We’ve been a big fan of Dean Sager around these parts. He’s an NYU guy transplanted to Texas. And he managed to get Texas into the top 14 of the U.S. News law school rankings.
But all good things must come to an end. Why is Larry Sager relinquishing the UT Law deanship?
Congratulations to Bradley Butwin, firm-wide chair of litigation at O’Melveny & Myers. The firm just announced that Butwin, a 51-year-old, New York-based partner, will take over from A.B. Culvahouse Jr. as chairman of the firm. The timing of the handover remains to be determined.
We previously covered the leadership transition process at OMM. At the time, word on the street was that five candidates were vying for Culvahouse’s position as chair.
In the end, it came down to three partners. Let’s learn about the contenders, and see what else is going on at O’Melveny….
A search committee went to work, to try and find someone to fill Dean Van Zandt’s large shoes. Today the law school announced its new leader.
The new Northwestern Law dean, like his predecessor, is a distinguished scholar. He also comes with a strong track record as a law school administrator.
Michetti is not the first former Cahill partner to join Paul Hastings in 2011. Just last month, Rich Farley, another leveraged finance partner, hopped over to Paul Hastings.
On the whole, Cahill has been flourishing as a firm — and sharing the bounty with its associates. Recall the firm’s recent mid-year bonuses, which were very well-received.
But do the departures of Messrs. Farley and Michetti reflect trouble in paradise? Let’s hear some of the scuttlebutt….
The news from earlier this week continues that trend. Allen & Overy is opening a second U.S. office with, you guessed it, O’Melveny partners (specifically, financial regulatory partners Barbara Stettner and Chris Salter, and counsel Charles Borden).
Up until now we’ve been reporting that there has at least been stability in OMM’s firm leadership. But that may no longer be the case. Today’s report suggests that firm chairman A.B. Culvahouse Jr. may be forced out sooner rather than later….
UPDATE (7/2/11): Additional comment from the firm, after the jump.
We have recentlycovered a number of notable partner departures from O’Melveny & Myers. While some of the losses were “not undesired,” as one source put it, others were bad news for OMM.
But, in fairness to the firm, there is good news coming out of O’Melveny these days as well. Let’s discuss some of it.
First, OMM has responded to some of the partner departures with fresh leadership. Firm chairman A.B. Culvahouse remains at the helm of the ship, but several practice groups now have new heads. As recently reported by Am Law Daily, Steven Tonsfeldt is the new leader of the M&A practice group, C. Brophy Christensen and Eric Reimer will take over the corporate finance/capital markets group, and Robert Rizzi will head the tax group. Congratulations to all of them on their new posts.
Second, OMM is busy — so busy that it is calling up some of its incoming associates and asking them to come in earlier. These associates were originally given start dates in December 2011 but are now wanted in the early fall.
(By the way, we are working on a story for next week about start dates at major law firms. Feel free to send us info about your firm if you have any.)
So what specific start dates are O’Melveny’s incoming associates being offered now, and how do they feel about the change?
We recently reported that at least 22 partners have left O’Melveny & Myers in 2011 thus far. That number continues to grow.
Earlier this week, two more partners announced their imminent departures from OMM: Ilan Nissan, former firmwide co-chair of the firm’s M&A and private equity practice, and Christian Nugent, also an M&A partner. Like several of the other O’Melveny defectors, Nissan and Nugent arrived at OMM’s New York office via O’Sullivan Graev & Karabell, the highly regarded corporate boutique that O’Melveny absorbed in 2002, in an effort to build its NYC transactional practice.
Nissan and Nugent will be joining the New York office of Dewey & LeBoeuf. A spokesperson for Dewey confirmed the news to ATL. (A spokesperson for O’Melveny declined to comment.)
In addition, readers brought to our attention two O’Melveny partner departures from this year that didn’t appear in our earlier list. Let’s take a look….
Last month, we broke the news of seven key corporate partners leaving O’Melveny & Myers to join Paul Weiss. Shortly thereafter, we learned that two other prominent partners were leaving O’Melveny to join Weil Gotshal.
Of course, partners come and partners go at large law firms — but some of these nine were major rainmakers and practice group heads. Paul Weiss snagged Gregory Ezring, who chaired O’Melveny’s corporate finance and capital markets practice, and Brad Okun, who headed O’Melveny’s tax practice. Meanwhile, Weil scored Harvey Eisenberg, a leading private-equity adviser, and M&A partner Douglas Ryder.
Could something more be going on at OMM?
“You guys are missing a huge story about O’Melveny,” a tipster recently told us. “In the last two years or so, around 60 partners have disappeared.”
“The pace is now quickening,” this source added. “Since January 1, around 10% of the OMM partners, including many practice group leaders and other key rainmakers, have departed.”
These numbers sound significant — but, in fairness to O’Melveny, they should be viewed in context. Let’s hear what the firm had to say about them….
Big news out of Washington today: Bob Bauer is stepping down as White House counsel. He’s returning to his former firm, Perkins Coie, where he will represent Barack Obama as his personal lawyer and serve as general counsel to President Obama’s re-election campaign. Bauer is being replaced by his top deputy, leading litigatrix Kathryn Ruemmler.
Kathy Ruemmler is no stranger to these pages. She’s famous for her role as a lead prosecutrix in the Enron fraud case — and for her fabulous footwear.
Let’s learn more about Ruemmler’s shoes — are they peep-toes? — and review her impressive résumé….
The high-powered law firm of Paul Weiss has a legendary litigation practice. But their corporate department is strong too — they’re working on, for example, the big Warner Music deal — and it’s only getting stronger.
Yesterday corporate lawyers at Paul Weiss received an unusual email: “We would like to ask all counsel and associates to attend a meeting tomorrow morning at 11 to discuss some exciting developments affecting the Corporate Department. The meeting will be held in the concourse. Please make every effort to attend.”
The meeting took place earlier today. What was announced?
UPDATE: Please note that several updates have been added to this post, after the jump.
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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