Wisler Pearlstine enjoys an established municipal law reputation throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania with one of the largest municipal practices in the Commonwealth. A team of seven attorneys practice municipal law on a full-time basis and almost every attorney in the firm has become involved with some aspect of our municipal law practice.
The breadth of our municipal law experience is significant.
We have represented municipalities and governmental agencies for over 70 years and most of our solicitorships are not new appointments. A number of our partners have represented municipalities for 10, 15, and even 20 years or more.
- Our entire municipal team has extensive experience in subdivision, land development, and zoning matters. We intentionally maintain a strong zoning and land development practice in the municipalities we do not represent. It has always been our belief that developing expertise from “both sides of the table” is particularly helpful to our municipal clients as we can easily anticipate developers’ legal positions.
- We regularly act as special counsel to various municipalities in southeastern Pennsylvania that require advice on particularly complex curative amendment or substantive validity challenges or even federal court litigation involving zoning matters.
- Drafting sophisticated ordinances, resolutions, public notices, conditional use decisions, zoning hearing board decisions, and a great variety of other legal documents that are a routine part of our municipal practice. We also have expertise in drafting complex documents for unique purposes.
- We litigate for municipal clients. We have represented municipal clients as both plaintiff and defendant in the Court of Common Pleas and as appellant and appellee in the Commonwealth Court, Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, our municipal team provides the kind of practical advice that helps keep our municipalities out of the courtroom unless confrontation is unavoidable.
- We easily handle most employment law matters through attorneys in the firm who focus on personnel issues, labor law, collective bargaining agreements, and a myriad of other employment and labor issues.
- We can serve as bond counsel for bond issues and frequently write opinion letters as borrower’s solicitor. We are experienced counsel for the private sale of notes and possess a working knowledge of the Local Government Unit Debt Act and Department of Community and Economic Development requirements and procedures.
- In conjunction with our firm’s real estate attorneys, we have collective expertise in specialty real estate transactions for local governments and agencies, including utility easements, conservation easements, open space acquisition, right-of-way acquisition, trail easements, deed restrictions and covenants, maintenance easements, and numerous other interests in real property.
Our Clients
Municipal law has been an integral part of Wisler Pearlstine’s legal work since the firm was founded in 1945. We take pride in keeping the attorneys in this department at the cutting edge of new developments in the field, and we fully support them (with frequent advice from our other departments) to address all the challenges of our municipal clients. As a result, we have earned an extensive client list. We currently represent the following municipalities and other local government entities:
A. Municipal Solicitorships
- Cheltenham Township
- East Coventry Township
- East Vincent Township
- Lansdale Borough (Special Counsel)
- Lower Salford Township
- Red Hill Borough
- Skippack Township (Special Counsel)
- Springfield Township
- Upper Gwynedd Township (Special Counsel)
B. Other Local Government Representations
- Chalfont-New Britain Township Joint Sewer Authority
- Lansdale Parking Authority
- Lower Moreland Township Zoning Hearing Board
- Montgomery County Housing Authority
- Northern Montgomery County Recycling Commission
- Pennridge Wastewater Treatment Authority
- Red Hill Water Authority
- Rockledge Borough Zoning Hearing Board
- Upper Dublin Township Zoning Hearing Board
Why Municipal Clients Choose Wisler Pearlstine
We know our clients' world. We understand the unique challenges facing our municipal clients on a day-to-day basis and have developed an expertise in the substantive and procedural law that applies uniquely to them. This enables us to quickly grasp the problems and issues facing our municipal clients and offer swift, decisive resolutions. We pride ourselves in working closely with our municipalities to establish best practices and procedures.
We prevent problems down the road. We educate and prepare our municipal clients to avoid problems in the future. When problems do arise, we are readily available to counsel our clients with common sense and practical advice in order to keep problems contained and costs to a minimum.
We have unique strengths. We practice municipal law using a team approach with one attorney typically having primary responsibility for a municipal client, but with other attorneys assisting in the representation. Given this team approach, we are able to expedite our municipal work so that we deliver the highest standards of quality, cost-effectively. We are always able to deploy the team member who has the particular expertise that will most benefit the municipality. It is also our practice to maintain attorney continuity at meetings as much as possible, since this consistency of representation is appreciated by our clients and helps minimize duplication of efforts when dealing with complex, ongoing issues.
