Drew Eckl & Farnham sign in Atlanta. (Photo: John Disney/ ALM)

Earlier this year, Drew Eckl & Farnham lawyers Karen Karabinos and Sonya Jacobs gave a presentation to Google's Atlanta women's group to help women take better control of their finances.

Their "Women & Wealth" presentation at Google in July led to requests from other women's groups at Fortune 500 companies in Atlanta, and Karabinos is now planning to speak at more corporate events.

It's one way that some Drew Eckl lawyers are expanding into new practice areas. Karabinos said the litigation defense midsize firm has broadened its scope to family law, wills and estates and even criminal matters, like DUIs, in response to frequent requests from clients, their friends and family for help in those areas.

Karabinos said she saw the need for the Women & Wealth talks after she added family law to her insurance defense practice and started advising women in divorces. She enlisted Jacobs, who handles wills and estates for families and closely-held businesses, to help.

"Despite all the strides women have made, many are still abdicating their financial decisions to spouses and significant others," Karabinos said. In the event of a spouse's death or a divorce, they are faced with handling their finances for the first time. "These women are often very educated, smart and leaders in their professions," she added.

Women & Wealth

For years, Drew Eckl partners had referred out clients' requests for help with family law matters, wills and estates and criminal defense, Karabinos said, but 18 months ago the firm decided to take on these matters themselves. Drew Eckl had already been handling commercial litigation and some corporate transactions.

Karabinos has practiced insurance defense law for more than 20 years, but she started out in family law before joining Drew Eckl in 1997. So she decided to add divorces and prenups to her practice investigating property insurance claims for fraud.

"It's another way to compete—and another way to help our clients," Karabinos said.

That's where the Women & Wealth presentation comes in.

Karabinos said she found from advising women on divorces that many had "no idea how much they spend, how much money is coming in—or even where their financial accounts are held or how to access them."

She and Jacobs gave their debut Women & Wealth talk to Google's Atlanta women's group in July. For about 25 women at Google, plus a lot more who dialed in to listen, the Drew Eckl lawyers explained what women can do to protect their finances and plan for financial succession. Considerations include prenup and postnup agreements, creating business structures to protect assets, and choosing the right financial advisers and accountants.

As a result, Google made a referral agreement with Drew Eckl to serve as a resource for the tech giant's local employees seeking a lawyer to help with family law, estate planning or other issues.

Karabinos will speak to NCR's local women's group in November and that of another Fortune 500 company in the new year. None of the companies were Drew Eckl clients, she said, and the engagements have come from personal connections made by lawyers in Drew Eckl's women's group.

Growth Areas

Drew Eckl's managing partner, Joe Chancey, estimated that the newer practice areas like family law, estate planning and corporate litigation and transactions now make up around 10% or 15% of the firm's work, and he said they've contributed to the 120-lawyer firm's growth.

The firm's long-range planning committee decided about 18 months ago that it made economic sense, Chancey said, "to build out these other areas that fit really well with our stable core platform of insurance defense and workers' compensation."

He explained that insurance defense and workers compensation work holds steady, even in a recession, but cost pressures on rate structures and margins mean they must operate very efficiently and economically.

Drew Eckl wants to turn that into an opportunity in these ancillary areas, Chancey said, by "focusing on value for midsize companies where our fee structure is going to be really appealing to them."

Karabinos noted that the rates for family law and criminal defense are higher than for insurance defense, in part because insurance defense rates are based on volume.

She is handling family law in addition to her first-party property defense and insurance coverage practice, but another Drew Eckl lawyer and a paralegal are working exclusively on family law cases. Karabinos also hired another lawyer, Sara Becker, 16 months ago from criminal defense boutique Arora & LaScala to help with both insurance defense and criminal matters.

"I still love my bread and butter, doing the insurance fraud and arson cases," Karabinos said, but she also likes the personal touch of family law. After a recent, successful paternity legitimation hearing, she said, she got a hug. "I think it was the first hug I've ever gotten from a client!"

A Mission

The Women & Wealth presentation is partly business development, but also, Karabanis said, part of her mission to help women.

That's what motivated Karabanis to start the Drew Eckl women's group in 2014 with another litigation partner, Taylor Poncz. She went on to help start a statewide women's group for the Georgia Defense Lawyers Association, which held its first meeting in January. A packed house of 86 women litigators turned out for panel discussions from judges and lawyers about the pathway to partnership for women.

Now Karabinos and other women defense litigators are organizing the first-ever Southeast Women Litigators conference through the GDLA and the Defense Research Institute. The name for the March event at the Atlanta Zoo?  "Women Litigators—I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!"

Karabinos expects about 200 women to attend the event, which she said will feature speakers on topics "to help women litigators become the leaders they were meant to be."