Friedman Law Firm
From Rock and Roll and MTV to Practicing Law
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Rick Friedman has a career path that is likely quite different from the average attorney. He started playing guitar at age 9 while his younger brother Brian played drums. The two went on to form a band and managed to meet a lot of musicians along the way. While attending the College of William & Mary, they wrote jingles for ads and TV shows.
Eventually, Brian went to work at MTV and that opened the door to writing more music, including the theme song for Punk’d. It became the most-aired theme song on cable television and earned them a BMI award.
Rick decided to pursue a law career and graduated from Whittier Law School in 2001. “With my background, I thought I would be working in entertainment law because that’s where all my contacts were,” Rick says. “When I began practicing law, I was asked by a few partners in the firm to help with divorce cases. I had never thought about that. I was fortunate that my parents were not divorced and I wasn’t divorced, so it wasn’t a part of my upbringing. But when I realized how much I could help people during such a difficult part of their life, it felt like a good fit.”
Friedman Law Firm was founded in 2010 in Chesterfield with Rick’s vision to “help as many people as we can and to treat our clients as we would like to be treated.” Eleven attorneys work at Friedman Law, specializing in divorce, child custody, spousal support, child support, and equitable distribution cases across Virginia.
Rick encourages his firm to be involved in the community. They support the James River Association, which is dedicated to protecting and restoring the James. During Covid, Friedman Law helped a local restaurant. “When restaurants were shutting down, we contacted a restaurant and told them that any first responders who came in could order anything they wanted to take home to their families and we would take care of the cost,” Rick says. “We helped first responders and kept a local restaurant in business. That’s the kind of thing we like to do.”
Friedman Law connected with TowneBank when vice president and commercial banker Ralph Martinez reached out to Rick. “Ralph called me and said he would like to talk to us about how important relationships are with banking,” Rick says. “In my world, I never had a relationship with a bank and didn’t think I needed one. But during Covid, I was trying to learn about the process for getting a PPP loan. My bank told me to speak to the manager at a local branch. When I got there, I was told they didn’t have a manager and they might be closing that branch. That’s when I learned that not having a relationship with a bank left us with no options for communication.”
Rick sums up his interesting journey, “While it’s cool to go to a movie theater or turn on a television and hear your music playing, that only affects a lot of people a little bit. In family law, you can’t affect as many people, but you can have an enormous role in their lives.”
Friedman Law has plans to expand to the Henrico area. For more information, visit FriedmanLawVa.com.
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