Richard Norris, who helped build what is today a 120-lawyer firm from a two-lawyer shop in downtown Somerville, is being remembered for his accomplishments as a practitioner and firm builder, and for setting a strong example of professionalism.

Norris died on Sunday, May 31, at age 93, following an illness, according to his firm, Norris McLaughlin. He was fully retired but had been working part time as recently as a year ago, a firm spokesman said.

Norris McLaughlin issued a release that included a message to firm employees from chairman John Vanarthos. The message said Norris "was truly the best of who we are and what we strive to be. He was a phenomenal lawyer, an outstanding partner, a true pillar of the legal community, and a great and trusted friend to us all. Anyone who knew him had nothing but the greatest respect and affection for him, holding him in the highest esteem. Dick will always be a source of pride for the firm and, for that, we will always owe him a deep debt of gratitude. We will love and miss him forever."

According to a prior bio published in the Law Journal, Norris grew up in Atlantic City, the son of an optometrist, went to college and law school on scholarships and loans, and drove a taxi cab in the summers to help pay for his education. He got his start in lawyering as a member of the U.S. Air Force's Judge Advocate General Office. He launched his firm in 1953 with Arthur Meredith on Main Street in Somerville, later moving to Bridgewater, where the firm remains headquartered today. (Meredith would later join the Superior Court bench.)

Norris was Somerset County's first public defender in 1967. He served as the Somerset County Bar Association president in 1970-71, and helped establish Somerset County Legal Services. Over the years, the firm grew, and Norris developed a reputation for trial law, family law, and social justice matters. In 2009, the New Jersey Commission on Professionalism in the Law awarded Norris the Daniel J. O'Hern Award for professionalism in the law.

New Jersey lawyer Cynthia Jacob, who knew Norris from the Public Defender's Office, joined his firm in 1977. There were fewer than 20 lawyers at the firm then, and she was the seventh or eighth partner there, she said.

Though she already had a decade's worth of practice experience at the time, "I always considered Dick to be a really good mentor," Jacob said in a phone interview.

The growth of the firm was owing largely to Norris' personality and status in Somerville, where he owned businesses and was very involved in the community, said Jacob, a fellow O'Hern Award winner.

"He was known in Somerville—he was known in a very positive way," and once he won clients' business, "they loved him, and they stayed with him forever," she said.

William Dreier, a longtime jurist in New Jersey and the Appellate Division's presiding judge for several years before leaving the bench in 1998, said the two remained close up to Norris' death.

"Dick Norris was the reason I joined the firm after retiring from the bench in 1998," said Dreier, who is of counsel at Norris McLaughlin. "We became close friends and ate lunch together nearly every day. I learned firsthand that he was a superb lawyer in many fields, a gifted writer, and most of all a gentleman. He had a wonderful sense of humor that lasted throughout his illnesses and disabilities following a serious accident."

Dreier added, "In the last months before the coronavirus, I would drive him to lunches that would stretch out to hours as his Harvard Law School-trained mind would engage a myriad of topics, even at 93 years old. He had particular pride that the two-man firm he started with Judge Meredith 60 years ago had grown to the … firm it is today."

Jacob added that Norris' willingness to add practice areas also was a catalyst for firm growth.

"He knew how to share the work with the right people," said Jacob, who remained at the firm until she and others left in 1986 to form Collier, Jacob & Mills in Somerset. (That firm was later absorbed into the New Jersey office of Fisher & Phillips, where she still practices.)

Norris was "pugnacious but always professional," and a "terrific trial lawyer" who "won most of the cases he actually tried," Jacob said. "I think he enjoyed every courtroom battle he was ever in."

The spinoff of Collier Jacob was not entirely smooth, resulting in litigation. Norris, for this part, though, remained friendly, said Jacob, and "didn't take it personally."

Richard Badolato, also a fellow recipient of the O'Hern Award, said he got to know Norris personally later in his career, but knew him by reputation long before that.

"He was a real professional—classy guy, did everything the right way, was very kind to younger lawyers," said Badolato, of counsel to Walsh Pizzi O'Reilly Falanga in Newark, in a phone interview.

"He should be looked at as a model to the professional," added Badolato, calling Norris "one of the pioneers" in New Jersey law for building his namesake firm.