Gunster, one of West Palm Beach's oldest law firms, just launched a major expansion in Florida's west coast by bringing on 28 lawyers from a firm with offices in Sarasota and Manatee counties.
The firm, Icard Merrill, handled a range of real estate areas, such as land use and litigation, as well as estate planning and probate.
In an Oct. 7 interview, Gunster Managing Partner Bill Perry said Icard Merrill's offices in Sarasota and Lakewood Ranch bridge the gaps between Gunster's existing offices in Naples and Tampa.
Perry said Sarasota and the greater Tampa area are becoming an important growth area, too. "It's absolutely on fire," Perry said of Tampa.
"On fire" also speaks to much of Florida, where transplanted financial, defense and other firms
have added muscle to the "Wall Street South" branding, especially along the southeast coast.
In addition, the newcomer businesses, and the affluent executives and employees they have brought with them, have prompted major gifts bolstering and expanding cultural institutions and medical centers. They've also lured campuses form out-of-state higher education institutions, such as Vanderbilt University and Carnegie Mellon University.
The move boosts Gunster's reach throughout Floridaas new companies and wealthy residentscontinue to pour into the state, Perry said.
For the past 20 years, Gunster has worked to be a dominant firm statewide and not just in South Florida. "We want to be the Florida firm in all major metropolitan markets, and a few other growth markets," Perry said.
Gunster expanding from base in South Florida
To be sure, South Florida remains a key market. Perry said Gunster's six South Florida offices are nearing 200 lawyers.
And Palm Beach County now is even nicknamed "Wall Street South" for the cluster of financial firms that moved to the county during and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The South Florida region also is attracting a range of companies in other industries, including technology and defense.
Meanwhile, wealthy residents who used to vacation in Florida during winter now live in the state year-round. While some may work here remotely, others are bringing their companies to Florida from the Northeast, Midwest and even California. As a result, they may need legal services for their companies as well as their families.
Deep legal roots in Florida's west, east coasts
The legal deal brings together two law firms with long histories in the state.
Gunster was founded 101 in West Palm Beach by two lawyers who handled work for First National Bank in Palm Beach. The firm expanded into corporate work in the 1980s, and slowly began opening offices elsewhere in the state.
Today, Gunster has 15 offices statewide. With the addition of the Icard Merrill lawyers, the firm has 360 attorneys, the most Gunster has ever had.
Icard Merrill was founded 75 years ago in Sarasota. Like Gunster, it had a specialty in real estate, including land planning and construction. It also handled estate planning and litigation matters.
These firms once dominated the sleepy Florida towns they did business in, but now outside law firms are eying the state's fortunes and setting up their own offices in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, as well as elsewhere in the Sunshine State.
Gunster's Perry said these outside firms are raising the overall quality of the legal community, but they also creating opportunity for Gunster. That's because of the firm's knowledge of local markets, as well as the firm's fees, which are lower than the $3,000 per hour charged by some national law firms.
Meanwhile, Gunster is looking to grow again, with more attorneys possibly joining the firm in selected offices by year-end, Perry said.
Alexandra Clough is a business writer at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at aclough@pbpost.com. X: @acloughpbp. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: West Palm Gunster buys Sarasota law firm as Florida booms | Exclusive
