In 2020, a year that proved incredibly difficult for small business, Nicholas Passalacqua, ’10, took the time to secure his firm’s steady growth.

Passalacqua & Associates, LLC, which has offices in both Utica and Syracuse, New York, was recognized in 2020 as the 36^th fastest growing firm in the nation by Law Firm 500.

“Thinking back to when I was starting on my own, I had no idea it would be this big,” he said. “I always thought, sure, but you never know.”

Passalacqua started the practice in 2013, and he knows that the person he was back then couldn’t have comprehended the success he’s seen in the years since then.

He first got his start as a law school graduate at a larger firm in the Utica area, where he was born and raised, but it wasn’t long before he realized that something didn’t quite fit. “Two and half years later, I was making the same exact money, I was sitting at a desk, I had one hearing and one trial in two and a half years, and I was like: ‘This is not what I want to do’.”

After coming to that conclusion, Passalacqua took some time off, during which he welcomed his first child. Meanwhile, he explored opportunities with his career, taking interviews with various firms and working on independent cases, before eventually deciding to take the plunge and start his own practice.

“I started getting these referrals and I was like, you know what, I always toyed with the idea of having my own practice – let’s just do it,” he said. “If it doesn’t work out, at least I can say I tried it and I know. I don’t have to ever worry about looking back and saying, ‘what if?’”

And he’s never looked back. His practice is primarily scaled to personal injury and criminal defense work. Passalacqua’s particular interest in these areas can be traced to his days doing mock trial at MSU College of Law and as a student in the Geoffrey Fieger Trial Practice Institute (Fieger TPI), studying the ins and outs of litigation and learning from leading practitioners.

“I liked the hands-on application of the classes in terms of trial-prepping a real-life case,” he explained. “Fieger TPI was much more practical-based, real-world lawyer stuff than you really get at all in law school.”

His firm experienced its largest growth from 2016 to 2019, the period for which it was ranked by Law Firm 500, and 2020 proved to be advantageous for the firm in an unanticipated way.  

“The pandemic was actually the best thing that ever happened [for my firm] from a business standpoint, because we grew so fast from ’16 to ’19 that our business growth far outpaced our business development,” Passalacqua explained. “We didn’t have anywhere near enough policies and procedures to guide us on the growth. When the pandemic happened, luckily we were able to keep everyone on staff, nobody missed a paycheck, but I was at home saying I need to take this opportunity – this slow-down in business – to get all of my numbers squared away, get these financial controls in place, set up some systems, policies, and procedures for certain routine things that can guide us and eliminate a lot of this stress […]. The pandemic really allowed us to step back and really dial things in and tighten up the business practices.”

Passalacqua knows that starting your own practice is a popular route for many young lawyers today, and he advises those ambitious individuals to take their time and to learn from others before veering off on their own.

“I would say find an opportunity to work in a firm in the practice area and the market that you think you want to work,” he explained. “If you want to be in Atlanta and you think you want to do divorce and family law, get into a decent-sized practice to make sure that’s what you do want to do without having to take all this risk and worry about everything else on top of it.”

“Get some experience first and then, if and when you decide to pull the trigger and start your own practice, take the time and headache of putting all the business elements together first, really build out your business plan and your system policies and procedures,” Passalacqua added.

“It’s time well spent, you might not see a direct ROI from it right away, but down the road you’ll be extremely thankful you have those in place.”