal matters in Buffalo.
“Our intention is not to continue to go after competitors in the Buffalo market but to create new revenue streams to the legal profession in the Buffalo legal market,” Tully said.
The firm plans to expand the local office through outsourcing work from other parts of the country and outside the U.S. to the Western New York region.
It has already started over the past 18 months with practices such as military law, security clearance and federal employment law. Clients originate in Washington, D.C. and through technology, such as internal file sharing and teleconference, local attorneys can help work on and complete their files. By doing this, the firm can offer cheaper services than other firms in Washington, D.C., Tully said.
“It’s a whole practice-area specific cross-selling across different geographical areas, and hopefully we’re going to be world-wide in the next five years,” Tully said. “It’s been extremely successful so far.”
In about 45 days, the firm anticipates opening a New York City office. The footprint there can be smaller because much of the work can be handled in Upstate New York, according to Tully.
By the end of the year, the firm is hoping to add an office in Europe. Tully plans to farm immigration and corporate transactional work from that office to the firm’s Buffalo office, as well.
The local office already has partner Darren Swetz being used as the backbone of the real estate practice because he can process closings for all of the firm’s other offices.
In four years, Tully Rinckey plans to be up to 118 attorneys in at least 15 geographical offices, according to its strategic plan. In the process, the firm projects an increase in revenue from $17.4 million to $29.3 million.
In order to achieve this type of growth, the firm has set goals that include driving new business based on profitability of practice groups, offices, attorneys and clients; recruiting and hiring one attorney per month; decisively counseling and removing poor performing attorneys and staff within the first 90 days of employment; and marketing and branding the firm in new markets.
The firm will consider geographic locations for expansion that are highly populated with federal employees and members of the military and look to develop an international presence with the help of building an institutional practice such as immigration. The firm has already been targeting immigration attorneys who can perform business-related immigration services, such as H1Bs and EB5s. It will also look to current attorneys and staff with cross-marketing capabilities, such as Barbara King, a partner in Albany, who’s clients have ties to Singapore, Japan, London and Korea.
