Everyone knows there are no guaranties in life. When it comes to business, business owners can take concrete steps to secure their current operations while facilitating growth. This is exactly what the attorneys of Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP and Platzer, Swergold, Goldberg, Katz & Jaslow LLP did by joining to form Goetz Platzer LLP on January 1, 2025.
Goetz Platzer doubled the size of each firm to a total of 40 attorneys, propelling growth and collaboration in their core practice areas of construction law, finance, real estate, commercial litigation, commercial collections, bankruptcy and trusts and estates.
Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP (Goetz) was founded in 1967 as a boutique law firm focusing on construction law, building a practice that served national and international owners, contractors, subcontractors, lenders, design firms in dispute resolution and litigation. Founders Peter Goetz and Gerry Fitzpatrick grew the firm, with continued expansion through the years, including bringing on Donald J. Carbone in the 1980s. Goetz died in May 2024, and Carbone remains an active pillar of the firm today.
Meanwhile, Platzer, Swergold, Goldberg, Katz, & Jaslow LLP (Platzer), also a boutique law firm more than 50 years old, had focused on bankruptcy law, secured transactions, general corporate law, litigation, commercial collections and more. The firm had established a reputation for excellence in the fields of bankruptcy law, debtor and creditor rights, insolvency, secured transactions, general corporate and commercial law, litigation and related legal matters.
“We have an opportunity to exponentially expand the platforms of the firms,” said Aaron Boyajian, co-managing partner of the newly combined law firm and equity partner of Goetz since 2018. “We have the ability to really grow.”
Platzer’s Cliff Katz serves as co-managing partner of Goetz Platzer with Boyajian.
The law firms had much in common despite offering client services in different practice areas, Boyajian said. Both firms were about 50 years old, were based in Manhattan, and serve the New York metropolitan area. And both faced the challenges of boutique firms in terms of efficiency and offering full services to their clients.
“We started talking with Howard Jaslow and Cliff Katz about two years ago,” Boyajian said. “They helped clients navigate finance issues, particularly clients in the garment industry. We found that their focus and ours were very complementary. There was a great potential integration there.”
Previously, Goetz would need to refer a client elsewhere for certain financing matters; Platzer would do the same on construction matters. Now, Goetz Platzer can simply bring someone in from down the hall at One Penn Plaza, Goetz’s longtime headquarters, which welcomed the Platzer team in late 2024. “Now we can keep it all under one roof and keep all our expenses under one roof, Boyajian said.
“While we’ve been attending to the succession of our own business, we are simultaneously helping our clients with their own business succession planning,” said Alison Arden Besunder, chair of the Trusts & Estates and Fiduciary Litigation practices. “Business succession requires intentionality of its owners. My partners and I have applied that to grow Goetz Fitzpatrick to the second generation, and now to a third act as Goetz Platzer. Our own experience with business succession informs our advice to our valued clients.”
Howard Jaslow, the senior equity partner from the original Platzer firm agreed with both Boyajian and Besunder. “There was a clear synergy between the two firms, which we hope will benefit the new entity and both existing and new firm clients,” he said.
“We went from a construction law boutique to a well-rounded law firm doing things outside construction law,” Boyajian recalled.
A 1999 merger with another law firm had brought in labor and employment practices to Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP. That was the last real growth until 2019 when Besunder joined the Goetz Fitzpatrick as an equity partner, after founding her own firm Arden Besunder PC in 2009. She added a significant expansion to the existing trusts and estates practice.
“We have a full team of attorneys and staff, offering services from basic planning to very thorough advanced succession needs,” Boyajian said.
Succession planning is a key component of estate planning for business owners and has resonance with nearly all of Goetz Platzer’s clients, the two said.
Planning for what happens to a company when current ownership or management retires or dies is never easy, Besunder noted. It is not as simple as directing that a business be left to the next generation. A business owner must consider how to maintain the continuity of business operations, maintain key employees and continue the flow of servicing the clients and customers. These are complexities that need to be resolved for owners who are too busy running their core businesses to become experts in other fields.
“We help business owners navigate the maze of business succession so that they can focus on their business and have peace of mind that their business will continue,” she said. “The approach to business succession depends on the core business. A real estate holding company can easily be left to second- or third-generation heirs who then hire people to manage it for them. They can remain largely hands-off if they wish,” Boyajian observed.
The fashion industry, which manufactures tangible goods and has direct relationships with textile providers and more that cannot be outsourced, is different.
“There is tangible product,” Boyajian explained. “There are more personal touches on the manufacturing side than on the real estate side. A fashion company may not make it to the next generation unless the owner fosters the continuity of the relationship to the next generation.”
Because the personal business relationships matter, succession planning is as much an art as it is applying the law, Besunder observed. It can be a very emotional process for a business owner as with many estate planning clients. This is especially true of companies that may be small entities without sophisticated business coaching.
“As a business owner myself, I try to meet the client where she is,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. All clients process information differently.”
There may also be serious tax implications for a business owner if they lack the liquidity to satisfy estate taxes that may result from the value of the business.
“A lot of people think that estate planning or any succession planning is simply pushing a button and generating a one-size-fits-all document,” she said. “The notion that this is a do-it-yourself project is dangerous. Lawyers add value by translating the clients’ objective to a legal document that lays out a road map for the plan and translating to the client what is possible in the law. There are also special considerations to elicit from the client by asking questions that the client might not think of that may affect the plan. Does the business have special certifications? Are they minority-owned businesses? What are real estate regulations now and what may change that could impact the plan?”
The power of Goetz Platzer’s combined practice areas adds value to this process.
“Platzer’s real estate practice focuses on the residential side. However, they also perform a lot of bank work, servicing the banks and other types of lenders,” Boyajian said. “I do a lot of office leasing, and we’re certainly growing that practice. With lease amendments, keeping the buildings occupied and changing deals, there’s never a dearth of opportunity.”
Platzer’s expertise in the financial industries, along with its more than 50 years of banking relationships, is another tool in the arsenal, while the former Goetz side can help garment industry and building owners deal with energy efficiency, leases, compliance and more.
That depth also allows Goetz Platzer LLP to compete with much larger firms, Boyajian said.
“We had debt expertise before the merger and good attorneys,” he said. “With the Platzer side bringing the same level, we can offer what the big firms do with the debtor creditor workouts.”
There are some areas that the combined law firm still doesn’t serve, including criminal and matrimonial matters. But clients are starting to learn about the expanded services that the Goetz Platzer attorneys can now access — a substantial construction and commercial litigation practice, for example.
“We are excited to join with dynamic attorneys who are passionate about the law and who have a positive impact on each other’s existing cultures. Bringing new people into the mix brings new expertise, new perspectives,” Besunder observed. “And there are a lot of cross-marketing opportunities so that we can help each other help our clients.”
Jaslow agreed and suggested that, “Our combined years of experience, now under one roof, allows us to offer more streamlined, comprehensive representation to current and future clients.”
