DANIEL J. O'RIELLY

With nearly 25 years of experience, Daniel J. O’Rielly has been able to build success within his field by counseling and advising numerous California law firms on a variety of issues regarding professional responsibility, risk management, and law firm practice management, providing insight, analysis and judgment to lawyers and their firms to help solve numerous complex and sensitive issues.

“Part of what makes it unique is that because we only represent California law firms, we see the types of issues they face every single day,” O’Rielly said. “That gives us a unique perspective when we are counseling any client because it can help put client problems into context.”

Before solely focusing on the law firm advisory practice, O’Rielly and his partners at O’Rielly & Roche LLP handled numerous cases that dealt with business litigation and law firm disputes. Because of the success in those cases, the team sought to “reorient the firm to focus on advisory practice exclusively,” O’Rielly said. “It grew over 16 years based off of what our clients were asking, needing and wanting from us.”

O’Rielly and his law partner Dena Roche decided to restructure into a firm that “is now exclusively focused on helping law firms to navigate their most vexing problems, structure and grow their practices in the right ways, plan for and properly manage transitions, and minimize and avoid risk,” per the firm’s mission statement.

“So now we’re a highly focused practice that handles pretty much any legal ethics or business question that you could have for a law firm in California,” O’Rielly said.

O’Rielly credits his success to the trust he has been able to build with his clients because of the “highly confidential” nature the advisory practice consists of dealing with sensitive subject matter such as legal ethics advice, law firm mergers and partner departure advice. “That’s why people hire us. A prime component of our practice is that we are an independent source of confidential advice, therefore we are able to provide a fresh perspective … they know our advice and counsel is handled with the utmost discretion.”

One of the challenges O’Rielly faced came on the heels of figuring out how to help his clients restructure themselves after the COVID-19 pandemic. “COVID caused a great deal of disruption in law firm life. We have seen a lot of work related to law firms changing form and just changing the way they approach their practices.”

His approach to continuing success, however, never wavered. “Our approach has been successful for our clients because what we do is take a step back and put into context what types of goals they want to achieve based off of what we know from the current marketplace,” O’Rielly explained. “I think it helps a lot to overcome the anxiety and fear of the unknown that people might have … and it gives our clients that perspective to know that the problem is something that we’ve handled before.”

O’Rielly also serves as a member of many professional responsibility organizations, including the California State Bar’s Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct, the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers and the American Bar Association Center for Professional Responsibility.

“It’s been very valuable to get a perspective from all the activities that we do to see the types of policy issues that are being decided at those association levels, and then compare that to what we see practically from our clients about problems they see every day,” O’Rielly explained.

“There are significant policy decisions and considerations that are happening in legal ethics, for example how lawyers should be authorized to practice law and what the limits of that should be. It does provide really interesting balance to the practical problems we see every day.”

– Devon Belcher