It’s about managing people and treating people with respect, and taking your other partners’ and lawyers’ advice in terms of what they want to see and with business development internally. After the merger at Squire, the abundance of increased bureaucracy and the decrease in human interaction among the partners was one of the main reasons I left. It’s still a people business at the end of the day.
— Douglas Boggs, son of the late Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. (a name partner of Patton Boggs), offering his thoughts about law firm management thanks to his pre- and post-merger experiences at Squire Patton Boggs. Boggs led the Tysons Corner, Virginia, office of Patton Boggs from 2005 to 2012, but left the firm to join Manatt Phelps & Phillips less than a year after Patton Boggs merged with Squire Sanders. Boggs now leads Manatt’s Washington, D.C., office.
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Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.