Firm Poised For New Leadership and Future Growth
Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller announced today that, to help achieve its long-term goal of thriving well beyond the generation of its founders, Mark A. Aronchick and Ronald P. Schiller will be named, respectively, the firm’s Chair and Vice-Chair effective January 1, 2014. David B. Pudlin will continue as President and CEO. This change is the first significant leadership change in the firm’s nineteen-year history, and it is the first step in the firm’s succession planning process under which key leadership roles in the firm will transition from the firm’s founders and others who have been with the firm for many years to the talented attorneys who later joined the firm at the beginning of their careers or came to the firm as laterals.
William T. Hangley, a Co-Founder of the firm and its Chair since its inception, said: “Letting go of the reins of leadership is a little bit scary, particularly in these challenging times for law firms, but Mark Aronchick has been great in everything he has tried. He’s been a great Bar Association Chancellor, a great City Solicitor, and a great lawyer, partner and friend. If anybody can preserve the special culture of this place and rise to the challenges of 21st Century practice, Mark can do it.”
Hangley will continue his bet-the-company trial practice, and he will continue to serve on the firm’s Board of Directors.
Co-founding shareholder Mark Aronchick has a diverse national trial and appellate practice. Most recently, he is leading the Hangley Aronchick litigation team in a case of national significance – a constitutional attack on Pennsylvania’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages in the first such case in the country following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor.
“I hope to build on the great leadership that Bill Hangley provided over the past nineteen years,” said Aronchick, “and I look forward to working with Ron Schiller and David Pudlin. The firm is poised and ready for the future and will continue to be a source of outstanding legal counsel to our clients and a magnet for the best legal talent. With this change, we are preserving our existing culture of excellence while simultaneously propelling the firm forward with a new generation of leadership.”
Ron Schiller, chair of the firm’s insurance litigation practice group, joined Hangley Aronchick in 2009, and he became a name shareholder in 2011 in recognition of the significant value he brought to the firm and his importance to its future. Schiller has represented the world’s largest insurers in sophisticated coverage, bad faith, and reinsurance disputes.
“My group was warmly welcomed by the firm,” said Schiller “and it has been exciting for us to work with the remarkable group of exceptional and bright young people we found here when we arrived and with the young lawyers and laterals who subsequently joined us to build an even stronger firm. We remain committed to growing via excellence, both by training our own attorneys and attracting laterals who share our vision.”
As the firm celebrates its 19th anniversary this month, it looks back on its remarkable growth and success under Bill Hangley’s leadership. Founded in 1994 with 16 lawyers and 25 total employees, the firm has grown to 47 attorneys and over 100 total employees in four offices. The firm cherishes its unique culture of uncompromising high standards, a collegial atmosphere and a commitment to the community through pro bono work and civic engagement. At the same time that it has maintained these qualities, it also has had great financial success, and in each of the past three years it enjoyed record revenues and profits.
“When Bill Hangley, Mark Aronchick, Dan Segal and I founded the firm in 1994, we wanted to establish a culture of excellence in an environment in which each attorney could feel secure about his or her long-range future, and I am delighted that we have achieved that goal,” said David Pudlin. “Others now are stepping in to help us continue this success for many years to come.”
Since its founding, the firm has served as counsel on numerous nationally recognized cases that have established and protected important legal principles. For example, in the past two years, Hangley Aronchick attorneys have celebrated great successes in the Luzerne County Juvenile litigation, directed by Dan Segal, the Chair of the firm’s Litigation Department; in successfully arguing for the first time in our country that a woman has the right to implant frozen embryos over the objection of her former husband; and in successfully representing our long-standing retail pharmacy clients in the K-Dur antitrust litigation, which was a landmark case in which we convinced the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to hold that so-called “pay-for-delay” patent settlements in the pharmaceutical industry are subject to antitrust scrutiny, a result that set up a clear circuit split and led to the recent adoption of a similar rule by the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition, the firm routinely works on important transactional matters for prominent national clients, such as Select Medical Corporation, one of the nation’s largest owners and operators of specialty hospitals and outpatient rehabilitation centers, and Eggland’s Best, the nation’s leading specialty egg company.
The firm is proud to have:
- Two former Philadelphia City Solicitors
- A former General Counsel of the School District of Philadelphia
- Several Fellows of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the American College of Bankruptcy, the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers
- The Regent-nominee of the American College of Trial Lawyers for the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware
- A former Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association and a former President of the Montgomery County Bar Association
- Two former Presidents of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation
- The Chair-Elect of the ABA’s Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources
- A member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Bankruptcy
- A Chair of The Reinvestment Fund
- A past Chair of the Pennsylvania IOLTA Board
- A member of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission
- Adjunct faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Rutgers University School of Law – Camden, and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law, among others.
Twenty of our trial lawyers have clerked for judges on federal courts of appeal or district courts, and one clerked for a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Attorneys at the firm also have received repeated accolades from professional rankings including, in 2013, 24% named to Chambers USA, 37% named a Pennsylvania Super Lawyers, 18% named Pennsylvania Super Lawyer Rising Stars, and 27% named to The Best Lawyers in America, including four ranked as Philadelphia Lawyer of the Year in their respective practice areas.
In 2012, the firm was selected by The Legal Intelligencer as Pennsylvania Litigation Department of the Year in the general litigation, mid-sized firm category.
