Biglaw

Biglaw Firm All About The Plaintiffs' Side Now

Bold change for a mega firm.

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You don’t expect to hear of a giant multinational law firm making the pivot to plaintiffs-side work —- particularly not the firm that tops the Am Law 100 list with the most revenue. But here Kirkland & Ellis is announcing last week that they’re “doubling down” on contingency cases on behalf of plaintiffs.

As reported by Law.com the mega firm is looking to do 10x the plaintiffs work:

“We’re betting on ourselves now,” said partner James Hurst. “Truly doubling down.”

On Wednesday, the firm announced it is launching a plaintiffs-side trial group, aiming to “increase by ten-fold or more the number of contingency cases we’re taking on,” Hurst said.

Kirkland says they aren’t focusing on slip and fall cases, natch, but they aren’t even targeting securities or whistleblower cases. Instead, the firm is zeroing in on complex litigation cases:

“We took a look at the historical results we’ve achieved on the plaintiffs side over the last one or two decades for plaintiffs, and we’ve had some huge wins,” said partner Andrew Kassof (above, right), who co-led the team that represented Tronox Litigation Trust in winning $14 billion in damages in 2013 against Kerr-McGee in a fraudulent conveyance suit.

Their conclusion: “We don’t think law firms need to stay so firmly on one side of the ’v’ or the other,” Kassof said. “We want to align our incentives with our clients, and put the full breadth of the resources of the firm behind it. If we don’t come through, the clients don’t have to pay.”

Kirkland thinks such a massive Biglaw firm taking such a high-profile step away from the billable hour could be “disruptive” for the market. Only time will tell if this can truly change Biglaw’s dependence on the billable hour.

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