Monday, February 3, 2003

Movers & Innovators

Contente keys up for managing role

By Jeff Miller

As the new managing partner at Lucash Gesmer and Updegrove LLP, a 25-attorney Boston law firm, William Contente faces a daunting legal market. Firms all over the city are issuing pink slips to attorneys in an environment where the most optimistic anticipate a flat 2003.

Hill & Barlow's demise haunts all of the small and mid-size firms.

"The mid-size firms are getting hammered," Contente said. "My biggest challenge is to keep the firm alive and healthy, and to keep the lawyers challenged in a relatively growth-free environment."

Contente took over as managing partner after Tom Dirken stepped down to focus more on building the firm's client base.

"He'd basically served six years of a two-year term," Contente said. "He was the first managing partner we had and worked to create a lot of infrastructure and management expertise at the firm."

Lucash Gessmer and Updegrove (LGU) is a boutique firm that focuses on representing early-stage companies and technology consortia, and on providing specialized services such as intellectual property law for large companies and institutions.

"I think we have to remember we're a niche player," Contente said. "We'll never be all things to all people the way the large Boston or the large national firms can be. But in those niches, we serve our clients very well."

Contente went to LGU in 1989 precisely because it was a smaller firm. He previously had been at Testa Hurwitz & Thibeault LLP, where he worked with Andy Updegrove

before Updegrove left to co-found LGU.

His decision to follow Updegrove was cemented by a handshake with a stranger in the Testa Hurwitz lobby.

"It sounds silly, but when Testa was at 80 to 90 lawyers, it was getting too big for me," Contente said. "I remember going into the lobby looking for a new client. I saw someone I didn't recognize, so I went over to shake his hand, thinking he was my client. Turns out it was a litigator who had been there for six months."

Though career planning officers often say that one can major in just about anything before going on to law school, it's doubtful that many Boston attorneys share Contente's bachelor's degree in music.

Contente had hoped to become a professional pianist and, after graduation, he trained as a piano tuner to support himself while he pursued a music career. But he soon discovered he spent much more time tuning pianos than he did playing them.

"There's 88 keys and 270 strings, and if you're tuning you have to hit every one of them," Contente said. "I was bored to tears."

Weighing his options, he decided he'd pursue either law or engineering, and the lawyers he knew seemed to be having more fun, Contente said.

These days, Contente doesn't play the piano any more. Instead, he has taken up guitar.

"I've got two teen-aged sons, and found I could connect with them that way," Contente said. "That's what they wanted to play."