Managing Partner Quits Suddenly, Firm Sends Out Snarky Email In Her Wake
Why did this managing partner just up and quit last Friday?
Here at Above the Law, we love ourselves a good departure memo. If a great one makes its way into your inbox, please feel free to send our way.
People write departure memos so they can frame their farewells — explain why they’re leaving, provide their new contact information, and thank the people who need to be thanked. But what about if a partner — a managing partner, no less, and one involved in a summer associate scandal from a few years ago — just quits without explanation?
In that case, the remaining members of management write her departure memo for her. And oh what a departure memo….
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The departing partner is Colleen Tracy, former managing partner at Fitzpatrick Cella, the prominent intellectual-property firm. If her name rings a bell, it should. This high-powered IP litigatrix was the partner whose gun-toting boyfriend — now her husband, we hear — mixed it up back in 2012 with a summer associate we dubbed the Fitzpatrick Cella Fella.
The Fitzpatrick Cella Fella got no-offered — which tends to happen when you get into a fight with the MP’s significant other. But now Colleen Tracy is no longer at the firm either.
Over the weekend, Nicholas Cannella — senior member of the firm’s Management Committee, said to be the true caller of shots at FCHS, even if Colleen Tracy held the title of “Managing Partner” — sent out an email to the entire firm. Here’s how it starts:
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Navigating Financial Success by Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Maximizing Firm Performance
From: Nicholas Cannella
Date: June 28, 2014, 10:50 a.m.
To: #All Firm Personnel
Subject: Colleen TracyColleen Tracy resigned from the firm late on Friday afternoon, without explanation or providing any information as to her future plans. We wish her well.
Actually, they don’t. Behold the passive-aggressive juxtaposition of “without explanation or providing any information as to her future plans” with “[w]e wish her well.”
We already have been in communication with the one client for whom she was working, and we do not anticipate any changes as a result of her departure.
“[T]he one client for whom she was working” — ouch. It sounds like Colleen Tracy’s book of business has a single page. “We do not anticipate any changes,” indeed.
Please feel free to contact any member of the a [sic] management Committee if you have any questions.
The Management Committee
Sent from my iPad
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Nothing says “we don’t give a crap about you” like a typo-laden email. Sent from an iPad.
We reached out to Nick Cannella for comment on Colleen Tracy’s departure; he did not get back to us. If we hear from him, we’ll update this post.
Recall that Tracy’s not the only person to leave Fitzpatrick Cella in recent moths. A tipster tells us:
[Remember they laid off] 22 of support staff in April due to “restructuring.” And then four major partners resigned. And four more associates followed to other firms. You mentioned three of the major partners that resigned.
Yes. We previously wrote about Lisa Barons Pensabene, Marc Pensabene, and Filko Prugo moving over to O’Melveny & Myers.
Where is Colleen Tracy headed? We don’t know. If you have an idea, or any inside info about Fitzpatrick Cella to share, feel free to email us or text us (646-820-8477). Thanks.
UPDATE (7/1/2014, 11:20 a.m.): Find out Tracy’s new professional home, and check out some law firm merger rumors, over here.
(Flip to the next page to review Colleen Tracy’s bio. It’s nice to see a litigatrix like Tracy strutting her stuff in the macho, male-dominated field of IP litigation.)
