After All These Attorney Departures, Does Anyone Still Work At Norton Rose?

There's been a string of departures from Norton Rose recently, and today the firm took the biggest blow yet.

Yesterday afternoon, I received a short tip out of the blue about Norton Rose Fulbright’s DC office. According to the tipster, the office “has been hemorrhaging attorneys since the beginning of the year” with senior associates and “partners who have been at the firm for decades” all decamping to greener pastures over the last few months.

To be honest, it’s not something that had appeared on my radar. Going back through the press releases of lateral moves for the year to date, there’s definitely something to this tip — laterals seem to be heading out of that office more than they’ve been heading in. Winston had nabbed 8 infrastructure and energy lawyers earlier in the year and Rohit Chaudhry and Brian Greene had both left, seemingly legacy Chadbourne attorneys who didn’t want to make a go of it at the new firm. But it wasn’t anything that would strike any but the most dedicated lateralphile as a trend.

Until today of course.

That tip turned out to be the canary in the proverbial mine, as today brought news that at least 16 attorneys — including Jared Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell — have left Norton Rose. That’s… a bad day.

Reed Smith picked up 15 of the attorneys from the firm’s Life Sciences/Health Care Team in Washington, New York, and Austin. Five of those defections were partners at Norton Rose, while an additional two were senior associates who will join Reed Smith as partners.

Meanwhile, Abbe Lowell is moving to Winston, a firm that hopefully has tighter email controls, and takes a marquee criminal law practice with him. While it’s easy to think Chadbourne lawyers are generally souring on the Norton Rose merger, Lowell explains that his reasons for leaving were much more practical:

“Norton Rose and Chadbourne are a powerful combination,” Lowell said by phone Wednesday, “[but] I was running into a number of conflicts and other issues in this 4,000-person firm.”

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The next time someone preaches a merger as the cure to a law firm’s ills, this is one of the very serious consequences that they’re probably overlooking. Mergers can create all manner of administrative headaches that, far from capitalizing on economies of scale, mire the new firm in unforeseen slowdowns for years until it can reach equilibrium. Sometimes that’s going to generate a few high-profile firm casualties.

But, to answer the question posed by the title, “yes, lots of people still work at Norton Rose.” Just not nearly as many as worked there yesterday. But with 4000, they can afford to spare a few before we start to get concerned.


HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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