Legal News

What?s Going on at Cooley Godward?

By Ashby Jones

Partner defections are a fact of life at pretty much every law firm, save a mighty and elite handful. And so long as they happen in well-spaced increments, law firms can typically weather the departure of even the highest-profile lawyer.

It’s when a flood of partners leave a firm within a relatively short period of time that serious questions start getting asked, sometimes about the viability of a department, sometimes about the viability of the entire firm. Sometimes, a firm recovers its footing and can put a bad run behind it in short order.

With that, we bring you the news of the latest firm to suffer a spate of significant departures: Cooley Godward Kronish. In the past two months, nine partners — four of whom were practice leaders — have left the firm.

The Los Angeles Daily Journal takes a look at the issue in Friday’s paper (link not available). According to the DJ:

The defections have revived questions about Cooley Godward’s future, the firm’s domestic-only focus, and willingness to expand beyond its focus on small, emerging company clients. All of the attorneys who left Cooley joined firms with a large international presence, and have cited that fact as a big reason for taking the jobs.

And with memories fresh about the collapse last year of firms like Heller Ehrman, some legal observers have wondered if Cooley Godward - still 650 lawyers strong - is in danger of facing a similar fate.

The DJ reporter, Craig Anderson, answers the question: saying it’s “an almost definitive no.”

“I don’t think this is by any means an indication of a meltdown at the firm,” said Larry Watanabe, a San Francisco-area legal recruiter. “Cooley has a very strong foothold in the marketplace.”

Richard Climan, who headed Cooley’s mergers and acquisitions group before leaving with highly regarded M&A partner Keith Flaum and technology transactions practice group head Eric Reifschneider to work at Dewey & LeBoeuf’s East Palo Alto office, also told the DJ his former firm would do fine.

Still, the departure of so many practice group leaders in such a short span of time presents, if nothing else, a public relations challenge for the firm. And from a strategic point of view, the exits revived questions that long have loomed over the firm, such as whether Cooley should expand overseas or merge with another firm that has offices in Asia and Europe.

Firm chairman Stephen Neal (pictured) said such expansion is “inevitable,” and chief executive Joe Conroy said Thursday that “it’s been a piece of our strategic plan to achieve an international presence at some point in time.”

Otherwise, to the DJ, Neal emphasized the firm’s litigation strength, saying half of its revenue comes from litigation, with a much smaller chunk coming from emerging companies corporate work.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).