Baldwinsville — Farrell, Martin & Barnell is celebrating its 70th year with a few changes. While the firm is bidding adieu to longtime partner Paul Martin and bookkeeper/secretary Donna Fuller, Farrell, Martin & Barnell has welcomed some new team members and is expanding its real estate practice.
“We’re … growing so the office can be here for another [70 years],” said Charlie Farrell, whose father, Simeon Farrell, joined what was then the Gale and Stone firm in 1952.
Farrell said his client base has been crucial to the firm’s success. Keeping it local has been Farrell, Martin & Barnell’s mantra for its seven decades of practice.
“There’s still a lot of people that prefer to deal with local folks,” he said.
Farrell said he and his colleagues have served more than three generations of clients from the same families and businesses, including Seneca Savings, which has been a client since 1946.
“[It’s] an amazing relationship given the way things change, especially in that industry,” Farrell said of his firm’s longstanding relationship with Seneca Savings, serving borrowers with their mortgage needs.
The law industry is changing as well, and Farrell, Martin & Barnell is evolving its practice to keep up. Partner Sara Connell Brady, who joined the firm in 2014, brings her expertise in elder law and Medicaid issues. The firm is updating its website, logo and business cards as it expands its real estate practice, in which both Derek Shepard (who joined the firm in 2015) and paralegal Wendy Van Der Water will be building new relationships.
As the firm has added some new faces over the last two years, partner Paul Martin is retiring after 35 years. “He decided it was time,” Farrell said.
Martin joined the firm in 1980, following in his father Norman J. Martin’s footsteps. Farrell said that sons of lawyers share a special bond and that he and Martin have had a fruitful partnership over the years.
continued — “Our personalities meshed well,” Farrell said. “We’ve both enjoyed working for friends and neighbors and classmates and people in our community.”
Paul Martin is not the only one hanging up his hat: the firm’s longtime bookkeeper and secretary, Donna Fuller, is retiring as well.
“We’re very grateful for Donna. How often do you have somebody working for you for 41 years?” Farrell said.
With Donna’s retirement, Elizabeth Shepard, who has been working with the firm for more than 10 years, has taken on many new responsibilities in addition to being legal assistant to Charlie Farrell.
There is another duty Derek Shepard will inherit from Martin: changing the light bulbs.
“I don’t do ladders,” Farrell said.
