As a natural extension of its niche work in the public and infrastructure sectors, downtown law firm Nossaman LLP launched an advisory division called Nossaman Consults last month.

That division will have three primary specialties: infrastructure, pensions and government relations. The formation of Nossaman Consults was borne of the firm’s historic clientele in those areas, and its services will largely complement the firm’s legal work.

Geoff Yarema, who chairs Nossaman Consults, said the new division is more than 20 years in the making and that the firm “got very serious about it” last year.

“Essentially, Nossaman Consults is formalizing a characteristic that has been inherent to the firm over its 80-year history – clients have always asked us to leverage our expertise in ways that fell outside our traditional legal counsel role,” Yarema said. “Given how often we were asked about this, we decided to become more proactive in aligning our offerings with client needs. After discussions with practice group leaders across the firm, we began to move forward with implementing a consulting group last year and we have been using it for the better part of 2024, and just recently announced it publicly.”

On the infrastructure side, Nossaman Consults works with entities in transportation, water and wastewater and social infrastructure, among others. In pensions, it works with the public sector, nonprofits, universities and private retirement administrators. For governments, it will work on strategy and planning for those entities.

Nossaman Consults will be represented in all 11 of the firm’s offices and Yarema said the firm will hire additional staff for the consulting division as needed.

“It allows us to service clients in a broader way than offering solely legal services, and provides a way for clients to tap into the commercial and strategic knowledge base we’ve acquired from representing hundreds of public agency and private clients on scores of high-profile, pioneering projects,” he added.