EDITOR’S NOTE: This is another in an occasional series of stories examining 50 years of Nashua business. Stories and multimedia pieces will focus on Milestones, Hidden Assets, and the Economic Engines of the city’s business community.

NASHUA – In some ways, plenty of things have changed since Nashua’s oldest law firm was established; but in other ways, not much has changed at all.

To see the contrast, check out the imposing offices of Hamblett & Kerrigan in the former Indian Head Bank building on Main Street.

“It’s busy on the third floor, quiet on the first floor,” is how J. Daniel Marr, a director, puts it.

The first floor of the offices has an elegant lobby to impress prospective clients off the street and a huge wall lined with legal books for perusing, just like you’d expect.

Except that hardly any clients come in off the street any more – they phone, they email, they choose lawyers over the Internet – and the books are unused, having long ago been replaced by electronic documentation.

“Technology has certainly changed the transactional side of the industry,” Marr said.

Much of that change is for the better he said, such as emailing documents. “I have a case right now down in Boston – it’s nice not to have to drop it off down there.”

But upstairs, where the firm’s seven lawyers and associated staff work, things are much more similar to the way they were in 1889, when Charles Hamblett founded the practice.

Attorneys and clients still have to talk, usually talk a lot, while cases are going through courts. The firm handles most aspects of civil law – that is, no criminal cases. In many areas, such as in divorce cases, knowledge of people is more important than knowledge of law.

“Sometimes you’re more of a counselor, not just an advocate,” said Marr, giving an example of a client in a divorce who wants to bring up a spouse’s drinking without thinking of its effect on their young child.

Technology has obviously made some changes – email chains, conference calls and video conferencing are interspersed among the phone calls and face-to-face meetings – but when it comes to deciding how to handle cases and getting them moved through court, “I haven’t felt that technology has speeded up litigation,” Marr said.

And while the practice tries to keep up with changes in finding clients – a recent board of directors meeting discussed whether to put those UPC smartphone codes on their marketing materials – it also uses tried and true methods. Marr has, for example, written a legal column for The Telegraph for many years.

Names are complicated

There’s something else to note about Hamblett & Kerrigan: It hasn’t got any Hambletts and it hasn’t got any Kerrigans, even though attorneys with both of those names practice in the region.

“That’s not unusual,” said Timothy Kerrigan, a Nashua attorney no longer associated with the firm where he practiced with his father for 28 years. He headed out on his own last year, after his father’s death: “I had never planned to practice there, except for the fact that I had the opportunity to practice with my dad. I never thought it would last that long,” he said.

Kerrigan ticked off large New Hampshire firms whose names no longer reflect their partners. “McLean has no McLean; Devine Millimet, no Devine, no Millimet; Orr and Reno has no Orr, has no Reno,” he said. “I’m sure there are others.”

It turns out that naming a law firm is more complicated than it seems.

According to Marr, the firm changed names regularly over the first 90 years of its existence, reflecting partners coming and going: Hamblett & Hamblett, then Hamblett, Griffith, Moran & Hamblett, then Hamblett, Moran & Hamblett, then Hamblett, Kerrigan & Latourette, then Hamblett, Kerrigan, Latourette & Lopez.

In 1977, however, it changed from a partnership to a professional association, a form of corporation, and shortened its name to Hamblett & Kerrigan P.A.

Changing the name of a corporation, as compared to a partnership, is complicated and expensive, so the name Hamblett & Kerrigan has remained even as attorneys have come and gone – including some as well-known as H. Michael Deasy, who became a bankruptcy judge.

The story is similar at other practices.

Hamblett & Kerrigan has fluctuated in size over time, as well. In the 1980s, it had nearly two dozen lawyers and was one of the biggest practices in the state.

That was unusual for Nashua, which doesn’t generally have really large firms, particularly out-of-state firms that tend to focus on the state’s biggest city or its capital. Law practices based in Nashua have other characteristics, notably the fact that they tend to be licensed in Massachusetts as well as New Hampshire, but not size.

“The big regional New England firms typically have gone into Manchester,” said Dan Weiss, communications director for the New Hampshire Bar Association.

Hamblett & Kerrigan is now at the large end of small or the small end of medium-sized, depending on your point of view, which seems to be about as big as Nashua practices get these days.

Experience helps

Despite all the changes, and the fact that few clients walk in off the street, Marr says there’s an advantage to having a long-established name in a visible location on Main Street.

“I do believe it helps to have a firm that has been around for a while. There is experience, knowledge, connections,” he said. “Some of my clients, Joe Kerrigan used to represent their dads.”

Marr said the roughly two dozen non-attorneys average more than 15 years in the practice, as do the attorneys.

As for Marr, he says that during his 25-year career, he has, as would be expected, seen some things change, but not everything.

Among the changes? More wrongful-discharge cases are filed against employers these days.

Among the things that have stayed the same?

“Clients like to start each conversation with a new lawyer joke,” he said.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Follow Brooks’
blog on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).