Richard Cohen, left, and Chris Belter, right. (Courtesy photo)

Since the inception of Goldberg Segalla in April 2001, the Buffalo, New York-based firm has remained under the guidance of its founder and managing partner Richard Cohen.

That changed Monday, when Cohen announced that he will be stepping down as managing partner, with no single, immediate successor taking his place. The firm's five-person facilitation committee will manage the firm until January 2021, at which point it will announce a new managing partner.

During that time, Cohen's longtime friend and firm partner Chris Belter, also a facilitation committee member, will step into a newly created Chief Operating Officer role.

"I have been doing this for the better part of 20 years," said Cohen, who will be 57 in August.

"Over those 20 years I have worn a lot of hats," he said, "Then, my life changed about eight years ago. My wife gave birth to six kids over a four-year period, giving me nine in total. This pandemic taught us a lot as a leadership group at the firm, and one of the things it taught me was that I can't continue to carry the full weight of this firm on my shoulders."

Cohen will stay involved with the firm, he said, and remain on the firm's facilitation committee for the foreseeable future.

Belter said the move to change, while laid bare by the effects of the pandemic, has been a slow build as he and others have gotten more involved in firm leadership, which for the better part of two decades was mostly directed by Cohen.

"One thing we learned as we navigated the day-to-day of COVID-19 is that we function well as a group," Belter said in an interview. "We integrated on a regular basis, more so than in the past, our full equity partner community. And the energy level was high. The position [of managing partner] will never be what it was with Rick at the helm. Having a smaller core of responsibility for one person makes more sense. With our size and growth, it is literally too much for one person."

The firm has experienced a high level of growth since its founding and has done it without the instant bump in size and scope that usually accompanies a merger. Starting with seven attorneys in 2001, the firm currently has over 400 attorneys in 20 offices covering 11 states and is ranked No. 171 in the 2020 Am Law 200. Cohen said March 23 that the firm made an unspecified number of staff layoffs due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Belter, who currently serves as chair of the firm's construction practice as well as its corporate services and commercial litigation practice, said the timing was right for Cohen to take a step back.

"Rick has been not only a partner but a friend to me for two decades," Belter said in a statement. "And as both a partner and friend, I'm thrilled that our firm has evolved to a point where Rick doesn't have to carry all of this load alone, and will be able to spend more time with his family."

Cohen said that he wanted to make sure that he didn't look back at his life and decide that he should have prioritized things differently.

"I don't want to be 65 years old and regret how I spent my life, especially during my kids' formative years," Cohen said. "My older kids had to experience a time when their father wasn't able to pay as much attention to them as they needed. I have the chance to do it right with the younger kids."

Both Cohen and Belter asserted that the change after 20 years was not influenced by ongoing litigation involving six former attorneys who spun off to form their own firm in 2017.

Filings in the initial lawsuit in the dispute are sealed, other than vague petition submitted by Goldberg Segalla stating that the departing attorneys "breached their partnership agreement." Last month the former lawyers submitted a petition to overturn a February 2020 arbitration award that found Goldberg Segalla's partnership agreement with them to be legal and enforceable.

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