Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, known both for its lobbying work and its community involvement, hasn’t been around as long as other large Denver firms, but in its 50 years, it’s grown to be the fourth-largest firm in Colorado and has 12 offices nationwide. When Norm Brownstein, Jack Hyatt and Steve Farber eschewed lucrative offers at established firms and joined together to make their own firm in 1968, there were already five well established Denver law firms — such as Davis Graham & Stubbs, Holland & Hart or the firm then known as Holme Roberts & Owen — and top clients were spoken for.
For a while, they were taking whatever business they could get and getting paid in whatever way they could. One client, a pie maker, paid them in pies. In the 1970s, Farber landed a real estate development client whose business would grow exponentially. In the 1980s, the firm became corporate counsel to the insurance company Metropolitan Life. The attorneys’ exceptional work ethic, or as some of them say, their “hustle,” soon began attracting clients that didn’t have to pay in confectionaries.
Today, the firm has 334 employees in Denver and 572 firmwide. Anyone there will say how the firm is like a family, something that has been true since the three childhood friends hung their shingle in September 1968.
EARLY DAYS
Farber met Brownstein in elementary school and Hyatt in high school. They all went to law school together at the University of Colorado along with the first attorney they hired, Mark Leonard, who is still a shareholder at the firm.
“We really were three guys with the same background, similar relationships and friendships, trying to get the right start,” said Farber.
Those early days in their new firm were highly cooperative in a small office that required Leonard and their second hire to share a conference room for an office, forcing one to leave when the other had a client in.
“Steve Farber wanted to take every client that came to us for help,” said Leonard. This was partly out of necessity to keep the business running but also because of his character. “You’re looking at someone here who was willing to help absolutely everybody or anybody who walked in the door. And word like that gets around,”
And the word did get around. One client led to another. The firm landed a series of real estate clients including Mizel Development Corporation and McCoy Enterprises. Larry Mizel became successful in real estate, and his company, now known as M.D.C. Holdings, is a parent company to development, mortgage and insurance companies.
Farber remembered that billionaire Marvin Davis saw the firm was counsel to Mizel, which was enough to convince him that the firm could be counsel to him as well. Davis, a former owner of 20th Century Fox and the Aspen Skiing Company, later moved the firm into the building it still resides in, 410 17th Street.
Being able to land the clients the firm did, its attorneys had to show they could do better than their competitors. “It’s not just hard work and putting hours in, it’s this idea of hustling and trying to outwork whoever else we’re working with, that’s just a big part of who we are,” said managing partner Adam Agron.
In 2007 the firm merged with a Nevada firm, Schreck Brignone, in order to enter the gaming industry. Frank Schreck says that the merger was the best decision he ever made.
LOBBYING AND POLITICS
Brownstein might now be known as a political powerhouse firm, but its expansion into the that world was a slow one. It started with Brownstein, himself, taking a legitimate interest in advocating for a supportive relationship between the U.S. and Israel. His work with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee introduced him to the world of lobbying and how to develop relationships with elected officials.
Agron described those relationships as authentic more than anything else, that they weren’t the kind seen with your average lobbyist, but were the result of a man genuinely advocating for a cause he believed in. That spawned the Washington, D.C., office in 1995.
The lobbying practice group at Brownstein might be unlike other law firms that maintain lobbying arms in that it is integrated with the rest of the firm. Lobbyists will work together with attorneys for a client when the client’s interest demands work like challenging laws and trying to change them. “We didn’t stop at being more traditional lawyers,” said Agron.
The firm’s political connection can be seen in the number of people who came to the firm after working in politics, like former Colorado Sen. Hank Brown or former Alaska Sen. Mark Begich. The move goes the other way as well, such as for Gale Norton who became Secretary of the Interior after working as a Brownstein attorney.
COMMUNITY SERVICE
Throughout its 50-year history, Brownstein has been involved in community service as well. It was in the founders’ youth that they were instilled with a dedication to their community.
“We just grew up with it, that’s what you were supposed to do, it was really second nature,” Leonard said. “It certainly helped build up the firm, but I think certainly for those three founders, it was part of their DNA.”
Those early forms of community involvement included representing Rose Medical Center as well as being part of its leadership. Hyatt did litigation work at Denver General Hospital, now Denver Health.
About 70 percent of the firm’s attorneys and policy professionals are on nonprofit boards and committees, which the firm encourages so that employees can engage with their community.
Together, all of the firm’s offices contribute over 10,000 hours in pro bono work in a year. Recipients typically are families, children, immigrants and nonprofits.
Each office of the firm has a “Karma Volunteer Program” that organizes hands-on volunteer projects for employees and their families and friends. As part of their 50th anniversary celebration, the firm has a goal to complete 50 projects, such as a toiletry drive where toiletries from business trips are donated to local shelters, clothing drives where professional clothes are collected for local causes and Operation Gratitude, which sends Halloween candy to soldiers overseas, their families and veterans.
The Las Vegas office has adopted a nearby low-income elementary school called Halle Hewetson and paid for a closet of student uniforms for students who can’t afford one for themselves, as well as a washer and dryer to keep those uniforms clean.
Besides donations of items like clothes and candy, the firm donates sizable amounts of money. 1999 marked the first time annual charitable donations to nonprofits surpassed $500,000. In just six years the annual donations broke $1 million. In the last 25 years, the firm has given over $22.5 million to nonprofit organizations and the offices’ communities.
To those who work at the firm, what they do is not just for the firm. “This idea of not just working in the office but also improving the community in which we live has come to benefit the firm,” said Agron.
Farber believes that the firm’s commitment to community, the state of Colorado and to those within the firm has maintained throughout the years. The relationships that bud from those commitments are the most important thing in business to Farber, and the firm continues to work on building relationships with new businesses in Colorado.
Leonard recalled a statistic that only 15 percent of successful first-generation firms persist into their second generation. The senior members of the firm are confident that they have found a second generation of attorneys and staff that can keep the firm successful once the first generation is gone entirely.
— Connor Craven