We all know that Bad News causes Lawcruiters to salivate and start headhunting. Not unlike sharks – the scent of blood in the water from a weakened firm sends Lawcruiters and their clients into a feeding frenzy as firms compete to acquire business relationships and practice expertise from the remains of a disintegrating firm. Every Brobeck lawyer (remember them?) or (more recently) Jenkens & Gilchrist lawyer knows this well.
These days, it’s Dewey Ballantine and Citibank attorneys who are getting the calls. In the case of Citibank attorneys – the situation is fairly clear-cut. For Dewey attorneys – the situation is more nuanced – and ultimately, the jury is still out as to whether the firm will survive the expiration, next month, of the term of the mutual non-solicitation agreement it signed with Orrick as a condition for the merger negotiations. In the meantime, a principal job for Dewey management (as would be the case for any firm in a comparable situation) is to reassure the troops (and discourage Lawcruiters and their clients) by making a compelling case that the firm continues to be an attractive and profitable place to practice law.
As a teaching opportunity – Dewey’s damage control/reassurance response in the aftermath of the merger failure gives some interesting food for thought. For example:
1. (As an example of looking weak.) In the several days after the merger failure announcement, the Dewey website was continuing to trumpet the impending merger.
2. (As an example of looking strong.) Multiple, rapid, successive announcements as to: management restructuring (here and here), the promotion of younger partners to leadership roles, significant lateral partner hiring both overseas (groups and individually), and at home (here, here, and here), and the aggressive promotion of a large class of new partners.
3. What we are not seeing are press releases about firm management engaging in Chadbourne-like internal P.R initiatives to reassure the troops, nor have we heard any reports of Dewey Chairman Morton Pierce taking a page out of Chadbourne’s playbook and extending the P.R. initiative by way of telephone calls to local Lawcruiters. Maybe this was a smart move in the sense that, well, what could he say without sounding defensive. And while we are on that topic, another sign of weakness was the Mort Pierce interview with the American Lawyer, where he permitted himself to appear “a bit bedraggled from the Orrick ordeal”, to go on the defensive about the failed merger – and then say, unconvincingly in this market environment, that the firm will not seek another merger. Didn’t he speak to a P.R. professional before agreeing to this interview?
The message is fairly simple. The better Dewey management succeeds in making the firm look strong and successful – the less likely that the troops will be tempted by the blandishments of Lawcruiters and their clients. Any Lawcruiter will confirm to you (with a disappointed tone of voice brought about by insufficient fees) that lawyers are a highly conservative lot who are generally not prone to changing firms at the slightest hint of bad news. So it really ought to be fairly simple for Dewey management to keep everyone on board – provided of course that they have enough confidence in the firm to resist talking to Lawcruiters about exit strategies for themselves.
