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| (photo illustration by banbalch.com) |
The revolving door at Birmingham's Balch & Bingham has swept another legacy partner out the exits at the scandal-plagued law firm, according to a report at banbalch.com. Writes Publisher K.B. Forbes, under the headline "Death Spiral? Balch Legacy Partner Rob Fowler Leaves Embattled Firm":
Sources close to Balch & Bingham report this afternoon that long-time environmental lawyer and Balch partner Rob Fowler has left the embattled firm after almost a quarter-century of service.
His webpage at Balch has been eliminated.
Regardless of his legal work on behalf of alleged unsavory clients, alleged racist quarry companies, and possible polluters, Fowler was a trusted, experienced, and knowledgeable lawyer of environmental law, and was one of maybe a dozen long-time legacy partners left at Balch.
The firm has been seen a mass exodus of experienced and money-making partners in the last several years.
Is Balch becoming a shadow of its former self? It's starting to look that way:
The crew left behind appear to be a collection of “green behind the ears” attorneys who lack experience and quality of work product. As we reported this summer, Balch has seen a decline of 27% of their local attorneys and has allegedly been plagued by inexperience.
The death spiral caused by less revenue and more inexperience appears to help Balch & Bingham’s competitors.
Fowler allegedly spearheaded the now infamous Vincent land-grab which allegedly bought up whites-only land in an attempt to place a rock quarry next to a historically African-American area of Vincent. The Vincent community united and tossed the Balch stooges out of office during elections last year in a resounding defeat against Balch.
Now Fowler has boxed up his personal belongings and left the awful skeletons behind.
3 comments:
I don't know much about how law firms work, but you would think that once someone was established as a partner, he would stick around. Strange that a guy like this would leave.
I'm not an expert on law-firm operations either, but yes, it does seem strange that a guy of Mr. Fowler's stature would leave a firm like Balch.
One conclusion might be that Mr. Fowler sees difficult days ahead for Balch, and he would rather be somewhere else. I suspect he will be able to hook on with another firm without much difficulty.
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