After graduating from the University of Colorado in 1985, Pat Vellone took a job at 1600 Stout St. downtown and got to work for the law firm that would become Allen Vellone.
On Wednesday, he will leave that firm and that address for the first time in 40 years.
“It’s bittersweet, there’s no question,” he said Thursday. “But it is good and it is exciting.”
In a conference room containing moving boxes and bubble wrap, Vellone thought back on the firm that bears his name and what a younger version of himself would make of it.
“I absolutely did not imagine this. From the start that we had to where we are today was well beyond anything that I could have imagined. I am incredibly grateful for that — for 32 years of building a practice with the people that I built it with,” the lawyer said in an interview.
Allen Vellone’s 15 attorneys and 11 professional staff are joining Michael Best, a national firm, in a move that the two sides call a “combination.” They will move into the nearly 25,000 square feet that Michael Best is leasing at Block 162, according to a firm spokesman.
“Our competitors in the Denver market are national, full-service law firms and we saw the attractiveness of that,” Jordan Factor, a partner at Allen Vellone, said Thursday.
Mergers and consolidations are common in the legal industry and some of Denver’s largest local firms, including Sherman & Howard and Moye White, have been acquired in recent years. Consolidation makes it harder to hire top lawyers in the city, according to Vellone.
Michael Best first suggested a combination six years ago, Vellone and Factor recall. Nothing came of it then but the idea percolated in the lawyers’ minds. So, when Allen Vellone was ready to make a move at the start of this year, Michael Best was who they called.
“You have folks who have spent their entire careers at this firm and the idea of any kind of change was intimidating for some of those folks,” Factor said of his coworkers.
Vellone recalls there were questions about the culture of so-called Big Law, which is famous for its brutal hours — “That was very much on everybody’s mind. It was a concern for all of us” — but when the time came to announce the agreement, his employees were on board.
“It was emotional. We sat down with everyone and we walked through all of the reasons why we felt that this was the right move for us and the right fit for us,” Vellone said.
“Change is always difficult,” he added, “but I’ve found that the best opportunities come from change. I’m just happy that my work family gets to undergo that change with me.”
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