Peter Torcicollo has been elected as the next managing director of Gibbons P.C., the firm announced Monday.
Torcicollo will assume the role on Feb. 1, when the current managing director, Patrick Dunican, assumes the position of executive chairperson.
Torcicollo has been with the firm for nearly three decades. He was promoted to director in 2000 and became a member of the Executive Committee in 2010. He currently co-chairs the firm’s Commercial and Criminal Litigation Group.
His connection to the firm goes much deeper.
Torcicollo served as the director of professional development, retention and associate recruitment for more than 15 years, playing a key role in the elimination of the firm’s summer associate program in favor of aggressive recruitment of lawyers who had completed judicial clerkships.
Today, well over half the firm’s attorneys are former judicial clerks or interns and can provide clients firsthand insight into the practices and preferences of specific judges and solid knowledge of courthouse procedures. In fact, Torcicollo was directly involved in the hiring of more than 60 current Gibbons attorneys and indirectly involved in far more.
Torcicollo said he is eager to assume the role of managing director.
“Patrick Dunican’s are big shoes to fill, but I will be committing 100% of my focus and effort to the management of this organization, and I am honored that my partners are giving me the opportunity to do so,” he said.
“The Gibbons firm has been here nearly 100 years, and I’ve been here nearly 30. It is my firmly held belief that all of us owe it to those lawyers coming up behind us to do everything in our power to guarantee that they all have this firm as a place to call home for the next 30 years, and that the institution is still here another 100 years from now.”
Dunican saluted the selection.
“Pete is everything a managing director should be — smart, strategic, open-minded, ethical, relatable and, most importantly, completely dedicated to the great Gibbons law firm, its clients, its employees and its future,” he said. “Having worked with him in various capacities for decades already, I am excited about what we will be able to accomplish together.”
As managing director, Torcicollo will be CEO of the firm for up to two four-year terms, responsible for overseeing professional and administrative operations, executing the directives of the Executive Committee, and ensuring that all attorneys, employees, committees and practice groups perform their roles effectively for the benefit of Gibbons and its clients. He will direct the creation and implementation of a strategic business plan and mission statement, as well as the internal operations required to carry them out.
About Gibbons P.C.
With nearly 200 attorneys, Gibbons is a leading law firm in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and Florida. The New Jersey Law Journal has awarded Gibbons a “Litigation Practice of the Year” designation four times in recent years, in the class actions, products liability and commercial litigation categories and with the overall “General Litigation Practice of the Year” honor.
Torcicollo will work closely with heads of the firm’s administrative departments and its general counsel on matters relating to finance, banking, budgeting, personnel, compensation, technology, marketing, the Rules of Professional Conduct, firm policies and protocols, and general daily operations. He will also be involved in the identification of new business and stewardship of existing business.
Torcicollo joined Gibbons as an associate in 1993 after earning degrees from Bucknell University and Rutgers School of Law – Newark, leaving for one year to serve as judicial clerk to Alfred J. Lechner Jr. at the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
In 2010, he was named chair of what was then the firm’s Business & Commercial Litigation Group. When that group merged with the criminal defense practice in 2018, he became co-chair of the Commercial and Criminal Litigation Group, the firm’s largest and most wide-ranging practice group. He has held numerous other managerial and leadership positions at Gibbons.
Torcicollo developed, launched, built and directed the firm’s construction litigation practice, leading to Gibbons’ ranking by leading industry publication, Construction Executive, as a nationwide “Top 50 Construction Law Firm” all three years the list has been published. He was the firm’s hiring partner for over 15 years and continues to serve on the Partnership Screening Committee.
In his managing director role, Torcicollo will work closely with Dunican, who, as executive chairperson, will focus on many of the more outward-facing platforms for which the two firm leaders will be responsible. They will collaborate to ensure that the firm’s internal and external plans and programs complement each other and together advance its overall strategic plan and mission.
