Profile: How Does Your Law Firm Grow? Green Thumb Judy Sullivan Nurtures Hendricks, Phillips By: June Bell

Judy Sullivan is on the move again. It’s not far, only from the 18^th floor of Peachtree Center’s 230 building to the 25^th floor. But it could be across the country for all the details involved.

Judy’s job as legal administrator for Hendrick, Phillips, Salzman & Flatt includes making sure the boutique construction-litigation firm doesn’t miss a beat despite relocating every brief and bookcase it owns. The move, expected to occur in early July, will give the 24 employees a fresh, newly renovated space while giving its administrator some hope for her ficus tree’s health.

She bought the ficus about a decade ago, when the firm relocated to its current home from the 14^th floor. Her corner office didn’t have enough light, though, so it received foster care in coworkers’ offices.

Judy, an avid gardener, is thrilled that her new office will provide a happier home for her tree as well as a panoramic view of downtown. After 21 years with the same employer, she deserves it. Her job involves overseeing just about everything that Hendrick, Phillips’ eleven attorneys and 13 support staffers need to litigate, communicate and collect their paychecks.

“The only day to day activity I’m not responsible for,” Judy says with a chuckle, “is the performance of the attorneys.”

The Atlanta native, says she’s always been attracted to law. She attended Clayton State when it was a junior college but left at 19 when she married a sailor. His enlistment took her to Charleston, S.C., and Sicily before they divorced. She returned to Atlanta to work at Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, fulfilling a long-time dream.

 “For some reason, I wanted to be a legal secretary,” Judy says. “That was the most glamorous thing I could think of, other than being a flight attendant!”

Though she had no experience in the legal field, she learned quickly and a few years later, in 1977, she joined what was then Stokes & Shapiro. She soon became the firm’s bookkeeper. When five attorneys left to form their own firm, she followed them in 1983. And she’s still working for them.  They have become her family.

Hendrick, Phillips concentrates in litigation involving construction, general contractors and subcontractors. Many of its attorneys are also engineers who are often on the road meeting with clients. Judy has encouraged them to experiment with evolving technology to boost their communication and productivity.

She’s been almost too successful, she admits: “I had to drag them into the computer world ten to fifteen years ago. Now they’re hooked and keep me hopping, because everyone wants a laptop, a Blackberry and digital dictation  … many of us are remotely networked so we can work off site, day or night.”

Judy works some long hours herself, but she notes proudly that she no longer works 12-hour days and rarely works Saturdays.

Her favorite parts of her job are space planning and navigating thickets of numbers. “I love doing budgets,” she says. “I like spreadsheets. I’m a very detail oriented person.” She also enjoys space planning. Her least favorite part?  “Being the policewoman,” she whispers.

She handles all accounts payable, insurance, 401(k) plan, equipment and furniture purchases, leaving a staff accountant to focus on billing. She is responsible for the firm’s financials and meets weekly with an information technology subcontractor to keep the firm’s hardware and software upgraded and running smoothly.

Managing partner Will Flatt, who’s known Judy for 13 years, says she skillfully walks a fine line in implementing the attorneys’ policies while maintaining a friendly dialogue with the support staff.

She handles so many details involved in managing a law firm that many of them completely escape his notice. “In all candor, she truly does run the show,” he says. “Even though we’re small, we pretty much have a hands-off approach. We have total trust in Judy’s ability, judgment and the decisions she makes.”

He’s amazed by her ability to collect about 95 percent of outstanding balances owed to the firm. “She won’t tell me her little secrets,” Flatt says, but he suspects Judy gets results because she doesn’t lose sight of critical minutia while remaining focused on the big picture.

That ability to multitask was put to good use from 2001 to 2003, when Judy served two terms as ALA’s treasurer. She’s active in the small-firm section and has served five times on the vendor luncheon committee. Last year she chaired the first online salary survey. 

Judy’s been an ALA member for 21 years and has been delighted to watch the group evolve. “It has become so much more sophisticated, much more of a business dedicated to the education of it’s members,” she say, then adds, “and we go to much nicer places to eat now.”

ALA’s listserv has been a godsend. Judy recently had to find a bus to transport 30 attorneys and clients to a Braves game. Rather than wasting time calling bus companies to see if they could accommodate her group, she asked her network of legal administrators for recommendations. She posted her query at 11:26 a.m. and had 15 helpful responses by 2:09 p.m. “The ALA has made my job so much easier because if you don’t know an answer, someone out there does,” she says.   

In 21 years, Judy has missed only two national conferences – the one in 1994 in and this year’s conference in Philadelphia. It was no coincidence that both fell smack in the middle of moves that she supervised.

Despite her enthusiasm for ALA and her career, Judy says she’s hoping to retire in the next five years. “No one should do this for more than 30 years,” she says. “It’s a very stressful way to make a living. It’s hard on your body. It’s hard on your psyche.”

In her life after legal administration Judy plans to study horticulture, and pursue a second career involving gardening. Anyone who’s visited her 80-year-old Buckhead home has seen her peaceful koi pond and the well-tended hydrangeas, climbing roses, peonies and irises that fill her garden, where she hosted the first annual Administrative Professional’s Day Garden Party for the firm’s staff this Spring.   Word in the hallways – it was a rousing success.          

June D. Bell has profiled more than a dozen of Atlanta’s ALA members. Contact her at junebell@aol.com.

Editor: Todd A. Wiggins (twiggins@cpmas.com) (This publication is the property of the Atlanta Association of Legal Administrators. Reproduction or reprint without prior permission is strictly prohibited. Click here to request reprint permission.)

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