When asked how he ended up as an employee benefits attorney, Lars Golumbic has an immediate response.  “Genetics, pure and simple,” he says with a smile.  “I’m a second generation ERISA lawyer.  My father was general counsel to the United Mine Workers Health and Retirement Fund and was a deputy general counsel at the PBGC.  He was also in private practice litigating ERISA matters for over a decade.” 

Lars points out that his father was among the first generation of lawyers who developed specific expertise in ERISA and was a colleague and friend of many of the attorneys who were practicing in the first law firm that specialized in employee benefits issues arising from ERISA—the Groom Law Group.  “My father made it a point to expose me not only to ERISA but to the people at Groom who were at the forefront of the field,” Lars recalls.  “It wasn’t a stretch at all for me to become a benefits attorney—and to practice at Groom.”

Lars has been involved with Groom since he graduated from high school, working at the firm in the summers through college and then as a paralegal for several years after college.  He took a hiatus from the firm while attending graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where he received a masters degree in American history in 1994, but returned to Groom as a summer associate while he was at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  After earning his law degree in 1998, he worked as a judicial clerk for a federal judge and at other law firms, only to find his way back to Groom in 2002, where he now works on benefits-related litigation, representing businesses in complex commercial disputes and governmental investigations.  He has found that while much has changed in the field of employee benefits law, Groom remains a constant.  “There are some new faces here,” he says, “but the firm has remained the same, particularly in its commitment to establishing real relationships with clients and in its collegiality.  It’s just a nice place to work.”