There were only two items on the agenda at the first meeting of the newly formed Lancaster County Convention Center Authority board of directors on September 21, 1999.

The first was to select the board’s officers. The four county and three city appointees voted to name James O. Pickard, Chairman; W. Garth Sprecher, vice-Chairman; and Willie Borden, Jr. Treasurer.

The second item was to nominate and vote for the appointment of a solicitor for the Authority. John W. Espenshade, a partner of the Stevens & Lee law firm, was nominated, and the board voted unanimously in favor of appointing the firm, and the meeting adjourned.

Stevens & Lee seemed a natural choice for the role of solicitor for the new Authority. The Reading-based firm had drafted the original enabling legislation, the 1994 Convention Center Act, allowing “Third-Class” counties to tax local hotels and motels to finance and construct convention centers. Lancaster County had just imposed this tax.

Stevens & Lee also had experience in precisely this area of the law, serving as solicitor to the Berks County, Pa. Convention Center and the Luzerne County, Pa. Convention Center. The attorneys were also the solicitors of record for both of these counties.

Further, the law firm of Stevens & Lee was, and is, a very well-connected Harrisburg lobbying presence, representing such substantial concerns as Comcast, UGI, and RJ Reynolds, as well as several counties (Berks, Lehigh Luzerne), and cities (Reading, Wilkes-Barre) in Pennsylvania.

One of the firm’s major clients is High Industries, a regional steel giant, and the parent company of a partner in the private hotel part of the Lancaster project In fact, the Chairman, CEO, and President of the Stevens & Lee firm, Joseph M. Harenza, was himself the registered lobbyist of High. Mr. Harenza appears to be something of a legal money magician, growing revenues and profits annually, often in double digits, for the first decade as Stevens & Lee’s top manager.

Stevens & Lee was also a major campaign contributor to Gibson E. Armstrong, then-chairman of the state Senate Banking Committee, later chairing the Appropriations Committee. It was an Armstrong-authored amendment, in 1999, to the original 1994 Act, that allowed the hotel room rental tax to be levied in Lancaster County.

The Harrisburg connection was additionally important because the project was expecting a $15 million grant from the state. And there might be more where that came from…

Finally, Mr. Espenshade, also happened to be the solicitor for Lancaster County.

So, in September of 1999, as the project was launching, one law firm, Stevens & Lee, represented the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority; Lancaster County government; a private partner in the project, and was a major financial contributor to, among others, the powerful state elected official personally pushing the project through the legislature.

Law firms can be ranked in a number of ways – number of attorneys, gross revenues, partner profits. It is in the area of making money for its partners where Stevens & Lee, established in 1928, seems to have excelled.

The home office of Stevens & Lee is located in the downscale, gritty city of Reading (pop. 83,000). The firm has 13 satellite branches, from Charleston, South Carolina to New York City. With about 180 attorneys, the firm ranks in the top two hundred firms in terms of gross revenues nationally, according to American Lawyer magazine. In 2008, the firm took in $110 million in gross revenues, the first dip (-1.8 %) after a more than a decade of impressive yearly gains.

While the number of lawyers at Stevens & Lee puts it in the second-tier in terms of size and gross revenues (top-tier firms have more than 500 attorneys, and gross revenues in the hundreds of millions.) But by the standard by which wealth is truly measured in the legal world, earnings, Stevens & Lee is top-tier.

Stevens & Lee is a very profitable law corporation. The revenue per lawyer at Stevens & Lee was $756,090 in 2008; the national average: $589,000.

In the area of profits per partner, the American Lawyer survey – called the ‘Am Law 200′ – reports that Stevens & Lee returns $760,000 to each equity partner; the survey’s average: $666,000.

Stevens & Lee doesn’t grade out quite as high in other areas. For example, according to the Minority Law Report of 2007, the firm only had four percent minority attorneys; the national average is 11.4%. And in the area of pro bono work, the American Bar Association recommends 50 hours per year per attorney; Stevens & Lee’s average fewer than six per year per lawyer.

The well-paid Stevens & Lee attorneys tend to be sharp minds from second-level law schools like Temple, Dickinson, Penn State, Villanova, as well as top-tier lateral senior attorney hires. The firm handles many high-end corporate specialties, including: bankruptcy, regulatory and government affairs; labor and employment, litigation, securities and merger and acquisitions; health care law, among others.

The following is from a profile of Stevens & Lee published in the Legal Intelligencer in 2007:

“Harenza said he is trying to make every lawyer specialize in an industry segment and possibly in a sub-specialty with the hopes of commanding higher rates. ‘My job is to get higher yield and rates from clients,’ [Harenza] said.”

In the case of convention centers, by writing the law, then representing convention center authorities and counties that establish these taxing bodies, Stevens & Lee literally created its own specialty account.

The haste in securing the job of solicitor for the Convention Center Authority was understandable. Just a week before, on September 14th, the Lancaster New Era reported that, “Local hotel owners, worried about losing business, are threatening legal action if the Lancaster County Commissioners don’t delay action on a proposed 5 percent hotel room tax.”

Apart from the lucrative negotiations and contract writing business Stevens & Lee would receive with the construction of the center, a lawsuit from the hoteliers meant there were thousands of billable hours for litigation waiting to be collected by the firm.

On the day after that first Authority board meeting, a “fee agreement” letter from John W. Espenshade, was hand-delivered to Chairman Pickard. The courier didn’t have to walk far because the Authority’s offices were located at the Stevens & Lee office on the second floor of the Fulton Bank on Penn Square. This arrangement remained for more than two years, when the Authority moved across the street. But for now, Espenshade could save the postage.

About one month after that fee agreement letter was signed by both parties, the Authority received its first bill from the firm. The invoice simply read: “For Professional Services Rendered on Behalf of the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority.” There was no other itemization for the bill that month, which came to a modest $2, 450.00*. The bill was promptly paid.

It was the first of more than 300 such invoices Stevens & Lee would bill the Convention Center Authority, and the wording and lack of itemization would always be the same, but the bills got more expensive and would increase to amounts that added up to millions of taxpayer dollars before a spade of earth was turned.