Since 1961, Boston companies, executives and families have brought Harlow & Vance the disputes and decisions they cannot afford to get wrong. Four practices, four partners, and the habit of telling you the odds on the first call.
Or call (555) 014-2427. A partner, not a receptionist, returns every call the same business day.
Thomas Harlow and Josephine Vance opened two rooms above a savings bank on Haverly Place and agreed to do four things well and decline the rest. It is still how a firm of twenty-three beats firms of six hundred.
“Take fewer cases, and see every one of them to the end.”
Thomas A. Harlow, 1961
When a company’s owners stop agreeing, or a contract stops meaning what it said, we prepare every case as if it will reach a jury. That is usually why it doesn’t.
Eleanor Harlow, lead partner31 trials to verdict
The exits, non-competes and severance terms that decide the next decade of a career, and the defense of employers when a disagreement becomes a claim. Our advice is dated, signed and kept current.
Marcus Vance, lead partnerFormer federal prosecutor
Commercial leases, acquisitions and the zoning appeals that decide whether a building gets built at all. We know the Zoning Board of Appeal by its habits and the Land Court by its docket.
Prema Raghunathan, lead partner$1.1 billion in closings
Plans written to be read by your family, not only by a court: wills and trusts, the succession of family companies, and, when it can’t be avoided, litigation in the Probate and Family Court.
Thomas Ellery, lead partnerFixed fees for most plans
We would rather show you a docket than a slogan. Most of our best results never reach a courtroom; these are a few that did, or nearly did.
$412million
recovered or protected for our clients since 1998, in verdicts, settlements and the judgments we kept from being entered against them.
1,864
matters closed since 2000, every one with a partner’s name on it
71%
of disputes resolved on our clients’ terms before trial
65
years at No. 9 Haverly Place, on the same fourth floor
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every matter turns on its own facts.
There has never been an intake department here. The partner who takes your first call leads your matter, signs every letter and picks up the phone, which is why there are four of us and not forty.
Managing partner · Business disputes
The founder’s granddaughter, and the firm’s first lawyer to argue twice before the Supreme Judicial Court in a single term. Opposing counsel describe her cross-examinations as perfectly polite, right up until they aren’t.
Partner · Employment
Nine years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney before coming home to the firm his grandmother co-founded. He negotiates for executives on Tuesdays and defends employers on Thursdays, which makes him very hard to surprise.
Partner · Real estate
Has closed more than a billion dollars of Boston commercial property and argued forty zoning appeals, most of them before nine in the morning. Developers call her before they buy; neighbors’ associations call her after.
Partner · Estates & trusts
A former trust officer who writes plans a family can read at the kitchen table, then administers them when the time comes. Thirty years in, he still answers his own phone and still makes house calls in Wellesley.
Bring the documents you have and the question that keeps you up. Forty-five minutes later you’ll know where you stand, what it might cost and whether you need us at all.
Arrange a first consultationIn our offices or by video, at no charge. If the honest answer is that you don’t need a lawyer, you will hear that too.
Strategy, a budget range, the likely timeline and our view of the odds, signed by the partner who will lead the work.
Fixed fees wherever the work allows. Where it doesn’t, a monthly cap that won’t move without your written approval.
Calls returned the same business day, and a written update every Friday on active matters, even when the update is that nothing moved.
Published, because you shouldn’t have to ask. Fixed wherever the work allows; everything else capped monthly, in writing.
Court and filing costs are passed through at cost. Retainers are held in a client trust account and reconciled every month.
Four times a year the partners write about what has changed in the law, and what it means at the kitchen table or the board table.
Eight years in, the 2018 statute has settled less than anyone hoped. Garden leave, “other mutually-agreed consideration” and the ten-business-day notice rule are where most agreements now come apart.
Most of the deadlocks we try began years earlier with a buy-sell clause nobody priced. Three questions to ask while everyone is still friends.
Four siblings, one cottage in Chatham and no plan. How families keep a place in the family without keeping a feud.