Cravath Elects Its Next Presiding Partner, M&A Star Faiza Saeed
Congrats to the first female leader in the legendary law firm's history.
Faiza J. Saeed
When I was a little boy growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, reading my mother’s back issues of Architectural Digest in the basement while other boys played baseball and such, I came across a compliment that stuck with me over the years. Someone (I can’t remember who) complimented Mica Ertegun, noted interior designer and wife of music mogul Ahmet Ertegun, using these words: “So elegant she can wear linen without wrinkling it.”
If any Biglaw partner deserves such high praise, it’s M&A rock star Faiza Saeed, who was just elected the next presiding partner of storied Cravath, Swaine & Moore (as reported last night by Julie Triedman of the American Lawyer). The 50-year-old Saeed, who currently serves as co-head of M&A at CSM, will take the reins in January 2017 from C. Allen Parker, whose four-year term concludes at the end of this year. She will become the firm’s 16th presiding partner and its first woman leader — and she will be in that role in 2019, when the firm celebrates its bicentennial anniversary.
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I have been fascinated by Faiza Saeed for many years, dating back to a profile of her that appeared in New York magazine back in February 2001, when she was a young partner at Cravath. (It’s not online, sadly, but I fished it out of my storage unit last night; sometimes it pays to be a packrat.) The writer, Cameron Stracher, commended Saeed for having “an amazing client list for any lawyer, even more amazing considering that Saeed is 35 and made partner only two years ago.” After describing her background — daughter of Pakistani immigrants, majored in molecular biology and economics at UC Berkeley, almost went to medical school but wound up at Harvard Law School instead — Stracher noted that “though she doesn’t make a banker’s salary, she doesn’t do too badly (average profits per partner at Cravath last year were $2.1 million). And she is worth it.”
Faiza Saeed (New York magazine, February 2001)
In the spirit of “Throwback Thursday,” I must also confess that I was intrigued by the photo of Saeed that ran with the article (at right, click to enlarge; “no filter,” as the kids say on Instragram). She’s wearing a lavender blazer — not typical attire for a top practitioner in the macho, male-dominated world of mergers and acquisitions — and she exudes the calmness and wisdom that have made her a leading lawyer for Fortune 500 companies over the years. At the same time, the portrait reflects a certain seriousness — perhaps a sadness — that makes you want to know more about this goddess of M&A.
I had the privilege of meeting Faiza Saeed in person more than a decade later, at a 2013 DealBook/New York Times conference where she spoke on a panel about activist investing and I served as a post-panel discussion facilitator. She was superb on the panel; I emailed a friend at the time, “She’s amazing — very eloquent, poised, and polished — she could be a TV newscaster.” She was warm and friendly when I approached her and introduced myself, although without giving up that air of mystery that so intrigued me.
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Those who know Faiza Saeed have nothing but raves. One fellow Cravath partner described her to me succinctly: “Wonderful.” Outgoing presiding partner Allen Parker told Sara Randazzo of the Wall Street Journal that Saeed is “a person of real character and integrity,” who will be an excellent leader of the firm.
Saeed’s clients — which include, as noted by the New York Times, Precision Castparts (sold to Berkshire Hathaway for $37 billion), DreamWorks (sale pending to NBCUniversal for $4 billion), and Yahoo (very much hoping to sell itself) — adore her as well. I reached out to Paul Cappuccio, executive vice president and general counsel of longtime Cravath client Time Warner, who shared these comments on Saeed:
Faiza, along with a couple of her partners, has been our go-to lawyer on many of our most important transactions over the last two decades. She is not merely a superb transactional lawyer, but also a trusted boardroom counsellor, whose advice and judgment both our management and board value very highly. She is also a wonderful person, who helps make everything she works on a more enjoyable experience.
Saeed will continue to maintain her M&A practice, which shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. She is a key rainmaker in Cravath’s corporate group, a major draw and contact point for clients (even more so in the wake of Scott Barshay’s departure for Paul Weiss earlier this year).
And being presiding partner does leave some room for maintaining a practice. Cravath is small by Biglaw standards — a shade under 500 lawyers, almost all of them in New York (aside from a small London office) — and running it is not as all-consuming a job as being managing partner of certain other Biglaw firms.
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First, Cravath has an executive director, Donna Rosenwasser, who handles day-to-day management. Second, its partnership — at 89 members, also small by Biglaw standards — is famously democratic. It holds regular, in-person lunch meetings, something that Biglaw mega-firms with hundreds of partners all over the globe can’t do, and even rank-and-file partners have input into firm decisions. Being presiding partner at Cravath doesn’t come with the dictatorial control of managing partner at many other firms; as noted by Paul Barrett of the WSJ back in 1997, the job “comes with modest official powers and relies more on persuasion.” Indeed, former presiding partner Samuel Butler famously compared the post to being “a fire hydrant in the presence of 70-odd dogs.”
The history-making nature of Faiza Saeed’s election as Cravath’s first female presiding partner should also be noted. As we’ve chronicled repeatedly in these pages, the ranks of Biglaw partners, especially equity partners, are sorely lacking in gender diversity. A mere 18 percent of equity partners are women, according to a study by the National Association of Women Lawyers. As for managing partners, the numbers are even smaller; Saeed joins just a handful of women leading Am Law 100 firms. The two most prominent right now, as noted by DealBook, are Jami Wintz McKeon of Morgan Lewis and Kathryn J. Fritz of Fenwick & West. With all due respect to Morgan Lewis and Fenwick, however, it’s fair to say that as of January, Cravath will be the most prestigious, profitable, and white-shoe firm to boast a woman leader.
Although he still has a few months on the job, it is appropriate at this time to congratulate outgoing presiding partner Allen Parker on his spectacularly successful tenure. He hands Cravath over to Faiza Saeed in great shape. Last year the firm advised on a record-breaking $927 billion in deals, placing second in the league tables only to Skadden (a much larger firm by headcount), and enjoyed profits per partner of $3.56 million, an increase of 5.6 percent over the prior year and good for a sixth-place finish in the Am Law 100 ranked by PPP. Cravath also took back the #1 spot from Wachtell in the Vault 100 rankings, which rank the nation’s top law firms by prestige and are closely followed by law students and young lawyers choosing between employers.
More importantly for Biglaw as a whole, Allen Parker spearheaded Cravath’s recent pay raise, which has reverberated throughout the world of large law firms and taken the standard starting salary to $180,000 (and reallocated hundreds of millions in compensation from partners to associates in the process). Parker thought it was the right thing to do — and he did it, despite possible client pushback, demonstrating a significant amount of courage as well as Cravath’s continued leadership of Biglaw. Mr. Parker, the law firm associates of America salute you.
Congratulations to Faiza Saeed on her election as Cravath’s next presiding partner, and congratulations to Cravath on selecting its next leader — a brilliant lawyer and leader, magnificently equipped to take one of America’s great law firms into its third century of success. Without wrinkling any linen.
Cravath Elects Top M&A Partner Faiza Saeed as New Leader [American Lawyer]
Faiza Saeed to Become First Woman to Lead Cravath, Swaine & Moore [DealBook / New York Times]
Cravath, Swaine & Moore Names Faiza Saeed as Presiding Partner [Wall Street Journal]
Cravath Elects Faiza J. Saeed as its Next Presiding Partner [Cravath (press release)]
Earlier: New Leadership At Cravath
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].
