MCD Law Partners merges with Baer Crossey to offer legal services to startups

Fort Washington-based MCD Law Partners, a boutique law firm oriented toward startups in the region, is merging with Center City-based law firm, Baer Crossey.

Baer Crossey, a relatively small firm itself, provides legal services to entrepreneurs in the area.

Christopher McDemus, the founding and only partner of MCD Law Partners, will join the three-man group as Managing Partner. You might know him as VC Deal Lawyer from his blog of the same name. [Full Disclosure: VC Deal Lawyer has been a past Technically Philly event sponsor.]

McDemus told Technically Philly that the merger came about as he was trying to figure out how to grow his practice, with just one full time partner — him — and one part-time of counsel, Rebecca Weaver.

“You reach a sort of tipping point where you have to consciously decide, “Do I keep growing this, and find a scalable way to do that, or do I keep it at the current size which is manageable for a solo,” McDemus said. “There’s risk in the latter and, frankly, sitting still isn’t really in my nature so I decided on smart growth.”

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Frank Taney: open office hours for entrepreneurs from @ScaryLawyer of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney commercial litigation attorney Frank Taney hosts open office hours for young tech businesses in the region.

Since starting to host free, monthly open office hours in June, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney attorney Francis X. Taney has met with nearly two dozen entrepreneurs he never knew before.

“Some become paying clients, some I never see again, but almost everyone walks away with some knowledge they needed, which is really the point,” said the Center City commercial litigation lawyer better known on Twitter as @ScaryLawyer. “The bigger, the stronger the pie in Philadelphia, the better it is for all of us.”

(Which is a good perspective, as Technically Philly is hosting another startup advice open hours on Jan. 19, albeit more focused on investment than potential litigation.)

Taney’s effort started at the Corzo Center at the University of the Arts by answering questions from students who were mostly starting industrial crafts and other creative arts businesses. Now it’s grown into part lead generation and part giving back, he says, helping startups the fourth Wednesday of each month. The next opportunity will be Jan. 25 from 6-8pm.

“I’m typically very useful to people who are trying to figure out the legal bases they have to cover in launching a business, whether that relates to entity selection and formation, contractual and IP issues or other related issues,” said Taney, noting he has walked through actual disputes with young businesses.

One advantage of sitting with so many startups, says the South Jersey native and Cherry Hill resident, is that he’s been able to get a good sense of where the broad entrepreneurial community is headed in Philadelphia.

“You’ve always tended to see less of a bubble here, and that’s still the case” he said. “Nobody’s chasing the sizzle. They’re building businesses.”

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ApprenNet wants to train the next generation of startup lawyers

Drexel professor Karl Okamoto believes that to continue Philadelphia’s entrepreneurial growth, the city will need smarter lawyers.

“Most lawyers who walk the street are very poorly trained on how to help entrepreneurs,” he says. “Law school does a poor job training people how to practice, particularly when their clients are doing business as opposed to suing each other.”

To help young lawyers be better educated, he’s launched ApprenNet, a site that hopes to solve this problem in Philadelphia and elsewhere by directly connecting legal professionals with young lawyers. The site has four employees and is currently searching for beta testers says Okamoto, who sits on the board of Cosi and teaches transactional law at Drexel’s Earle Mack School of Law.

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