Power of the Big, Spirit of the Small

The occasion was the firm’s 10th Anniversary. And though the food and drink was nice, and the collection of corporate aircraft that surrounded us was indeed impressive, I was most impressed by the three principals themselves. They seemed interesting and intelligent, two words you might expect to use in describing lots of lawyers. But entrepreneurial? That, I wasn’t expecting.

“I wanted to have a little more control over what we practiced, how we practiced and even where we practiced,” says Fafinski, CEO and co-founding shareholder, about his decision to start the firm. “Don and I were both at a large firm downtown practicing together, and I wanted to have a firm that focused on commercial law. It was sort of a secondary practice at the firm we came from.”

“I had been doing insurance defense work for 27 years and was looking for other challenges,” Mark adds. “Bob and I were friends literally from the time he first started at the downtown firm so it seemed like a natural thing to join him in the new venture.”

“I remember that day extremely well,” says Johnson with a smile, speaking of June 1, 1999, the day they started their new firm. “We had a pretty good confidence level that things were going to work out. Still, there was a mix of what I would call heightened excitement and extreme terror.”

The three say they were very careful to do things ethically, and that they didn’t talk to clients before they left with the exception of a few where they were in the middle of something big. In those instances, they felt it would almost be more unethical not to tell them they were leaving and going on their own.

“It was an exciting time when we started,” Fafinski recalls. “We didn’t do a lot of law practicing that first week because we kept getting faxes from people saying, ‘I want you to be my lawyer.’ We had a good start with lots of clients right away. A lot of businesses don’t have that. Sun Country was in the middle of a lot of stuff and we had a great relationship with them and they wanted us to do their work. Having that boost right away with a big company like that who paid their bills was wonderful.” 

AH, YES, SUN COUNTRY. I told you aviation would figure into the story and the Twin Cities only remaining “hometown airline” was how it all began.

Donald Chance Mark, Jr., son of a Northwest pilot, had always been interested in aviation, and became very involved with aviation legal matters. He recalls getting a call from his insurance broker one day, asking if he would be willing to meet with a group of people who were interested in starting an airline. He drove to the airport and walked into a virtually empty hanger where there were several ex-Braniff Airlines employees sitting around talking.

“So I listened to these people and became very interested and enthusiastic about what they were planning. But I remember very distinctly driving back to the office and thinking that I had no clue as to what they needed  to do next. When I got downtown I went to young Bob Fafinski and asked him if he had any idea, and he rightly said he did. That was not only the start of a relationship with a client that continues to this day, it was also, literally, the beginnings of Sun Country Airlines.”

As it turned out, the third partner, Kevin Johnson, also added a lot to this burgeoning aviation practice. The first place he began working as a law clerk was at the in-house legal dept at northwest Airlines. So Fafinski Mark & Johnson seemed perfectly poised when a triple-threat of rising fuel costs, wage battles with unions and a decline in business travel hammered the airline industry in this country, driving many companies into bankruptcy.

The firm began representing large, international leasing companies, investors, hedge funds and financial institutions in complex commercial aviation transactions with airlines all over the world, as well as in the U.S. in deals involving large domestic airlines like northwest, united and uS Air.  These deals often involve the sale, purchase, leasing and financing of commercial aircraft fleets, sometimes in the context of an airline bankruptcy. They also employ lawyers who represented creditors who were impacted by an airline’s bankruptcy and got involved in the renegotiation of aircraft leases and sometimes in the repossession of assets in the bankruptcies.

IT IS AMAZING, when you think about it, that a relatively small, start-up law firm from Eden Prairie, Minn., could end up representing large, legacy companies at some of the most critical times in their histories.

“One of our best referral sources has been parties on the other side of a transaction,” explains Johnson. “So let’s go back to the beginning when we’re working with Sun Country. They weren’t a Fortune 500 company but they were leasing aircraft from some of the world’s largest aircraft lessors. We’re working with those companies, and those companies see that we’re often out-lawyering the lawyers that they use and they may call us later and say, ‘Hey, we want to use you next time.’ Or they may refer us to someone else they work with. Our performance in these transactions has reflected well on us all along and provided us with a lot of opportunities we might not have had otherwise.”

“Executives at large, public, global companies have the same pressures that entrepreneurs do in smaller companies, they’re just bigger,” opines Fafinski. “We have represented 17 Fortune 500 companies since we started and we simply listen well, figure out what’s going on in their business, leverage our relationships and then find solutions. We’ve found a way to appeal to them in a niche practice area or in an area where they have a particular need.”

“We try to put ourselves in the position of our clients and think the way they do,” adds Mark. “One of the things we talked about early on is that we not only want to be someone’s lawyer, we also want to be their business advisor, their confidante. And we want that relationship to be long-term. We’re not just interested in dealing with a client’s problems today, we’d like to be around to deal with their problems five years from now. We truly care about them and we’re looking for solutions, not necessarily the quickest way to earn a big fee.”

The three principals agree they are probably best known for their work in the commercial aviation industry. However, they want to emphasize they are also active in banking, the investment and corporate finance communities, the energy field, employment advising and litigation and so on. As a result, the next 10 years might not look exactly like the first 10.

“I was at a conference and was doodling and it was all about strategic planning and where law firms fit into that,” says Fafinski in closing. “I was coming through with some ideas about where are we going and what our strengths are and I realized we’re really good at being an alternative. We have the skill sets of large firms, but we have a smaller, more focused delivery of those services. We call it 'Power of the big, spirit of the small.' Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you can’t go after large goals and succeed. That’s been our mindset all along.” 

BizBriefing
FaFinski Mark & Johnson
Headquarters:  Eden Prairie     
Inception: 1999
Revenue: ND
Employees: 26 attorneys, 20 additional
Description: Fafinski Mark & Johnson, P.A. offers a full line of legal services to clients ranging from emerging businesses to Fortune 500 companies.
Website: fmjlaw.com

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