Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC

Focus and practice areas

With more than 55 lawyers working from five offices in northern New England, this is a firm built for regional reach rather than a single market. It goes by Downs Rachlin Martin, or DRM for short, and the legal entity is Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC. The work runs across business matters and litigation, with a wide set of practice groups underneath.

The practice list is long. It covers business law, business succession planning, captive insurance, commercial real estate, data security and privacy, energy law, environmental law, government affairs, intellectual property, labor and employment, litigation, tax law, telecommunications law, trusts and estates, and white collar defense. The intellectual property side splits into patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secrets. That mix suggests a firm that expects to handle most of a business client's legal needs under one roof.

The firm also names the industries it serves. Those include captive insurance, commercial finance, commercial real estate, complex land use and development, food and beverage, health care, and renewable energy. In my opinion that industry list tells a reader as much as the practice list does. It reads like a firm shaped by the Vermont and New Hampshire economy it sits in.

How the team is built

DRM is organized as a professional limited liability corporation. The lawyers who lead it carry the title of Director, which the firm describes as its equivalent of a partner. So when you see "Director" on a bio here, read it as the senior ownership tier.

The firm publishes some figures on its own makeup. It states that 41% of its attorneys and 32% of its Directors are women. Those are numbers the firm chose to put forward, and they give a reader something concrete about how the roster is balanced across the ranks. Robert Rachlin is named as one of the founders, which ties the current firm to the name on the door.

A structure like this shapes how work gets staffed. Directors sit at the top, and the firm also uses Of Counsel lawyers alongside them. For a client, that usually means a senior lawyer owns the relationship while the wider group handles the day-to-day.

A note on the employment practice

One detail stands out and deserves a plain statement. The labor and employment group represents employers and management only. That is set out openly on the firm's pages.

For an employer, that single-side focus can work in its favor, since the group is not trying to serve both workers and companies in the same field. For a person seeking representation against an employer, this is not the firm to call. As a reviewer, I think putting that split up front is the honest way to handle it, and it saves the wrong caller a phone conversation.

The lawyers the site names

Public detail on individual attorneys is limited on the pages we reviewed, so this section stays short by necessity. The Brattleboro office lists four names. Timothy E. Copeland, Jr. and Craig Miskovich are Directors. Krista A. Gay and Andrea O. Wright are listed as Of Counsel.

Bios, law schools, and admission dates were not available for these lawyers on the pages we checked, so this review will not guess at them. The titles alone give a sense of one office: two Directors, supported by two Of Counsel attorneys. Across five offices and a roster of more than 55, this is a small window into the wider team.

Where the firm works

The five offices sit across two states. Four are in Vermont: Brattleboro, Burlington, Montpelier, and St. Johnsbury. The fifth is in Lebanon, New Hampshire. That footprint stretches across much of northern New England, from the southern Vermont line up toward the top of the state.

A spread like this matters for clients who are not near a big city. A company in the St. Johnsbury area and a client near the New Hampshire border can each reach a DRM office without a long drive. For a firm whose work leans toward business, real estate, and land use, being close to these towns is a practical asset.

The Brattleboro office anchors the southern end of that map. It carries a full business and litigation practice, so a client in that corner of Vermont is not routed to a distant branch for routine work.

What the record shows and who it fits

Reading the firm's own material, a clear picture forms. This is a full-service business firm rooted in Vermont and New Hampshire, with a Director-led structure and a broad bench of practice groups. It serves companies, property owners, and the industries that carry the regional economy.

What the pages do not offer is a public list of case results, settlement figures, awards, or rankings, so this review does not claim any. In my opinion that absence is fine for what the firm is. The story here is scope and staying power in one region, not a highlight reel. A business, a developer working through land use and permitting, or an employer operating in northern New England is the natural fit for what DRM describes.