Top Midsize Workplace: Roig Lawyers provides ‘a career, not just a job’

DEERFIELD BEACH — When Michael Rosenberg was looking for a place to start his law career he was looking for a place to grow just as the firm was growing, too.

That was about two decades ago, and Roig Lawyers, which was created in 2000 by Fernando Roig, his wife, and a paralegal, has only grown larger.

Today the firm has 55 attorneys throughout the state, with offices in Miami, the headquarters of Deerfield Beach, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville, with scores more as support staff and paralegals.

This year, Roig Lawyers of Deerfield Beach was recognized as the top-ranked mid-size workplace in the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s Top Workplaces 2024 competition. There were more than 174 companies of all sizes surveyed. Mid-sized businesses are defined as 125 to 399 employees.

Rosenberg joined the firm in 2005 as the seventh attorney. Since then “we’ve really focused on servicing our clients and growing the firm but maintaining” what made them stand out since the beginning.

“All of us including myself all had the opportunity to grow with the company; none of us are in the positions we were when we started,” he said. “We have had tremendous opportunity to grow within the organization, to not only see it evolve but be part of that evolution.”

Roig Lawyers serves as legal counsel in insurance defense matters for corporations and insurance companies, such as car and health insurance companies, and acts as litigation counsel in civil disputes. Many clients are retail and grocery stores contending with slip-and-falls. The firm also represents technology companies and banks — “they get sued a lot.”

There are four named partners, but the firm still operates under the Roig name.

How the firm is a success: “We want to give our attorneys the freedom to deliver the best results for the client. We are not micromanagers; we are not yellers or screamers. We try to work in a collaborative environment where we have the input of all stakeholders.”

A meeting with a new client to understand a case, for example, could include associate lawyers and the paralegal: “It’s extremely important for everyone to be on the same page, contribute to the process, how we were going to litigate this case. Everyone feels heard, everyone has an opportunity to provide their input,” Rosenberg said.

There is still room for growth: “We’ve talked about opening offices in other states,” he said.

Rosenberg credits the firm’s Top Workplace success with considerate perks such as 100% payment of medical and dental premiums, as well as life insurance and long-term disability plans for all full-time employees.

“If you take burdens off people, even small things,” it allows employees to “focus on the work,” he said. “You get a better product and you get better people.”

And there’s trust and independence: Attorneys average 37.5 hours a week, but “nobody is on a real schedule,” Rosenberg said. “If you want to start at 9 because you want to drop your kids off, fine. As long as the work is getting done.”

Where employees work is at their discretion, too, whether it’s the office, home, or a hybrid of the two: “Whatever best suits you or the team’s needs,” he said.

Jessica Martin started at the law firm in 2002, the year before she started law school. Roig took her on as a file clerk.

“He had just started his own firm; it was very small,” she said.

Every summer when she was in school she returned to work as a clerk, which involved getting the pleadings that came in the mail “in the right folder with paper fasteners. It was a really neat experience.”

She learned to write, and how to review cases. She shadowed the lawyers in the office and was “listening to their conversations with clients.”

“I never left,” she said. “I was very lucky.”

She started with the firm in 2006 as an attorney, and became the first female partner in 2009.

While her friends at the University of Florida’s law school were chasing the most lucrative paying firms shelling out six-figure starter incomes, Martin said she couldn’t wait to get back home to Roig.

“I’m not leaving,” she said. “For me it’s about culture more so than anything. It’s about working somewhere where every opinion matters. It’s not just about work; it is a family.”

She said she was pursuing “a home, and a future, and a career, not just a job.”

Within insurance defense, today Martin specializes in fraud cases and special investigations within personal injury protection. That’s when someone is “telling me she can’t work because of a car accident, a slip-and-fall, and then surveillance shows (them) picking coconuts out of palm trees.”

Cases can include bogus claims, inflated medical charges, exaggerated injuries, and other suspected cases of insurance fraud.

It’s the culture of Roig that keeps Martin a loyal employee.

“It’s about being valued, it’s about feeling appreciated, it’s about having a voice, being able to participate in the management of the firm and the day-to-day operations,” she said. It’s a firm where not just “the partners get to do the fun stuff,” she said. Young lawyers have the “ability to grow professionally and grow with the firm.”

Although most of the staff works remotely, the management makes an effort to get out handwritten notes to mark birthdays, and gifts for the holidays.

And there’s “teamwork, everyone works together,” she said.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on X, formerly Twitter, @LisaHuriash