Manos, Martin, and Pergram Co., LPA represents one of Delaware’s longest-running businesses, and this year, it is set to celebrate its 70th anniversary in the community. Originally founded in the city by Peter Manos in 1951, the law firm merged with the Columbus-based firm of Steve Martin and his former partner in 1990 to form the current group.
Following the merger, Manos’ Delaware office in the current PNC Bank building downtown was retained until 1999 when the firm purchased the building for its current location at 50 N. Sandusky St. The firm includes five attorneys in Martin, Dennis Pergram, Andrew Wecker, Kathleen Johnson and Nancy Krueger; Manos passed away in 2004. Martin said the firm “could use a couple more” attorneys in addition to the current team.
Areas of practice for the firm include business legal services, employment law, estate planning, real estate and school law. The firm expanded in 2017, adding an office in Galena to serve the eastern portion of the county.
“Over the years, the firm has developed a solid reputation for providing exemplary, cost-effective legal counsel,” the firm’s website states. “The firm is rated AV Preeminent 5.0 out of 5 by Martindale Hubbell. Such reputation is a result of our lawyers’ diverse backgrounds, skills, and experience in representing clients in a variety of fields, and our lawyers’ and highly professional support staffs’ skills, efforts, and commitment to serving our clients.”
Even after his death, Manos’ legacy remains alive and well all throughout the county, and Martin said he feels the firm has done well to continue that legacy through its practice.
“We still have an oil painting of (Manos) in the lobby, and probably the legacy that he, his wife, and daughters left is they made the initial gift that formed the Delaware County Foundation in 1995,” Martin said of Manos.
“I think we’re doing a good job,” Martin said when asked how he felt the firm continues to honor what Manos started in Delaware. “I was one of the incorporators of the community foundation and served on it for the first 11 years until I was term-limited, and I’m still on the governance committee and the pro bono legal counsel for them.”
In reflecting on more than 30 years practicing in Delaware, Martin said the community has been “a great place to practice law, as well as to live in.” Martin said he’s had many opportunities since completing law school to practice in Columbus, but choosing to come to Delaware has been the best decision he’s ever made, both personally and from a business perspective.
Martin said he enjoys the “dynamics of the county” the most about the firm’s practice. “You’ve got new clients, you’ve got clients that were our clients in Franklin County that have moved their businesses into Delaware County, and then you’ve got builders coming in. It’s just a dynamic scene, and there are some good projects.”
While he pointed out that practicing law will always be a people-first business, Martin said the pandemic has brought about some changes to the way the team works with its clients. However, he said the rise of video meeting platforms rather than conference calls has, in ways, made the business even more personable.
Asked what he is most looking forward to in the years ahead for the firm, Martin said, “Bringing in more lawyers in transitioning so that there are several decades at minimum with the firm when I’m gone. Peter has been gone for 17 years, and it would be nice to have someone interviewing the successor for the 90th or 100th anniversary.”
