Nagy Wolfe Appleton LLP launches as boutique firms flex muscle.
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Tibor Nagy isn’t a stranger to the boutique law firm life. A veteran of Susman Godfrey, Nagy was the first attorney to join Stephen Susman in setting up a New York office back in the day. As 2025 dawns, Nagy has launched his own firm Nagy Wolfe Appleton LLP — along with partners Gregory Wolfe and Tracy Appleton — guided by the “vision of an early Susman Godfrey,” building a tight-knit collegial team working on high-stakes, complex commercial litigation.
Not even a week into the year, the firm is already busy with three trials lined up over the coming months.
Boutique firms aren’t new, obviously, but the launch of a new, small firm aimed at top-dollar legal work is a reminder of the growing demand for this business model.
As the top of the industry consolidates through more and more Biglaw mergers, boutique firms increasingly fill industry gaps. Bigger firms mean bigger lists of conflicts. And as Nagy points out, it’s not just existing clients, but “conflicts that they hope to have,” citing instances from his own career where he took on cases because big firms steered clear of going against big fish clients that some partner dreamed of bagging down the road.
Boutiques, on the other hand, offer freedom. For Nagy, that freedom extends to both sides of the “v,” with a mix of clients on both the plaintiff and defense side. “I love that representing a plaintiff can change someone’s life. And I have great experiences on defense side, but wouldn’t want to do only that.” He noted that staying flexible in this way “gives you the freedom to learn about both sides [of areas of law] that you wouldn’t otherwise.”
But it’s one thing to watch Biglaw firms close themselves off to work and another to build a firm that can seize that business. Complex commercial litigation is, for lack of a better term, complex. These are the sorts of cases that bury a firm in documents and, by extension, overhead as the firm builds out enough capacity to deal with it. Yet that obstacle doesn’t seem to deter boutiques as much as it did 20 or even 10 years ago.
In part, this a story about legal technology. “I think it’s fantastic to launch right now,” Nagy said. “The technology makes it easier to do everyday things.” Need phones? Zoom will get you a number cheap. Need 401(k)s? There’s a swift solution for that. “I had a case with a massive volume of documents, we had a team of five people [within the firm]… and three did most of the work.” Citing improved discovery tech and skilled vendors and contract attorneys, he explained that small firms are getting bigger matters done with confidence.
Though one of the best ways to save money is to shrink the office footprint. “You don’t need massive office space if you allow people to work remotely and a lot want to,” he said. It’s easy to stay connected and the pandemic taught even the most tech-skeptical lawyer how to work seamlessly from home, so there’s no reason to waste resources on massive offices. As long as the firm hires people who don’t need someone looking over their shoulder, the only facetime you need is on the smartphone.
Clients appreciate it. “They hire the lawyer, not the firm,” Nagy observed of big clients showing more confidence to make personal hires than chase brand name law firms. But the partner at the top of the matter still needs to deliver a team that clients trust. “What we’re selling are our people, their talent, their drive,” he explained. “We try to find really smart and driven people.”
And if it can save the client some money to get top-notch work, all the better.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
