Robert Ehrlich is planning on higher offices in the near future, specifically a move to a downtown Baltimore high-rise this summer for the Maryland offices of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, the branch he heads for the big North Carolina law firm.
“We couldn?t find enough [class] A office space in the Annapolis-BWI corridor to handle our growth plan,” former Gov. Ehrlich told The Examiner this week. “I would have preferred not to be in Baltimore,” but that?s the only place the firm could find 25,000 to 30,000 square feet in one place.
“The goal of the firm is to grow to 40 lawyers in two years ? that?s the business plan, and we are moving to 250 West Pratt in about six weeks to accommodate that growth,” Ehrlich said. “There will be other names that you will recognize.”
Womble is a 600-lawyer firm headquartered in North Carolina headed by James Hunt, a four-term Democratic governor there.
The Maryland office has only four lawyers and three communication consultants ? all connected to the Ehrlich administration ? occupying a suite in a low-rise building near the airport.
“We have a lot of autonomy here to represent a lot of clients,” Ehrlich said. “The firm would like us to focus on firm strengths,” which include intellectual property, banking and real estate.
Ehrlich hadn?t practiced law since he left the Baltimore firm of Ober Kaler after he was elected to Congress 1993. He said Womble made “the strategic decision a couple of years” to become more a one-stop shop for its corporate clients, including communications consulting.
That made bringing in his State House communications team ? Paul Schurick, Greg Massoni and Henry Fawell ? “an easy sell, and I thought it would be the most difficult sell,” Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich, a former litigator, said his main job now is serving the existing client base in Maryland and “classic rainmaking” to bring in new clients to the firm. “It?s challenging and the firm has been terrific to me,” he said.
Hunt has been very supportive of Ehrlich?s continuing “high profile” in politics and on radio, he said. The firm even carries audio clips of the Bob and Kendel Ehrlich talk show on the home page of the Womble Web site.
