Legally Speaking – Legal Recruiter Blog

We all know today’s legal market continues to evolve and it certainly presents unique challenges. With the uncertainly still looming over the financial markets, many law firms continue to streamline their ranks and trim compensation for partners whose business has fallen off. It is not uncommon to push partners into early retirement or into counsel positions for those who are no longer producing at an acceptable partner level.

So…in light of these not so attractive elements, how do you stay nimble and place yourself in a position to exact the most benefit from the current market situation? How do you maintain a vital position and keep your firm enamored with you?

Answer: Do some soul-searching and ask yourself these thought-provoking questions. If you answer them honestly, they will help you determine if you should stay the course with your current firm or start to look for new digs.

1. Are you satisfied with your firm’s reputation in the legal and business communities?
2. Is your firm well managed?
3. Are you optimistic when it comes to the financial health of your firm? Do you believe management is making the right decisions regarding the firm’s future?
4. Does your firm provide the platform you require for building your practice? Does your practice coincide with the strategic vision of the firm?
5. Is the firm committed to marketing? Does the firm provide you with the resources you need to successfully market your practice?
6. Are firm billing rates compatible with your specialty and your clients and has your firm adopted a flexible billing program?
7. Do you have the opportunity to participate in important departmental or practice decisions? If you desire a leadership role in the firm, is that a real possibility?
8. Do you feel you are compensated fairly when compared with your peers at your current firm and with those at similar firms?
9. Is your firm a good cultural fit? Do your peers share your views of work/life balance and superior client service and reputable character?
10. Does the firm’s physical surroundings provide an atmosphere where you can be productive?
11. Do you feel respected and valued by your peers? Do you respect and value your colleagues’ legal work? Are you comfortable referring your clients’ matters to them?
12. Do you receive adequate support from other partners, associates, paralegals and support staff in order to get work done in a timely fashion?
13. Is the firm committed to pro bono work and community service in a way that coincides with your values and beliefs?
14. Does the firm have a fair policy for recognizing cross-marketing and service to yours and others clients? Is there equality regarding how much work you receive from others as opposed to how much work to you throw off to others?

Derek C. Smith, Foley Hoag

Luis A. Parada, Foley Hoag

GLI, a global legal recruiting network (Grimes Legal Inc.) recently placed Derek Smith, Latin American International Dispute Resolution, Petroleum Law and Public International Law partner, and Luis Parada, counsel, with Foley Hoag, continuing the growth of its leading International Litigation and Arbitration Practice and its Washington, D.C. office.

Smith and Parada, who joined Foley Hoag from Dewey & LeBoeuf in Washington, D.C., represent sovereign States in international arbitration and other dispute settlement proceedings. Smith practices in the areas of international dispute resolution, petroleum law and public international law. He also works with governments of petroleum producing countries and national oil companies in the full range of matters related to oil and gas exploration, production and monetization, including dispute resolution.

Foley Hoag has one of the world’s most respected and experienced group of lawyers practicing international litigation and arbitration. According to Foley Hoag’s co-managing partner Adam Kahn, “Our Washington, D.C. office serves as a gateway to assist our clients around the world.” Derek and Luis bring significant experience to a team that practices at the highest levels worldwide, and we welcome them to the firm.”

Ronald Goodman, co-chair of Foley Hoag’s International Litigation and Arbitration Practice said, “Derek is a leading practitioner in international dispute resolution, especially in petroleum law, and he and Luis add talent to an already strong team of international litigation and arbitration lawyers that aims to provide clients with high-quality legal services.”

Read more….

Brian Baxter

The Am Law Daily

06-19-2012

A trio of financial services transactions announced this month have boosted the corporate practices of several leading law firms.

New York–based private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts announced Monday its purchase of Prisma Capital Partners, an investment firm focused on hedge funds. Reuters reports that the money management unit of Dutch financial services giant Aegon, which helped set up Prisma in 2004, will sell its minority stake in Prisma but remain a significant investor in Prisma’s funds.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the transaction has yielded roles for two Am Law 100 firms that are no strangers to private equity and hedge fund work.

Schulte Roth & Zabel, a firm known for its top-tier hedge fund and investment management practice, is advising Aegon and Prisma on the deal with a team led by M&A partners Andre Weiss and Christopher Harrison, tax partner Philippe Benedict, investment management partner Jennifer Dunn, and employee benefits partner Holly Weiss. Anne Wynne has served as general counsel and chief compliance officer for New York–based Prisma since June 2010.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett is advising longtime client KKR on the acquisition. Corporate partner Gary Horowitz, investment funds partner Jason Herman, tax chair Steven Todrys, tax partner Katharine Moir, employee benefits partner Andrea Wahlquist, and corporate counsel Lisa Klar are leading a team from the firm working on the matter.

KKR has long been one of Simpson Thacher’s largest clients. In 2011 alone, the firm advised KKR on its $7.2 billion acquisition of oil and gas company Samson, its $2.38 billion buy of Pfizer’s Capsugel division, its sale of a stake in Web domain name provider Go Daddy Group, and the purchase of stakes in Academy Sports + Outdoors and Vietnam’s Masan Group.

