Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller

Focus and practice areas

Ten practice groups sit under one roof in Philadelphia. The firm lists antitrust, bankruptcy, corporate and transactions, education, environmental, family law, insurance coverage, litigation, real estate, and tax and estates.

That spread covers both business disputes and personal legal matters. A company facing an antitrust claim and a person working through a custody schedule both have a group here. The firm describes its clients as businesses, governments and private clients, on a local, national and international basis.

Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller works on both sides of the matters it takes. Its own description names plaintiffs and defendants, buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers. In my opinion that two-sided posture tells you something useful about the firm: the lawyers see how each type of case looks from the opposite chair.

Where the offices are

Three locations carry the work. The main office is at One Logan Square in Philadelphia, with additional offices in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.

The geography follows the client base. Philadelphia anchors the commercial and litigation side. Cherry Hill reaches South Jersey clients, and Plymouth Meeting sits in Montgomery County, where much of the suburban family law and real estate work in the region originates.

How the team is built

The firm uses the shareholder title for its senior lawyers. Its home page carries a roster of named people, among them Eric Bloom, David Pudlin, Michael Masciandaro, Michele Fenkel, Eitan Kagedan, Kelley Fazzini, Ronald Schiller, Robert Ebby, Richard Goldstein, Thomas Brown and Michael Carlson.

Three of those surnames appear in the firm name itself. Pudlin and Schiller are both partners of record and current listed attorneys, which points to long tenure at the top of the firm.

Gerald L. Shoemaker

Shoemaker is a shareholder in the family law group. He earned his JD at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 2000 and his BA at Duquesne University in 1997. He is admitted in Pennsylvania.

His practice covers equitable distribution, alimony, custody and complex support matters. He has handled matters arising out of same-sex relationships, civil unions and partition of real property. He also works through arbitration, mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution, and he holds the position of second vice chair of the Pennsylvania Bar Association family law section.

What family law work involves here

Adoption and assisted reproduction matters fall inside the family law group. The firm also runs a family law blog.

Some general context helps here, and it applies to Pennsylvania family matters broadly. Equitable distribution means a court divides marital property by fairness factors, not by a fixed split. Income, length of marriage, standard of living and each spouse's earning capacity all enter the calculation. Complex support matters usually turn on how income gets defined, which is why business owners and commission earners take longer to resolve than salaried employees.

Alternative dispute resolution changes who decides. In mediation, a neutral third party helps the two sides reach their own agreement. In arbitration, the parties hand the decision to a chosen arbitrator and keep the matter out of open court. Both routes tend to move faster than a trial calendar allows.

Partition of real property comes up when two people co-own a house and one wants out. Unmarried couples and former civil union partners hit this often, because equitable distribution rules may not reach the property the way they would in a divorce. Shoemaker's listed work in that area lines up with the same-sex relationship and civil union matters on his page.

Insurance coverage, real estate and litigation

Three of the firm's groups map onto broad areas of demand. Insurance coverage work asks whether a policy responds to a given claim, and the answer usually lives in the policy wording, the exclusions and the timing of notice. Coverage disputes often run parallel to the underlying lawsuit, with a separate set of lawyers on each track.

Real estate practice at a firm with this mix typically spans acquisitions, financing, leasing and land use. The firm's own client description of buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers fits that pattern.

Litigation is a named group of its own, and it overlaps with the antitrust, environmental and education groups when those matters reach court. Education law in Pennsylvania draws in school districts, charter authorizations, special education disputes and employment questions, which is one reason the firm names governments among its clients.

History and public service

The About page names the late Dan Segal as a co-founder. The same page describes the firm as being in practice for more than thirty years.

Pro bono and community service get their own space on the site. The firm points to work connected to marriage equality litigation. As a reviewer I put weight on that kind of detail, because it dates the commitment: marriage equality cases in Pennsylvania ran through the years before and around the 2014 rulings, so the firm's family law group and its pro bono work were pulling in the same direction at a time when the law was still unsettled.

The firm also describes its people as central to its identity on the home page. Ten practice groups, three offices and a partner-named masthead give a fair picture of a Philadelphia firm that grew by adding depth in both commercial and personal work.

Reading the listing

The site publishes practice groups, office locations and a named roster. Detailed biographical pages are available for individual lawyers, with Shoemaker's giving law school, undergraduate degree, bar admission and a description of his subject areas.

Anyone comparing options will find the practice group list the fastest way to check fit. A business dispute, an insurance coverage question, a bankruptcy filing, a divorce or a property transaction each has a named home here. The firm's stated reach covers local, national and international clients from its Philadelphia base.

Additional attorneys in the listing

The directory's personnel record contains 44 names. Beyond the lawyers discussed above, it identifies Barry Refsin, Daniel Layden, Peter Keays, Nicholas Bellos, Caitlin McHugh, Sharon McKee and Steven Miano. Gianni Mascioli, Lily Huffman, Adena Herskovitz, Erin Gallagher, Andrew Erdlen and Robert Wiygul also appear in the record.

The list continues with Matthew Hamermesh, Cheryl Young, John Summers, Dori Green, Kyle Heisner, Matthew Klebanoff, Jason Levine and Cary Rice. David Scolnic, Bonnie Hoffman, Alexander Egerváry, Helen Casale and Mark Aronchick are included as well.

Alyssa Bennett, Christopher Mauro, Eileen Bradley, Ellen Heiman, Rebecca Nayak and Sara Smith complete the names supplied for this listing. For a reviewer, the fuller roster has a practical use. Someone who already has a lawyer's name can confirm the person's association with the firm without relying on the surnames in the firm's title or the smaller selection presented elsewhere in the review.

The range of surnames also makes clear that the attorney roster extends beyond the named partners. The record supports that observation through the names themselves, although it supplies no further role or practice description for these attorneys.

Shoemaker's committee responsibility

Gerald L. Shoemaker's profile contains an internal firm role that is separate from his domestic relations work. He co-chairs the firm's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. This is the only committee leadership position stated in the supplied attorney record.

That appointment adds a firm governance responsibility to his profile. Readers assessing individual lawyers can distinguish this internal role from his work for clients and his activity within the Pennsylvania Bar Association. The committee position concerns the firm's own organization, while the other details describe legal work and professional participation outside the firm.

Telephone contacts

The record provides 215.568.6200 as one telephone contact. It also publishes 856.616.2100. Another listed number is 610.313.1670. These numbers give prospective clients direct contact routes beyond the online attorney and practice information.