Biglaw

Norton Rose's Problems Run Way Deeper Than Losing Abbe Lowell

Norton Rose may still be a megafirm when it comes to revenue, but its American operations are experiencing serious brain drain.

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When Abbe Lowell and 15 other lawyers announced their departures from Norton Rose, we already had some inkling that these departures might signal a larger trend at work. Through the first half of the year, partners have quietly walked away from Norton Rose, one or two at a time — with the exception of eight infrastructure attorneys that seemed, plausibly at the time, to be one of those one-off departmental moves that are just a fact of life in Biglaw these days.

But now, as we stand back from the Seurat that is Norton Rose Fulbright in 2018, the picture that’s developing is a firm with a whole lot of unhappy partners. And there’s no one merger that can be pegged as the source of the discontent.

Parsing through the press releases and chatting with some sources, we’ve pulled together a list of at least 38 attorneys who have decamped from Norton Rose this year — and 18 of them appear to be lawyers who never knew any firm but one of Norton Rose’s predecessor firms. Even in the cutthroat world of Biglaw, lateraling after spending decades at the same firm, working with the same partners, is a difficult decision. But as hard as it is to convince a lifer to move on from the only firm they’ve ever known, it gets a lot easier with each successive lifer who walks out the door. These things have a tendency to snowball.

Just ask Sedgwick.

So to say there’s a morale problem over there would seem to be an understatement.

How does a Biglaw firm lose the faith of so many senior attorneys — including attorneys like Jeff Layne, who left for Reed Smith last week, or Michael Pikiel, now with Winston, who sources say were considered within the firm as leaders being groomed for higher responsibilities throughout the verein? Sources say the problems are legion but fundamentally boil down to a cultural shift dictated by a detached management group.

There are a lot of reasons not to buy the myth that mergers bring Biglaw happiness, but one speed bump that merging firms never seem to consider is the chafing caused by bringing professionals with decades of experience into another institution with decades of experience of its own. And when a management structure doesn’t appear especially interested in bringing its new members into the fold, that’s going to inspire some phone calls to recruiters.

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It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s legacy Chadbourne, legacy Fulbright, or a domestic Norton Rose partner with no prior ties — senior attorneys in the American offices have, as one source put it, “next to zero confidence in current management.” Under the firm’s more centralized structure, the horizontal distribution of power that prevailed in predecessor firms is gone, and wealth has rapidly concentrated at high levels at the firm.

As one might imagine, that’s the sort of management misstep that impacts young partners the hardest. It’s an old saw that partners make less in their first year of partnership than they did in their final year as a senior associate. According to people we talked to about Norton Rose’s rash of departures, junior partners are undercompensated relative to associates as many as four to five years into partnership. One source noted that the morale problem extends to senior associates who don’t see the opportunities that they did before leaving — this tip resonates when you recall that the mass lateral move to Reed Smith included more than one Norton Rose senior associate who lateraled into a partnership role. That’s not where a firm should be placing its up-and-coming leadership.

Unless, of course, the firm doesn’t really care about its future leaders. If management views America as little more than a revenue stream, it doesn’t need to get to the bottom of the unhappiness. The firm ranks tenth among the Am Law 200 for revenue. On the other hand, PPP is on the decline — not that this means much if the big earners are making the decisions.

If Norton Rose hopes to stanch the bleeding of its U.S. ranks, it probably should get on that quick because there’s no reason to believe we’ve seen the end of the exodus.

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

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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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