Company Profile
Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP
Company Overview
Benesch is a business law firm with offices in Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Shanghai, White Plains and Wilmington. Benesch is dedicated to building a deep understanding of our clients, their businesses and their industries. We develop client-focused teams to ensure first class legal service, view business issues from our clients' perspective and assist in discovering the best legal services to address our clients' needs, drawing upon the strengths of diverse, knowledgeable and experienced lawyers. The firm services national and international clients that include public and private, middle market and emerging companies as well as private equity funds, entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, trusts and estates.
Benesch’s attorney group is a multi-dimensional collection of people from diverse law schools, ethnic backgrounds, religions and even prior careers. We have attorneys who have formerly been judges, nurses (co-chair of the Health Care Practice Group) and engineers. We even have a Grammy Award nominee (co-chair of the Intellectual Property Practice Group) in our midst. We believe that a diverse workplace enhances and energizes the firm and makes it an interesting place to work.
Benesch values and promotes the diversity of its attorneys and staff. Dedication to diversity helps the firm to attract and retain talented employees, enhances its relationships with current clients, and expands the Firm's market share. The Firm is committed to realizing and maintaining an environment that welcomes and embraces diversity, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical ability and religious beliefs. In support of the Firm's commitment, the Executive Committee established a Diversity Initiative Committee and endorses the key values developed by the Committee. These key values are designed to promote an environment in which differences are respected, employees are treated fairly and individual skills and talents are valued.
As part of Benesch’s ongoing strategic plan, the leadership of the firm has established a set of core values. The following principles consistently guide the firm’s lawyers and staff in the successful pursuit of clients’ interests and the advancement of the firm:
* Honesty, trust, integrity and ethical behavior in all our actions.
* Excellence, competence and responsiveness in serving our clients.
* Innovative and collaborative solutions for our clients.
* Mutual respect, candor, teamwork and civility in our interactions.
* Accountability and meaningful contributions to the ongoing success of the firm.
* Meaningful contributions to the communities in which we live and work.
We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on any grounds. Our nondiscrimination policy governs all aspects of employment including hiring, assignments, promotions, discharges, and other terms and conditions of employment.
We invite you to go to this link to view our recruiting video and our recruiting brochure: http://www.beneschlaw.com/careers/xprGeneralContentCareerFlash.aspx?xpST=CareersOverview
Company History
Benesch was founded in 1938 with the name Benesch, Friedlander & Morris. The firm's original offices were on the 11th floor of the Citizens Building in Cleveland, which is now known as the City Club Building.
Alfred A. Benesch's position as Ohio Director of Commerce was ending (Democrat Governor Martin L. Davie was defeated by Republican John W. Bricker and Benesch lost his position). Jerome M. Friedlander, a real estate and finance company lawyer as well as an arbitrator for the motion picture industry, was appointed under the mandates of the Depression-era National Recovery Administration. I. Robert Morris was a practicing trial attorney, professor at the Cleveland Law School, President of the League for Human Affairs and a Trustee of Neighborhood Settlement. Robert I. Kopper was a tax specialist and the fourth partner in the new firm. Other attorneys associated with Benesch's foundation were Frank W. Briton, Benjamin S. Gerson and Edward A. Liebenthal.
Benesch, who graduated law school in 1903 from Harvard, was a councilman at large in Cleveland in 1911, Cleveland’s Safety Director in 1914 and was elected to the Cleveland Board of Education in 1925 where he served for 37 years and as President for three terms. In 1942, the Federal Office of Price Administration named him Director of Rent Control for the Cleveland area during World War II. The Alfred A. Benesch Elementary School in Cleveland is named after him.
The firm has had seven names over the years: 1938 – Benesch, Friedlander & Morris; 1940 – Benesch, Marsteller, Friedlander & Morris; 1943 – Benesch, Friedlander & Morris; 1951 – Benesch, Friedlander & Mendelson; 1955 – Benesch, Friedlander, Mendelson, Gnau & Coplan; 1962 – Benesch, Friedlander, Mendelson & Coplan; and 1975 – Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff.
Robert C. "Bob" Coplan, Alfred Benesch’s nephew, joined the firm at the end of World War II as a U.S. Navy Veteran in the Naval Air Force. The firm’s original partnership was dissolved and became an association of lawyers. Coplan was hired by Friedlander for $150 a month and was able to keep his own fees. This arrangement for newly hired lawyers continued until the 1970's.
Coplan established the firm’s future course. He had a number of tenets, including: get the deal done and make it happen; understand that the client’s problems are paramount and communicate with the client to know what the client requires; be mindful of the client’s problems and if he is in real estate, go out and look at the property and if he is in manufacturing go through his plant and learn how the product is made; you can’t get the feel for advising without seeing; and, it’s more important to be counselor than a technician. Coplan also founded Cleveland Scholarship Programs from the Roy Markus estate and started hiring law students to do part-time work, filing papers and doing finance company collections.
In 1966 the firm again became a partnership. The founding partners: Bob Coplan, Allan Kleinman, George Aronoff, Bernie Goodman, Marv Kelner, Larry Bell and Mike Honohan. The new partnership's first public offering was done for Airport Parking Company of America in 1960. That decade IPOs were also done for Pennsylvania Life Insurance Company, Bally Manufacturing Corporation and Wright Airlines, Inc.
Notable Accomplishments / Recognition
Among many other notable accomplishments, the 2011 edition of The Best Lawyers in America®, which describes itself as the definitive guide to legal excellence in the U.S. and establishes a system that ranks firms based upon the number of attorneys selected in designated areas, ranked Benesch #1 in Ohio in the areas of Administrative Law and Transportation Law. The firm ranked #1 in Cleveland in the areas of Administrative Law, Corporate Law, Government Relations Law, Health Care Law, Real Estate Law and Venture Capital Law. The firm ranked #1 in Columbus in the areas of Appellate Law and Non-Profit/Charities Law. A total of 45 Benesch attorneys were named Best Lawyers in America®. We are also proud that we have been honored as an eight-time recipient of the NorthCoast 99 Best Places to Work award and an Ohio Women's Bar Association (OWBA) 2010 Family Friendly Award finalist.
Benesch was named BTI’s Client Service A-Team 2008, the only client service ranking based solely on unprompted client response during in-depth interviews. Clients indicate Benesch delivers superior client service. Benesch stood out in a field of more than 500 core laws firms serving the Fortune 1000.