Congratulations To Skadden’s 12 New Partners

This year seems to be off to a strong start for Skadden Arps. In the first quarter of 2017, the firm showed up near the top of the global and domestic M&A league tables of both Thomson Reuters and Mergermarket. And the second quarter is off to a good start, with Skadden advising JAB Holding Company in its recently announced acquisition of Panera (try their celebrated chocolate chip cookies).

Continuing the good news, yesterday the firm welcomed 12 lawyers into its partnership:

We are pleased to announce that the following attorneys have become partners of the firm:

Faiz Ahmad – Mergers and Acquisitions – Wilmington
Ryan Dzierniejko – Corporate Finance – New York
Eytan Fisch – Financial Institutions Regulation and Enforcement – Washington, D.C.
Michael Hines – Litigation – Boston
Maxim Mayer-Cesiano – Mergers and Acquisitions – New York
James Mazza, Jr. – Corporate Restructuring – Chicago
Giorgio Motta – European Union/International Competition – Brussels
Sonia Nijjar – Mergers and Acquisitions – Palo Alto
Joseph Penko – Executive Compensation and Benefits – New York
Patrick Rideout – Complex Litigation and Trials – New York
Royce Tidwell – Tax – Washington, D.C.
B. Chase Wink – Tax – New York

The new partners exhibit the geographic diversity one would expect from a global law firm, with the 12 lawyers hailing from seven different offices. They don’t exhibit quite as much diversity in terms of practice areas; they are heavily skewed towards the transactional side of the ledger, with just two litigators among them (but this isn’t shocking, given Skadden’s status as an M&A powerhouse).

Alas, the new partner class does fall short in terms of gender diversity. Of the 12 new partners, 11 are men. That’s 92 percent male and 8 percent female — well below the 37 percent that the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance reports to be the percentage of new partners who are women at large U.S. law firms over the past year.

Racial or ethnic diversity is a bit harder to ascertain, but this partner class doesn’t seem terribly diverse on that front either. Faiz Ahmad and Sonia Nijjar seem to be the only ones who fit the bill.

We reached out to the firm, which provided this statement:

We’re excited about the tremendous talent of our newest partners – both those who came up through the ranks and those who joined us laterally over the past 12 months. More than 25 percent of this total group are women, and more than 25 percent are partners of color. Consistently doing better with the diversity of our through-the-ranks partners is a priority. Women comprise 29% of our promoted partners over the past three years and we remain committed to making greater progress.

As the statement indicates, Skadden’s record on partnership diversity is stronger than this latest crop of partners would suggest, and lateral hires should be considered as well as “homegrown” partners. Of the seven lateral partners who have joined Skadden over the past year, a majority — four out of seven — are women (Amy Heller, Tara Reinhart, Lisa Laukitis, and Elizabeth Robertson).

So as we’ve said before on multiple occasions, one shouldn’t judge an entire firm by the diversity of a single partnership class. Diversity levels will fluctuate over the years. For example, back in 1987, Skadden’s new partner class was one-third women — surely well above the average for that period.

Yes, a single year can be an aberration — but over the long haul, firms ignore diversity and inclusion at their peril, because clients are now demanding it. For example, Facebook recently announced that it will require that women and ethnic minorities make up at least 33 percent of law firm teams working on its matters.

For proponents of diversity in Biglaw, that policy offers a lot to “like.”

Facebook Pushes Outside Law Firms to Become More Diverse [New York Times]

Earlier: Gibson Dunn Names 13 New Partners; How Diverse Is This Group?
Sullivan & Cromwell’s New Partners: Impressive, Yes; Diverse, Not So Much
Cleary Gottlieb’s New Partner Class: Where Are The Women?

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David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].