Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney has added to its white-collar defense practice through the addition of a 40-year veteran with experience representing the likes of John E. du Pont and former congressman Edward M. Mezvinsky.

Tom Bergstrom was scheduled to start in the firm's Philadelphia office Tuesday after spending more than 30 years as a solo practitioner handling white-collar and straight criminal defense cases.

Bergstrom's wife, Dee, died last year and his four kids are either married or finishing up college. He said it was the right time for him to join a firm with a larger support network and work again in the city after spending the last few years in an office in a barn 75 yards away from his Malvern, Pa., home.

"You come to a point I think, and I'm there, where I need some support," Bergstrom said. "I mean support in the sense that, get younger people involved. There comes a time where you don't really want to do all the research that needs to be done and you have younger people interested in doing it."

Bergstrom began the process of looking for a new position about 10 months ago. He called William A. DeStefano, chairman of Buchanan Ingersoll's white-collar defense and investigations group, because DeStefano had worked at a firm Bergstrom was talking to. When Bergstrom asked DeStefano what he thought, DeStefano had a different idea and talks between Bergstrom and Buchanan Ingersoll began.

"I'm totally pleased to have Tom come here," DeStefano said. "He's widely recognized as, if not the top, certainly one of the top white-collar criminal defense lawyers in the whole area. To get somebody to come out of solo practice after all those years and join any firm, it's a huge feather in our cap."

Bergstrom will be bringing over a docket of cases with him to Buchanan Ingersoll, including a health care fraud investigation case and a case in Jackson, Miss., that is set to go to trial in the spring, he said. The bulk of Bergstrom's cases are in the Eastern and Middle Districts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

DeStefano said Bergstrom had to be selective in the cases he took in the last few years because of caring for his ill wife. He said he wouldn't be surprised if Bergstrom's practice "doubles or triples, really, really explodes," after joining a larger firm.

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