Back in 1997, when Polly McNeill decided to quit Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe to help launch Summit Law Group, it didn’t seem like the smartest bet. Leaving Heller, after all, meant giving up her busy environmental law practice, not to mention a coveted partner slot in the Seattle office of one of San Francisco’s oldest and most venerable firms.
Like her fellow Summit cofounders, McNeill was convinced that the standard law firm billing model was in desperate need of an overhaul. And she was excited by the idea of teaming up with Heller colleagues—including litigator Ralph Palumbo and employment partner Otto Klein—to build a different, more entrepreneurial kind of firm. But she’d also be leaving virtually all of her major matters behind at Heller, along with the relative stability and long-term job security that a big firm seemed to offer. Would Summit’s value-billing-based model actually attract clients? Would the Seattle-based Summit even be able to hold together more than a couple of years? There was no guarantee. “It was a huge leap of faith,” recalls McNeill, “and in more ways than one.”
