AGAWAM – During the Agawam City Council meeting hosted on March 18 at the Agawam Junior High School, the Council continued their series introduced in February called “Meet Our Local Businesses.”

For the month of March, Ryan McLane of McLane & McLane Law Firm, located on Springfield Street in Feeding Hills, spoke about the work of the law firm. McLane is also the Chairman of the West of the River Chamber of Commerce, serving Agawam and West Springfield.

McLane explained that his mother, Abbe McLane, founded the law firm 15 years ago. He recently partnered with her to make McLane & McLane Law Firm. “Before I became a lawyer, I worked for her. Over the course of 15 years, I would like to say working in Agawam has been very good. I think Agawam has been very conducive to businesses. I’m not saying everything is perfect, I like the people of Agawam, but I think overall it offers an opportunity to get involved locally. I know over the course of the years, we’ve been able to get involved with different organizations. My mother was on the Council on Aging for, I believe, 12 years. That definitely assisted with her elder law area of practice,” McLane said.

McLane also discussed the increased value of properties in the Agawam area and credited it to the safety of the town. “[Abbe McLane] also does real estate. Agawam is a safe town. All of these things factor into the fact that home values are going up, which means revenues for us go up as well. I’m a personal injury lawyer. Most of my clients come from Springfield,” McLane said.

McLane continued, “I do think it’s a very business conducive town. It’s given us a lot of opportunity to get involved.”

McLane said that McLane & McLane Law Firm has seen success that he, in part, attributes to the opportunities afforded by Agawam. “I don’t think there’s been a year where we haven’t gained at least 10 percent in revenue from the year before. I don’t really have a lot of complaints in terms of the opportunities Agawam has afforded to us. I look forward to some of the planning in the future. I will commend that I think a lot of additional planning has been forthcoming the past couple of years with the Council, the mayor and the different committees. I’m excited for the future,” McLane said.

At the conclusion of McLane’s presentation, Agawam City Council President Christopher C. Johnson asked McLane what feedback he has heard about the town of Agawam in his practice. “Being in the same profession you are, you get to hear from a lot of your clients. My question to you would be what do you hear about the town itself from your clients and are there areas that you think we in government can improve on, providing services, whether they be residents or local businesses that utilize your services?” Johnson said.

McLane explained that he has spoken with clients who would like to see a higher rate of small business success in Agawam. “Dealing a lot with different businesses, we see a lot of small businesses form and then sort-of fizzle out and I don’t know what that looks like, what kind of planning has to happen, maybe districting? I don’t have a 100 percent answer, but it does seem like there’s a lack of centralized location of restaurants or lack of a financial area. Things sort-of spring up, and then die down. Over the 15 years, a lot of people have had an idea,” McLane said.

McLane continued, “They started the business and it didn’t really kick off. Maybe it’s a lack of marketing plan; maybe it just starts with more marketing for services and opportunities for small businesses. That’s probably the most that I get. Things spring up like a new Chinese restaurant or a new hair salon and then things fizzle from there. Not to be too negative, but that’s some of the critique that I get from some clients.”

Councilor Paul C. Cavallo asked McLane about the future of McLane & McLane Law Firm. “Do you anticipate, in the future, adding to your law firm or any growth? I know you’re doing well and I was wondering if you were expanding at all?” Cavallo said.

McLane shared that the firm is hoping to add a new attorney and has been making plans for his mother’s retirement. “Within six months to a year, we hope to be adding a divorce/family law attorney. Also, Abbe won’t be around forever. We’re already starting; you have to plan a few years ahead, starting the exit plan. The woman’s so busy, I think we may have to hire two people to take over her areas of practice,” McLane said.

McLane said he is planning to continue working as part of the McLane & McLane Law Firm. “I don’t plan on leaving, so hopefully as the years go on, we may have a larger firm located in Agawam,” McLane said.

Councilor Cavallo also asked about what the firm planned to do in regard to the growing popularity of trusts. “Your mother deals with a lot with elders. Are you anticipating also, possibly, because it’s so popular today, people coming in to see lawyers about establishing a trust? Is that growing as part of your business too? I know a couple of my relatives have done it and they said it’s a good thing to do and it affords a lot of protection,” Cavallo said.

McLane said he has seen a rise in trusts and Medicaid planning. “I see it only growing. For whatever reason, I think more is available to people now. People just have more and they’re trying to protect that. Trusts are big. Also what’s big is a lot of people may retire or be on in years, maybe less than a million dollars but enough that they want to leave something to their family. Medicaid planning and qualifying for MassHealth is really the new retirement. Trusts are huge with that,” McLane explained.

Councilor Rosemary Sandlin suggested that West of the River Chamber host seminars for business plan building. “Are you anticipating doing any seminars on how to build a business plan for new businesses or how to build an extension of a business plan so that they are able to expand? I know a lot of businesses are small and they can’t get to the next step because they don’t have either the money or the expertise in jumping into that next step or going over that hurdle,” Sandlin said.

Robin Wozniak, Executive Director of West of the River Chamber, was present at the City Council meeting and responded to Councilor Sandlin’s question, stating, “We do have a partnership with SCORE and we do offer workshops. SCORE assists us in planning these workshops. Typically, it’s a five workshop series. We’re in the beginning stages of planning our next series of workshops. The first workshop we did was Google marketing, which is very big. We wanted to educate our small business chamber members about Google marketing availability and help that SCORE can offer. The next series, we can definitely implement some sort of business plan portion of our workshop.”

McLane said he agreed that the implementation of business planning into an upcoming workshop would be a good idea. “I do think that’s a good idea, getting back to the basis of what’s a business plan, what’s market research and how you can do it cheaply and affectively,” McLane said.

The Agawam City Council meets at 7 p.m. on the first and third Monday of every month, with the exception of summer months or Monday holidays. To view the full meeting, visit vimeo.com/agawam.