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Julie Pearl's firm has been both hurt and helped by the economic downturn.
Though floundering technology companies and harsher immigration strictures that followed last year's terrorism meant that San Francisco-based Pearl Law Group, which specializes in immigration employment law, had fewer visa-seeking clients to compete for, the slumping real estate market made a new Market Street office possible.
"We were very conservative," said Pearl, who founded the firm in 1995. "We never spent money we didn't have. We just moved here in May, because the market turned."
The firm, which has been growing even through the downturn, also has a small San Jose office and opened a New York office in June. With 34-employees, the company brought in $5.1 million in revenue in 2001, double what it made in 2000. This rapid growth was possible because Pearl carefully kept her firm's portfolio of customers diversified.
"They're not all technology firms," she said.
Pearl Law Group is a young firm in a field dominated by established giants. Most of her competitors have been in business more than 20 years, she said. It basically takes time to gain a foothold in the world of immigration law, which is as much about whom you know as what you know.
"Only about...