David Sorkin, a former Simpson Thacher partner and member of the firm’s executive committee, has served as general counsel of KKR since 2007. Documents disclosed as a result of KKR’s $2 billion initial public offering in 2010 revealed Sorkin’s annual compensation to be nearly $7 million. (Simpson Thacher handled the IPO work for KKR.)

Also on Monday, billionaire Nelson Peltz disclosed that he had amassed a 5.1 percent stake in investment boutique Lazard through his Trian Fund Management. Peltz, whose hedge fund is now Lazard’s largest outside shareholder, has thrown his support behind a strategic plan outlined earlier this year by Lazard management to increase its business and boost shareholder value.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has traditionally handled transactions for Peltz, such as the activist investor’s $2.3 billion acquisition of Wendy’s International in 2008 and the $130 million sale of its majority stake in the Arby’s restaurant business last year. A Paul Weiss spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on the Lazard matter.

Lazard’s longtime outside legal counsel of choice has been Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Bruce Wasserstein, a former lawyer at the firm who served as chairman and CEO of Lazard, eventually prevailed in a fierce internal battle to take the investment bank public in 2005. (Wasserstein, who died in 2009 at 61, once owned The American Lawyer and parent company ALM before selling both to London-based Incisive Media in 2007 for $630 million.)

Two spokeswomen for Cravath did not respond to requests for comment on whether Lazard turned to the firm for counsel on the stake taken by Peltz, nor did corporate partner and longtime Lazard lawyer Erik Tavzel. Scott Hoffman, another former Cravath lawyer who serves as managing director and general counsel of Lazard, did not respond to a request for comment on the bank’s legal advisers for the transaction.

Last week, Lazard elected former Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler partner Richard Parsons, who also served as chairman of Citigroup and CEO of Time Warner, to its board of directors. Other members of Lazard’s board include Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld senior counsel Vernon Jordan Jr. and former U.S. Supreme Court clerk Hal Scott, a Harvard Law School graduate who serves as director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, an independent and nonpartisan research organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Several prominent Am Law 100 alums also work at Lazard. Last year the former managing partner of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Mark Walker, left after 45 years at the firm to join Lazard’s sovereign advisory group, where he has played a prominent role over the past year advising the Greek government. Lazard also employs Timothy Pohl, the former cohead of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom’s corporate restructuring practice, who joined the bank in January 2009.

In another major deal announced earlier this month, London-based Norton Rose, which in recent years has put a premium on explosive international growth, took the lead for Absa Bank, a South African subsidiary of Barclays, on its $1.2 billion purchase of the retail credit card business of African department store chain Edcon.

A team of Norton Rose lawyers in South Africa and Abu Dhabi led by corporate partners Kevin Cron and Alan Bainbridge are advising Johannesburg-based Absa Bank on the deal, the biggest in its history. With roughly 700 branches and nearly 9,300 ATMs throughout South Africa, Absa Bank is one of the largest retail and mortgage lenders in the country

Chris Johnson
The Am Law Daily
06-11-2012

The globalization of legal business has generally come in waves, moving from one country to the next. In the late 1990s, U.S. and U.K. firms flocked to Germany. Intense law firm activity has also been seen in recent years in Hong Kong, China, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Most recently, Australia and Canada have dominated the headlines.

The signs are that it may now be Africa’s turn. The eyes of the international legal elite seem to be increasingly fixed on the region, attracted by an economy that is one of the world’s fastest growing, with gross domestic product still rising at almost 5 percent per year.

Last week, Baker & McKenzie became the latest firm to launch on the continent, establishing an office in South Africa with the hire of a 31-lawyer team from Dewey & LeBoeuf—one of the now-bankrupt firm’s last remaining outposts. Wildu du Plessis, who joined Baker alongside fellow co–managing partner Morne van der Merwe and six other partners, says that the specialist energy, mining, and projects group was approached by several firms, but that Baker’s “unmatched global platform” clinched the deal. Baker, highest-ranked firm by revenue on the The Am Law 100, now has 70 offices in 43 countries.   Read more

When you think of outsourcing you probably think of Blue collar jobs requiring little to no skill or technical support and customer service representatives who are as obsequious as they are incompetent spitting out canned dialogue with a heavy accent.  “I understand that you are upset because the defective battery we shipped with your laptop burned down your house Mr. Smith…”

No more.

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) companies are offering the services of lawyers abroad to handle the labor intensive parts of U.S. legal matters like document review in large scale litigation. As with other industries, India is the favored destination because, in addition to low wages, English is widely spoken.

Ethics Opinion 08-451, dated Aug. 5 but announced by the ABA Tuesday, states that sending legal work overseas is ethically permissible as long as the lawyer doing the outsourcing takes steps to ensure the protection of client confidences and preservation of attorney-client privilege.

The first casualties have been, and will continue to be, contract lawyers brought in to help with document intensive litigation, but, as Elie Mystal states in Above the Law:

how long before the work of junior associates can be cost effectively shipped overseas? It’s not like firms want to go to $190K for incoming associates.

People already in the pipeline should be fine. But change is coming to our profession. This ABA decision isn’t the tip of an iceberg, it is the receding sea that anticipates a tsunami.

Many contract lawyers have long held that the ABA represents the interests of wealthy partners at large law firms to the detriment of everyone else.  This recent opinion only serves to reinforce that view.