Legal News

A Sit Down With Latham Chairman Bob Dell

By Nathan Koppel

Law Blog colleague Christopher Bjork sat down yesterday with Latham & Watkins chairman Bob Dell.

The setting: Latham’s Madrid offices. The topic: the state of the firm, a matter of interest to us given the firm's herky jerky trajectory in recent years. It was perhaps the hot firm in the AmLaw 100 circa 2007, but it was battered by the recession and forced last year to fire about 200 lawyers ─ or around 10% of the firm.

So how are things now? Pretty darn good, Dell said.

The legal market in the U.S., he said, picked up in the 4th Quarter of 2009 ─ a view shared by lawyers at other firms.

Demand has also picked up this year in Europe, Dell said, and the M&A and IPO markets are returning in force in Asia as well.

Dell said his firm is getting so many IPO inquiries it's almost too much to handle.

It's not all good news, of course. Associates at the firm still aren't fully occupied, according to Dell.

But that, he said, is due in part to the fact that the firm was judicious last year with its layoffs, holding on to more lawyers than it needed to service the recessionary level of demand for its services.

Dell also talked about law-firm M&A. In the wake of the epic Hogan/Lovells tie-up, folks (i.e., the Law Blog) have been watching and waiting for another transatlantic merger.

But Latham will not join the M&A party anytime soon, said Dell, who also doubts that London's "Magic Circle" firms will make M&A news in the near future.

"Putting two behemoths together is too difficult," he said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 07, 2010 (boomark / email).