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With a foundation built on staff collaboration and trust, a family atmosphere and specializations spanning various areas of the law, it’s no surprise that Jacobs, Schwalbe & Petruzzelli, P.C., is on the cusp of its 50th year.
But the real secret to its success stems from guiding clients through difficult periods with care and patience.
“One of the things we pride ourselves on is we have empathy and compassion for our clients,” says attorney Jeffrey S. Simons. “Our clients are injured, out of work and have ongoing problems such as financial hardship and disabilities, so empathy is a very important trait to have. It’s hard to step into somebody else’s shoes, but we try our best to be compassionate with our clients. It’s not just a business to us: We’re trying to help people, too.”
Mark S. Jacobs, who founded the Cherry Hill practice in 1977, was joined soon by Alan L. Schwalbe and Robert A. Petruzzelli. The trio still profoundly impacts a firm focusing on personal injury, workers’ compensation and Social Security disability—but are yielding more leadership responsibility to the next generation of partners: Simons, Timothy J. Mello and Lauren S. Tovinsky, who all have longtime personal ties to JS&P.
“My first job when I was 15 years old was in our file room,” Mello says. “I started here as a kid, have always stayed in touch with everybody, and when I was doing workers’ compensation defense work, they recruited me to come back about seven years ago. It’s like a homecoming and it’s been incredible.”
“Tim and I have worked at other law firms, and I can say that not every firm has an amicable environment where everybody gets along and respects each other like we do here,” Simons adds. “Tim was here in high school and made his way back. Mark Jacobs is actually my father-in-law, and Lauren is the daughter of Robert Petruzzelli. So we have a family relationship here, both figuratively and literally, and it works well for all of us.”
Those connections are beneficial since the firm’s three different specialties commonly overlap—often on the same cases—so teamwork is critical for both efficiency and reaching the best result for clients.
As Simons explains, New Jersey was one of the first states to pass workers’ comp laws in 1911, establishing a no-fault system where employees are protected by any injury that happens at work, whether the fault of themselves, their employer or their colleagues. Personal injury, a separate legal area, is based on the idea that somebody else is at fault for the person’s injuries, but the two can intersect.
For example, if a factory employee driving a forklift hits a fellow employee, there’s a workers’ comp claim; if an employee is driving for work and a third party injures them in a car accident, there is also a personal injury or negligence case.
“There are cases with workers’ comp only, cases with personal injury only, and cases where there could be both,” Simons says. “I think we do a very good job of identifying the cases where there could be both and trying to get creative on whether there is additional liability for someone other than their employer or co-employee.”
He adds that New Jersey laws aim to prevent someone from getting a double recovery: a full recovery in workers’ comp and personal injury. “A portion of the money that is paid out by the workers’ comp carrier is entitled to go back to the workers’ comp carrier out of a third-party settlement. So that lien is not asserted against the client individually, but it’s asserted against the client’s third-party personal injury lawsuit and it would affect their bottom line. But when we have the opportunity to handle both of their claims stemming from the same incident, we’re in an excellent position to minimize what the comp lien is going back to the insurance carrier, and at the end of the day, maximizing the recovery for our client.”
Workers’ comp and personal injury most commonly overlap, but the third specialty can also be a factor.
“If you’re out of work or expected to be out of work for 12 months or more, you can qualify for Social Security disability benefits,” Mello says. “It’s not unusual at all for us to have a personal injury/comp claim, and about six months in we’ll be talking about the case and how our client is still out of work and possibly needing another surgery. That’s when we would start talking to her about a Social Security claim, and now we have all three of them going. The goal is always to help our client any way we can and maximize their recovery.”
Whether the firm is hired to focus on one or every aspect of a case, attorneys still work together to share experiences and insights from their area of expertise, while demonstrably sympathizing with clients’ emotional and physical toll.
The process may differ with each case but the goal is the same.
“There are absolutely cases that only fall into one practice area, like a car accident that has nothing to do with work,” Simons says. “But from a client management perspective, I don’t think they’re any different. We’re always looking to be zealous advocates for our clients, to have compassion when working with them and to respond to their needs. There are also cases where our clients are involved in multiple practice areas, but they have different law firms for each, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can get great representation from other firms too, but when everything is under our roof, I think we’re in a very good position to conference cases, be on top of the issues that might impact each other’s cases, and, at the end of the day, to maximize our clients’ results.”
Jacobs, Schwalbe & Petruzzelli, P.C.
Cherry Hill
(856) 484-4229
JacobsLawOffice.com
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Published and copyrighted in South Jersey Magazine, Volume 22, Issue 4 (July 2025)
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