Newark Law Firm Strives to Give Back to Community

Steve Adubato talks with Patrick Dunican Jr., Chairman & Managing Director of Gibbons P.C. about the Newark-based law firm’s corporate civic minded culture and outreach programs, including Gibbons Cares.

#1920 11/16/2016

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"We've got him back. He's Patrick C. Dunican, junior chairman and managing director, Gibbons PC. Good to see you my good friend. Nice to see you Steve. Thanks for having me back. We should let you know that you know this place very well? Right? NJPAC? We're at NJPAC. I'm on the board. I was here for a committee meeting early this morning. It's part of the connection between my firm Gibbons and the Newark Community. We feel it's important to be supportive of the local charities and of course, NJPAC is one of the preeminent philanthropic organizations in town, helping out kids through arts education and providing entertainment to the broader New Jersey community. For those who do not know the law firm, and I've done a significant amount of leadership development seminars there, I know the firm well, let folks know what it is. So Gibbons is a 90 year old law firm, founded in 1926 by Andrew B. Crummy. So for much of our lives, we were the "crummy lawyers". But with a name like schmuckers... Yes. ...we changed our name to that of our standard bearer, John Gibbons, who is 90 years young, and we practiced law here in New Jersey and in five states throughout the northeast region. So you and I have talked about this offline as well. One of the issues that comes up a lot is you and I talk about what it takes to have a workplace that people want to be a part of. And particularly with millennials, we have a fair number of younger, particularly younger people on our team, millennials. People say, "Oh they're tougher to motivate" etc, etc. You know, younger lawyers coming in. Your firm has been, without being promotional here, the fact is Gibbons has been selected as one of the best places to work, by a lot of different folks? Right. Describe that, and also help us understand how? Why? Yeah. So we were recently certified as one of the best small or medium sized companies to work for in the United States of America. Which we find pretty cool. And that's based upon a survey of our employees. And it's really important for us to maintain a unique culture. I saw something last week where a law firm managing partner said that the idea of culture at a law firm is overstated. I couldn't disagree more with that. In fact, it's the very essence of who we are is... Define culture. Culture is... we're service providers, okay? So we want to put the best face on our institution to our clients that we possibly can. We want to have a low jerk factor. We want to make sure... [laughter] What do you mean..."