Balancing business and egos, John Morrell and David Whitson have venerable Higgs Fletcher & Mack on track. (photo/alandeckerphoto.com)

A decade ago, Higgs Fletcher & Mack, one of San Diego’s oldest and largest local law firms, needed to grow, having shrunk significantly during the severe early 1990s recession. At the same time a smaller litigation-focused, old-line firm, McInnis, Fitzgerald, Rees & Sharkey, was seeking to build its business law practice, a Higgs specialty. Merger talks between the two went nowhere and an outside consultant judged any combination a likely failure.

Seeing things differently, and focusing on similarities in firm cultures and lawyer personalities, were Higgs’ managing partner John Morrell and McInnis’ chief administrator David Whitson.

Resurrecting the deal, the two not only orchestrated in five months a merger that grew Higgs by 50 percent, they continue managing the law firm as a team, with Morrell in the CEO role and Whitson as a sort of super administrator. (Bill Low, the McInnis managing partner at the negotiating table, remains with Higgs as a partner.)

As Higgs celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, business has never been better.

The firm has 61 lawyers, 10 paralegals and 65 support employees. Annual billings are growing and will hit about $23 million this year, with business law accounting for nearly 75 percent. Last year Higgs served about 1,200 clients; the larger ones are the San Diego Unified School District, Scripps Health and The Corky McMillin Cos. Its community involvement is extensive. Among the organizations Higgs (higgslaw.com) supports are Accion San Diego, San Diego Taxpayers Association, San Diego Senior Community Centers, American Red Cross of San Diego & Imperial Counties, the Anti-Defamation League and the Old Globe Theatre.

“In my 37 years here, there has never been a time that we were more in synch about where we are and where we are headed,” says Craig Higgs, a partner and son of the late firm founder Dutch Higgs. “(Whitson and Morrell) understand the needs of the partners and the individual lawyers and they are great leaders to take us to new places.”

The Road To Higgs

The route to Higgs was quite different for Morrell and Whitson.

Morrell, a third-generation San Diegan who lives in Kensington with his wife and two sons, aspired to be a political science professor. Determining earning a JD was the fastest route, he went to law school at USD after graduating from Chico State. Clerking as a student for a small boutique bankruptcy firm changed his career path. “Once you start working to pay for your living, there is no way to go back,” says Morrell, 49.

After a year of clerking for a federal bankruptcy judge in Orange County, he was hired by Higgs in 1985 to start its Chapter 11 practice, in part because of his knowledge about recently enacted sweeping changes to bankruptcy laws. Today he is one of San Diego’s most prominent bankruptcy attorneys.

Whitson, a resident of Del Mar who has dined at Jake’s with his wife every Wednesday since the restaurant opened (always ordering steak), arrived in San Diego 30 years ago. He drove here seeking a private sector job after running a school district in Cedarburg, Wis. for 10 years. Answering a newspaper ad, he was hired in 1979 by McInnis. The law firm operated with yearly rotating managing partners, leaving the chief administrator role to Whitson.

Today, at age 64, the Ball State alumnus (business administration) still carries the build of a college football player. He is San Diego’s longest standing member of the Association of Legal Administrators.

Finding A Managing Groove

The management style Morrell and Whitson employ is a mild hybrid of the strong CEO. When Morrell arrived, the firm had moved from a three-partner team to a non-lawyer CEO. It wasn’t working. “We had a non lawyer running the firm 100 percent,” Morrell says. “He wasn’t an owner. He had no skin in the game and it almost killed the firm.” In 1977 the structure was changed to place a single partner in the CEO role and Morrell was given that job. His bankruptcy experience helped, he jokes. “I saw why a lot of businesses don’t work.”

Working at Higgs wasn’t Whitson’s plan. During the merger discussions, he was essentially negotiating his way to unemployment. But when the deal closed, he was asked to come along, a decision that proved invaluable. “When you combine two organizations like we did, there is a lot of discomfort and uneasiness,” Morrell says. “A lot of that was softened because there was such a high degree of confidence in Dave (by the McGinnis attorneys) that their interests were being looked out for.”

Whitson acts as the chief operating officer, overseeing non-legal human resource issues, finance, records management, marketing and IT. “Those are the areas that I deal with on a day to day basis with a staff,” Whitson says. “Then I work with John on a number of areas, including hiring attorneys and evaluating prospects. After almost 10 years we have gotten to know what each other does best and to rely on each other. We know how each other think.”

Lawyers — the firm has 20 owner partners, 20 non-equity partners and 21 associates — must naturally be independent thinkers. So culture, which includes a big dose of getting along, is very important.

“So much of running a law firm is knowing the idiosyncrasies of your lawyers,” Morrell says. “Rarely do Dave and I not see eye to eye in sizing up the people who work for us.”

Morrell and Whitson have proven creative in bringing in associates. One example was assisting Julian Myers, a former associate of one of Mexico City’s largest firms, in earning a visa. Myers now is a Higgs partner providing cross-border legal business counsel. Also working the binational angle is Mary Robberson, a former firm paralegal who went back to school for her law degree.

“A lot of Mexican nationals are moving assets out of Mexico and into the United States, buying businesses, estate planing,” says Morrell. “We have the advantage of people who know not only the legal structure in Mexico and how it is affected, but also the cultural areas.”

When the firm considers a new partner, Morrell and Whitson evaluate that individual, work out a financial package and then present it to the partners’ board for a decision. The board rarely disagrees, and it is unheard of for a group of lawyers to leave Higgs to set up shop with another firm.

“John and I both realize the value of people; the value of the attorneys and employees,” says Whitson. “We treat them respectfully and interact with them. They recognize that we care about them.”

Craig Higgs says the best test of the firm’s management comes when the owners gather. “The partnership meetings we have,” he says, “are actually pleasurable.”