The offices are very nice. Doug Doyle will tell you that himself.
But when DeCotiis Doyle LLP launched Feb. 1, the firm made a deliberate decision: nobody has to work in them.
That alone puts the Fairfield and Little Silver-based firm in rare company in the legal world. But Doyle, a founding equity partner, says it isn’t a perk — it’s the model.
Nearly five months in, with the firm growing from 10 attorneys to 14 and counting, the market is responding.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s different than the traditional model. We’re moving in a direction that the clients are absolutely appreciating.”
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DeCotiis Doyle was built around a thesis that managing partner Michael DeCotiis and Doyle had been developing for years:
The practice of law was changing, the pandemic accelerated it — and the firms that fought the new reality would lose the talent war.
The hourly billing model still works, Doyle said. But the idea that attorneys need to be at a desk in a specific building to be productive — that, the pandemic put to rest. Billing tracked in six-minute increments, productivity was measurable, and it turned out attorneys working remotely were getting the work done.
The question became: why fight it?
“We realized that we had to provide a quality of life for young attorneys who were willing to work really hard, but didn’t see the need to be in a bricks and mortar building,” Doyle said.
So DeCotiis Doyle built something different.
The firm’s two offices, in Fairfield and Little Silver, exist as optional hubs, with desks and monitors available for anyone who wants to drop in.
The real infrastructure is digital. The firm invested in a tech stack that lets Doyle reach any attorney instantly, regardless of where they are.
Weekly Tuesday morning video calls — cameras being on is required — replace the hallway conversation. The impact is the same.
“It enables us to be much more nimble and gives clients the sense that we’re on top of their matters,” Doyle said.
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The practice areas are focused: real estate, redevelopment and land use, litigation, government and corporate compliance, business law, healthcare and life sciences and public entity representation.
Redevelopment is the anchor.
Doyle said he and DeCotiis have been involved in well over $5 billion in redevelopment projects on both the public and private side, including major work in Newark and throughout Morris County.
DeCotiis, who served as Chief Counsel to Gov. James McGreevey and Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, brings a government relationships depth that few firms can match.
The boutique model, Doyle said, is a feature, not a limitation.
“We’re not going to be everything to everybody,” he said. “We’re going to focus on areas that we’re very, very good at, keep lean and mean, and provide the maximum quality service to the client at an appropriate legal rate.”
Doyle said he’s watching the broader legal market consolidate — mega-firms getting bigger, mid-sized firms struggling to compete on either talent or efficiency — and thinks DeCotiis Doyle is positioned exactly where it needs to be.
“It’s about providing excellent services in limited areas,” he said. “Boutiques are able to do that.”
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The model also lets DeCotiis Doyle recruit differently.
Rather than fishing in a local pond, the firm can draw attorneys from across New Jersey and the tri-state area. Since launching, the firm has grown to 14 attorneys. Doyle expects to be between 15 and 20 attorneys by year’s end.
The mix is deliberate, Doyle said. There’s a handful of veterans, a core of mid-career attorneys, and a group of lawyers five to seven years out of school who Doyle says bring energy and tech fluency that the firm couldn’t replicate any other way.
“We get the best ideas from the brightest and youngest people, and we can attract them from anywhere in the state,” he said.
For as much as the firm is about today, it also is thinking about tomorrow.
Doyle said the firm is thinking about the next generation of its own attorneys differently. At DeCotiis Doyle, everyone has a path to partnership and everyone is encouraged to develop business — a sharp contrast to the large-firm model where associates spend years billing without ever being invited to grow the book, he said.
“Everybody’s an owner at our firm. Everybody has the opportunity to grow the firm,” he said.
That’s why, he looks ahead to February 2027 — the firm’s first anniversary — Doyle said the goal isn’t just more attorneys. It’s more attorneys who share the same philosophy about where the practice of law is going.
“We’re not looking for the traditional person,” he said.
