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Six Lessons Learned From Pond Lehocky Giordano’s First 15 Years
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Without a doubt, opening the doors to Pond Lehocky Giordano on July 1, 2010, with a handful of attorneys and staff members, was the best professional decision the three of us have ever made. We take enormous pride in the fact that our clients give our over 175 attorneys and staff members the privilege and honor of letting us fight for them when their lives have been derailed by a health crisis, and letting us be their champions while they recover from an accident, illness, or injury.
It surely wasn’t the easiest decision, nor has the path from 2010 to 2025 been straight, smooth, or predictable. But today, we have grown to become the largest workers’ compensation and disability law firm in Pennsylvania, and one of the largest such firms in the U.S.
Our firm’s recent celebration of its 15th anniversary gave us an opportunity to reflect on some lessons we’ve learned in starting, building, and managing Pond Lehocky Giordano. Here are six of them.
A law firm will only go as far as its collective mindset will take it
Mindset determines everything about how a law firm operates, including its growth, how it serves and retains clients, and its ability to attract attorneys and staff. If a firm’s attorneys and staff have a value system and mindset focused primarily on individual achievement, hubris, ego, and burning the candle at both ends, that law firm will struggle to achieve mediocrity, let alone thrive and become a market leader.
On the other hand, if the firm’s attorneys and staff enjoy being on a team, working toward a common goal, having each other’s backs, and they all understand the importance of taking care of their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, the sky’s the limit for what they can achieve together.
At Pond Lehocky Giordano, we embrace a mindset that includes high character, a moral compass, joy in serving clients, love for the work we do and each other, believing that treating our clients right is both good business and good karma, growth, and being driven by excellence. Ownership of and belief in this mindset starts with the three of us as the founding partners. If we didn’t embrace this mindset, no one at the firm would. This mindset has played a key role in our growth and our ability to secure favorable outcomes for our clients.
The values underpinning a law firm’s culture must start at the top—and be protected
Whereas a law firm’s mindset represents its collective view of the world, its culture comprises the shared norms, practices, and behaviors that support that mindset. To build a productive and uplifting culture that attorneys and staff buy into, and that will attract clients and referrals, a law firm’s leaders must live and breathe that culture, make it part of the firm’s DNA, and protect and honor it. Law firm culture doesn’t simply happen; law firm leaders must be intentional in creating and modeling the culture they want their firms to have.
We’ve worked hard to instill a culture at Pond Lehocky Giordano that includes fairness, honesty, hard work, a team-first approach, having each other’s backs, service to clients first and then to others and the community at large, strong leadership with no fear of quick decision making guided by what’s best for the law firm, and a duty and responsibility to those whom you lead. Though it isn’t always easy, the three of us must show up each day personifying these norms. If we didn’t, how could we expect our attorneys and staff to do so?
Believe in yourself, be yourself, and always do the right thing
Starting, building, and running a law firm are excellent ways to court self-doubt. As lawyers, we take comfort in relying on precedent and established processes and procedures that seem to work as well today as they did a decade ago. When you’re in the early days of building a law firm that bears your name, if you’re not feeling discomfort and uncertainty, you might not have a pulse. When these feelings come over you, it can be tempting to look outside for all the answers.
While that may be a winning formula in certain circumstances, we built Pond Lehocky Giordano based on the vision we had for how a modern workers’ compensation and disability law firm should operate. As we built the firm, it was important for us to trust our instincts when venturing into uncharted territory and deciding how to handle situations we were encountering for the first time.
We were committed to being true to ourselves and making decisions based on our goals and values, rather than on what other attorneys told us to base our decisions on. We focused on always doing right by our clients, colleagues, and the legal community overall—and still prioritize that above all else.
Attorneys at new firms often take shortcuts operationally and marketing-wise in hopes of catching up to market leaders. We’ve always avoided taking them, knowing that we were not sprinting toward short-term, superficial growth metrics; we were slowly building a law firm with a differentiated culture and approach to the practice of law.
Recognize the privilege and importance of the responsibility of representing your client
In our mind, doing the right thing has always started with understanding the sanctity of the attorney-client relationship. That might seem hokey and old-timey, but everything in a law firm starts and ends with clients. A law firm’s growth—if not its continued existence—depends on its ability to attract clients, support them during the darkest days of their lives, provide excellent client service, resolve their legal issues favorably, and receive referrals from happy clients.
For this reason, from day one, we have viewed our representation of every client and the responsibility that comes with it as a privilege. Of all the law firms with workers’ compensation and disability practices that they could have turned to, our clients turned to us.
Every Pond Lehocky Giordano attorney and staff member knows we cannot take our clients for granted. We also know we are often the last line of defense they have against employers or insurance carriers who refuse to provide them with the legal benefits they are required to provide under statutes, regulations, or contracts. Our obsession with client service and doing right by our clients has been a key driver of our success.
It is important to know yourself and others
As a law firm owner and leader, it’s not enough to know the law, have a firm grasp of leadership principles, and be a master marketer. Those things might help you achieve short-term success. But long-term success and personal growth only come when you know yourself and others.
When you understand your strengths, weaknesses, potential for growth, and limitations, as well as those of your team members, you can assemble a high-functioning team where everyone is in an optimal position to excel. Conventional wisdom says we should work on fixing our flaws. But the magic happens when a law firm’s attorneys and staff play to their strengths.
Knowing the tasks you enjoy doing and are good at can help you know when to handle certain tasks yourself and delegate others. The same thing goes for your attorneys and staff. The attorneys who are introverted, talented writers should focus on researching and writing motions and briefs, while you can task your extroverted, emotionally intelligent colleagues with interacting with clients. Putting our attorneys and staff in positions to excel has been a big reason our firm has grown to its current size.
Showing gratitude and having an “of service” mindset builds bonds between firm leaders and their attorneys and staff
Over the last 15 years, leaders at our firm—including the three of us—have made a concerted effort to express gratitude to the firm’s attorneys and staff regularly and to approach our roles as leaders with an “of service” leadership mindset. This is another reason our firm has grown the way it has.
Yes, “gratitude” is nearing “authenticity” these days as an overused buzzword. But unlike the amorphous “authenticity,” gratitude is real and easy to give when your heart is in the right place. When the partners at our firm show gratitude to their attorneys and staff by acknowledging their contributions, they’re telling them they’re not viewed as merely warm bodies sitting in front of computer screens. We want our attorneys and staff to know that, by us making them feel seen and respected, we appreciate the hard work they put in for our clients each day, and we value their effort—not just the results of their efforts.
Relatedly, our firm’s partners have the mindset that their job is to help our attorneys and staff succeed by prioritizing their growth and success. We empower our attorneys and staff to operate at their highest potential, which they often do. It’s not just about providing our attorneys and staff with new technology and the latest software—it’s about supporting our attorneys and staff to help them grow professionally and be the best people they can be inside the office and out.
Lessons learned, mistakes made
Establishing and operating Pond Lehocky Giordano has been an exciting, trying, and humbling professional endeavor. But this firm would not exist without our wonderful clients who trust us with their legal matters, nor without our attorneys and staff whose devotion to our clients knows no bounds.
We are forever indebted to our clients and colleagues for helping us to build Pond Lehocky Giordano over the last 15 years. Should you decide one day to open the doors to your own law firm—or if you’re already there—we hope these six lessons will save you some blood, sweat, and tears.
Reprinted with permission from the October 23, 2025 edition of The Legal Intelligencer © 2025 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-257-3382 or reprints@alm.com.
