The Beginning

Allan Paul was born and raised in Albany, NY. He first came to Vermont to attend the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College.  He graduated from UVM in 1953 and then attended Columbia University School of Law.  Just before the start of his second year at Columbia, he and his college sweetheart, Elsie, were married.  He graduated from Columbia in 1956 with an LL.B. in hand.  This was later converted to a J.D. degree.  Immediately upon graduation, Allan returned to Burlington and went to work in the Law Offices of A. Pearly Feen, where he practiced for almost nine years.  In 1965, Allan set off on his own and was a sole practitioner for three years with associates working for him from time to time.

Joe Frank is a Burlington native.  In 1952, the year he finished high school, tuition costs at Harvard and UVM were the same. Joe chose Harvard, graduating in 1956. After a brief flirtation with the idea of practicing medicine, and the realization that he had no future as an economist, he applied to Harvard Law School. To be near his family, Joe returned to Vermont with his L.L.D. in 1959. (Got his converted to a J.D. for $15.

Peter Collins grew up in Great Neck, Long Island, and started a life long love affair with sailboats at age 9. After high school, Peter attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1959 with a B.A. in Psychology. He than entered the Navy OCS program in Newport, Rhode Island, where 16 weeks later, as a new Ensign, he was assigned to the USS Cromwell, a Destroyer Escort out of Newport. After a year on the USS Cromwell as Damage Control Officer, the captain of a sister ship needed an engineering officer, and Peter volunteered to attend a crash course in naval engineering. He then spent his remaining two years of active duty as Engineering Officer aboard the USS Courtney, where they sailed to Northern Europe and all around South American. During his last year aboard ship, he decided to attend law school and proceeded to take the LSAT exam on ship while bouncing around the North Atlantic Ocean. While on active duty he met a young lady from Kansas who had moved to Boston, and even though she had never been on a sailboat until she met Peter, and had been warned about “those Navy guys,” Peter & Bernadine were married right after his active duty was up. Peter & Bern began married life in Boston, and Peter attended law school at Boston University.

During his last year at Boston University, Peter and Bern decided that they didn’t want to live outside a large city where commuting was the norm, and wherever they ended up, it had to be near a body of water large enough to sail on.

Peter answered an ad for an associate at Mikell & Stuart, a two man law firm in Burlington, Vermont. Being familiar with Burlington, Vermont and Lake Champlain, he accepted their offer, and soon after, Peter, Bern, and their three week old son, Philip, moved to Burlington. Two daughters became part of the Collins Clan in the years to come.

After a year at Mikell & Stuart, Peter decided to open his own office in downtown Burlington. In 1965, Peter started teaching a business law course at Champlain College. He enjoyed his adjunct teaching role for 17 more years, and continued a long term relationship with Champlain College as legal counsel, a trustee of the College, and Chairman of the Board. As a Trustee Emeritus, he is still actively advising the College. By coincidence, his first office was just down the hall from Joe Frank’s office, and two years later, Peter, Joe and Allan would form the new firm of Paul, Frank & Collins. 

Getting Started

In 1965, Allan Paul hung out his own shingle in Burlington. Within a few years he had more work coming through the door than he could keep up with.  

Joe Frank served a year as a law clerk to the U.S. District Court, District of Vermont, cutting his teeth on 28 jury trials. He put in another year and another 50 cases as Assistant U.S. District Attorney in Rutland before determining that he didn’t want a permanent position at the U.S Attorney’s Office. Joe returned to Burlington in December of 1961 to open his own office on St. Paul Street, just down the hall, as it happened, from where Peter Collins would locate his solo shop a few years hence.

Open for Business

The fledgling firm of Paul Frank + Collins very nearly became the first in modern history to open without a working telephone. New England Telephone & Telegraph was on strike during the summer of 1968. But, as luck had it, Joe had done a considerable amount of legal work as special counsel for the Vermont Public Service Board.  He facilitated the arrival of both NET&T’s general manager and its installation supervisor. These two spent their Memorial Day weekend, assisted by Joe, connecting the offices at 135 College Street in Burlington, and on Monday, June 3, 1968,  Paul Frank + Collins was open for business, complete with phone service. Peter and Joe nominated Allan to oversee the firm’s executive duties. He served as president for the first 26 years, until 1994.

Between 1968 and 1979, the firm was essentially a general practice with Allan taking on mostly defense litigation and estate planning; Joe focusing on general litigation; and Peter doing a mix of criminal work, plaintiff litigation, and Real Estate. From the beginning, all three attorney’s worked on Estate Planning. As the firm evolved, the three began to specialize their respective practices in different directions, enabling the firm as a whole to assume a greater workload.   Paul Frank + Collin’s first associate cum principal, Jack Sartore, is presently the firm’s senior trial lawyer.

PF+C buys a Burlington Landmark

In 1979, Paul Frank + Collins relocated to larger quarters on the third floor of 110 Main Street in Burlington. Over the next five years the firm grew apace, tending more and more toward legal work in the business, finance, and insurance sectors. By 1984, with ten attorneys and ten staff members overflowing into offices down on the second floor, the firm was literally bursting at the seams.

While many Burlington law firms during the 1980s were opting to relocate to outlying suburbs and communities, Paul Frank + Collins made the decision to remain a decidedly downtown firm. An extensive search for a building that would accommodate continued growth and reflect the firm’s prestige and character yielded as contender number one—the stately and historic Masonic Temple building at 1 Church Street.

The original 1895 contract between the Masons and Wilson Brothers and Company for construction of the building stipulated an $85,000 price tag, top to bottom. Eighty-nine years later, Paul Frank + Collins purchased the building for nearly eight times that amount and spent another $1.6 million and a solid year getting it ready to move into. The principal reason renovation costs were so high was the building’s historical designation.  Local, state, and federal historic preservation requirements had to be followed while bringing the building up to code. When the building’s interior was gutted and refurbished, all doors, windows, wainscoting, etc. had to be numbered, stored, and refitted. Special fire-rated walls and doors had to be installed in order to maintain the buildings open wooden staircase. All storm windows had to be installed inside of the primary windows so as not to alter the appearance of the building’s facade.  Despite the hefty price tag and the tedium of modern construction protocol, firm members recognized the building’s potential and fell in love with its landmark charm. When it was all said and done, and they began moving in on December 1, 1985, they knew they’d made the right choice.  Paul Frank + Collins was home and here to stay.

PF+C today

Since the 1980s, the firm has honed its focus in increasingly sophisticated specialty practice areas such as alternative risk markets, land use and construction law, insurance claims counsel and oversight, and complex litigation on behalf of a host of corporate, high-finance, and institutional clients.  Despite steady growth, the firm has never lost sight of its original core values of efficaciousness and availability to clients.  Today, Paul Frank + Collins provides highly nuanced legal and business services for a variety of national and international clients.

Reflecting upon the changes to the firm and the nature of contemporary legal practice in general, the three founders agree that movement toward specialization and providing highly complex legal services was both inevitable and necessary for survival—mostly gone are the days of the generalized practice.

All three founders still keep an office at One Church Street. Allan Paul spends winters in Florida. During the warmer months, he focuses on his business and estate planning practice. Joe Frank officially retired from the firm in 1995. He devotes most of his time these days to a number of community organizations and to hiking with his wife. Peter Collins is still active within the firm, working primarily with complex real estate matters.  He remains an avid sailor, spending as much time as possible with his wife out on Lake Champlain.