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Joseph A. Prim Jr. was often invited to dinner at Rick Furia’s home at Broad and Tasker streets. The two were good friends, growing up in South Philly, and from their days attending Annunciation B.V.M., 1150 Wharton St., all the way up to their University of Pennsylvania days.
“His father was a judge and I’d have dinner at the family table and Judge [Edward W.] Furia — we’d have spirited conversations,” Prim said of the former U.S. District official. “He said to me, ‘You know, you’d make a good lawyer’ and I said, ‘Really? I never thought about it.’”
The endorsement sealed the deal for Prim, who resided at Broad and Moore streets with sisters Suzanne and Helene in the home their grandfather, Thomas Armstrong, bought in 1919. The son of Joseph and Leila wrapped up his senior year at Penn where he majored in English literature in ’67 and promptly enrolled at Boston University School of Law, where he earned his juris doctorate three years later.
Now a partner at the Center City-based Duca & Prim, where he mainly deals with workers’ compensation cases, the ’62 Bishop Neumann High School alum also is serving his second year as the treasurer for the Philadelphia Bar Association.
Prim became involved with the group in the early ’80s, when he began attending meetings for the association’s Workers’ Compensation Committee that expanded into a section in ’95.
“In ’94, I was asked to chair that committee and I enjoyed it very much,” the 65-year-old said. “After that, I was treasurer of Workers’ Compensation Committee until last year and, as I became more active in other areas of the bar association, I thought that it would be nice because of my experience to get in a more visible leadership position.”
He served as co-chairman of the bar related groups Solo and Small Firm Committee, along with the Law Practice Management Division, and was elected to the Board of Governors in 2005.
“When my term expired on the board, I still enjoyed what I was doing, so I ran for assistant treasurer [in ’08] and when the treasurer resigned because he was running for judge in Montgomery County, I ran for treasurer,” he said.
Last year, he beat out three other candidates vying for the position that includes reviewing the financial condition and the audit of the association; he ran unopposed for the seat for this year.
Since those dinners with Furia, the attorney has continued to absorb various aspects of the field — which continued when Prim became Furia’s law clerk.
“The entire thing is a learning process,” he said. “I began to learn about the law and our system of law around the table in college and I learned more in law school, saw how it’s applied in clerkship and, when I started working, learned how to apply it myself. I’m still learning.”
He began practicing at O’Halloran, Stack & Smith, a former Center City law firm, before opening his own practice in ’73 where he took on various cases including criminal defense, personal injury and contracts. During two of his years as a solo practitioner, he worked on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Rules Committee.
“It involved doing research for the committee into different jurisdictions and how they solve problems in rule-making to see if the Supreme Court rules could be adjusted to work better,” he said.
In ’80, while opposing Steven Sheller on a domestic relations case, Prim’s career took an unexpected turn.
“He said, ‘You know you should be working over here with me.’ I was like, ‘All right. Make me an offer.’”
And Sheller did.
He joined Steven Sheller and Associates, which represented labor unions and developed a small workers compensations division, which he became actively involved in. Prior to this job, he had worked in various areas of the law before finding his niche.
“I took the experience I had developed in personal injury work and applied it to their small workers’ compensation practice and developed it,” he said. “I decided I really enjoyed the work. It was very satisfying both intellectually and rewarding in seeing successful outcomes that benefited people.”
After refining his passion during the seven years on the job, he opted to venture out.
“I decided in ’87 it was time for me to move away from there and go out on my own again. I bumped into Paul [J. Duca] on the street we started talking and he mentioned he had a vacant office.”
The two worked together for awhile and soon developed Duca & Prim, 1500 Walnut St. Duca concentrates on real estate, commercial law, estates and personal injury, while Prim focuses on workers’ compensation and some personal injury cases.
“I think I got to be pretty good at it and I got more and more work, so that eventually became the major part of my practice,” he said of his workers’ compensation cases.
The Gladwyne resident deals with getting benefits for clients or having them reinstated if they are cut off before the worker is fully recovered in addition to advising self-insured businesses.
“About half involve injured workers who suffer an injury on the job and the injury is not recognized by the employee for whatever reason,” the father of four — Jennifer, 36, Joseph, 34, Marian, 16, Tom, 10 — with wife of 18 years Jeanne and grandfather of five said. “Some reasons are that the employee is concerned about the increase in premiums if they acknowledge the injury or they don’t like the fellow or the worker was only there for a short period of time.”
Aside from his courtroom work, he speaks at law education seminars about changing ethical standards, among other topics.
Even after practicing for 40 years, Prim does not see an end in sight.
“I want to continue my work with the bar association in the leadership position and continue to develop my practice and work on the law, which I enjoy very much,” he said. “There’s some people who are looking forward to the day they retire from the day they start working, but I get great pleasure from the work I do.”
Contact Staff Writer Amanda Snyder at asnyder@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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