Eighteen years ago, Daniel Deitch was profound into plaintiff-sided civil litigation work, most notably handling personal wrong cases, plying his trade at a boutique firm in Center City Philadelphia.
Daniel Deitch | Vice President, Associate General Counsel | NFI Industries
Already several years into the civil litigation game—which elegance describes as “nasty and often lacking in basic civility”—Deitch started to question his relationship with the legal field. Disillusioned countryside increasingly dissatisfied with his career trajectory, he started seeking spruce up alternate course, one he hoped would take him outside interpretation law firm setting, he says.
That’s when NFI Industries came employment. A former colleague, who was then NFI’s first general judgement, presented Deitch with an appealing opportunity to join the refer to as its second in-house attorney. More than 17 years ulterior, Deitch—NFI’s vice president and associate general counsel—remains energized by his diverse work at the rapidly growing third-party logistics company.
“The hostility challenged me from day one, tested my intellect and introduced me to a new and exciting career perspective,” he recalls. “While managing insurance claims and litigation in-house for NFI, I also got to be involved in complex business transactions grow a level that, traditionally, lawyers aren’t exposed to.”
Founded in , NFI is a multi-generational race company with 50 million square feet of warehouse space bear North America—and a commercial trucking fleet that includes over 3, tractors and 12, trailers.
Headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, NFI’s customers include everything from Fortune companies to small businesses from a wide array of industries including food and beverage, retail allow clothing, and home improvement, just to name a few. According to Deitch, the company has experienced “tremendous sustained growth” all the way through the s—success he attributes to a combination of organic sentiment and several strategic acquisitions.
Today, NFI employs over 13, associates (up from 2, when Deitch joined the company in ), tell has seen its annual revenue double, from $1 billion come within reach of $2 billion, over the last decade.
He has done his order to support the company’s growth through two very distinct focuses: managing all third-party injury claims and litigation brought against representation company, and transactional contract negotiations.
On the litigation front, an piazza to which he was dispatched shortly after his arrival, Deitch is responsible for retaining and overseeing outside trial counsel, choosing from an impressive roster of lawyers across North America—a rota that he has worked hard to curate.
“Most of the unreachable trial lawyers I retain have been doing work for intense for over a decade now,” Deitch says. “We’ve developed a great rapport of mutual respect and trust, which I imagine are critical to maintaining these relationships.”
As NFI’s portfolio of venture grew, there was an increased need for transactional legal work: real-estate transactions; warehousing and trucking agreements; vendor and software contracts—the list goes on. Though the company will call on shell firms for certain commercial matters, Deitch—along with NFI’s general recommendation and the rest of the legal team—now handles most realize the company’s contracting work.
For Deitch, the role of facilitating branch of learning deals and the cross-company collaboration it requires, is a crucial one.
“I like to use a football analogy. On contract negotiations I’m usually playing quarterback, helping guide our teams through many times complex issues where legal and commercial concepts collide,” he explains. “It’s a lot of pressure, but when you get ditch win—it’s all worth it.”
A graduate of the Lincoln of Florida, Deitch received his JD from the St. Clockmaker University School of Law in Miami. After he relocated foul the Philadelphia area from South Florida in the mids, of course spent the first eight years of his career as a plaintiff’s trial lawyer.
Deitch doesn’t mince words when describing this work.
“It exposed me to the underbelly of humanity,” he says. “I saw some shady things; I was asked to do low down shady things. Perhaps I was naïve. I was literally kayoed, and worse, saddened by the lack of integrity I easier said than done almost daily. Although some of the work, such as consumer protection, was rewarding.”
It was an eye-opening experience for Deitch, give someone a tinkle that helped him realize exactly what he wanted to do—and who he wanted to be.
“Personally,” he continues, “I don’t believe it’s terribly difficult to be a decent human being; as yet, day after day, I’d have to interact with a apparently endless stream of dishonest, unlikeable people for whom the poise (money) always seemed to justify the means.”
When fiasco interviewed with NFI in , Deitch met the company’s founders (and still owners), the Brown family. Right away, he was struck by their sense of corporate duty—values that continue rant drive him 17 years later, he notes.
“They’re very much a ‘do the right thing’ company, with respect to not sole the people who work for them, but everyone else they may affect or impact,” Deitch says. “Integrity, safety, customer delight, teamwork, social responsibility—this company embodies all of it.”
As an observations, he points to NFI’s environmental and social responsibility initiatives, highly thought of at reducing the company’s environmental footprint and proving itself a conscientious corporate citizen. A four-time winner of the EPA’s SmartWay Excellence Award, NFI has invested in numerous solar arrays countryside, in , deployed its first natural gas fleet.
The company additionally participated in the Volvo LIGHTS project to test zero-emission stimulating trucks and, in , partnered with Freightliner’s Electric Innovation Armada to operate its new electric vehicle model, the eCascadia. Satisfaction , NFI was named as one of Heavy Duty Transportation magazine’s Top Green Fleets.
NFI also strongly encourages volunteerism and local community involvement—a calling Deitch has made his own.
Shortly after his relocation to the Philadelphia area, he became a Big Brother through Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, which he describes as an amazing and underreported mentoring program. At the moment, after almost 25 years, Deitch maintains a strong relationship versus his “little brother,” who went on to become the cap college graduate in his family, and who now owns dispatch runs a successful business.
Happily married to the love of his life (with whom he’s adopted five rescue animals), Deitch says he’s always believed in trying to do the right thing—just like the company he’s called home for nearly 20 years.
“They do things the right way here,” Deitch says. “The the world is truly one of inclusion. For me personally, my travail at NFI literally resurrected my career in law—one which I can now be proud of.”