LAW FIRM VALUES INNOVATORS
FOR THOMAS SAGER, senior vice president and general counsel at E.I. du Pont de
Nemours and Company, mounting mass tort
lawsuits in the early 1990s forced a reexam-ination of the way his company worked with
outside counsel. The DuPont Legal Model
that Sager unveiled in 1992 brought business discipline into the practice of law, calling for greater cooperation between DuPont
and its outside lawyers. It aimed to cut costs
by using litigation budgets and alternative
fee arrangements that paid law firms for
meeting a series of performance metrics.
The new model also promoted diversity by
hiring firms that actively recruited women
and minorities. Sager’s use of performance
metrics in evaluating firms not only demonstrated that law departments could provide
value to a company, but changed the way
firms and companies measured success,
says Susan Hackett, chief executive officer
of consulting firm Legal Executive Leadership. “Tom was out in front way before anyone else,” she says. “Law firms are following
his lead now and focusing on the business
of law.” The Financial Post estimated that
the model had saved DuPont more than
$175 million as of 2010.
THOMAS SAGER
E.I. du Pont de Nemours
and Company
Wilmington
JONATHAN LIPPMAN
New York State
Chief Judge
New York
Pro Bono in the DNA
To expand access to legal services, New York’s chief judge has added
pro bono requirements for the state’s newly minted lawyers.
KEITH WETMORE
Morrison & Foerster
New York
WHEN KEITH WETMORE began his career in
1982 as an associate in the San Francisco
office of Morrison & Foerster, it was a scary
time to be an openly gay male. The AIDS crisis was just beginning. Most gay and lesbian
lawyers remained in the closet at their jobs.
Wetmore says that although the firm was
generally accepting of his homosexuality,
the interviewing partner still advised him to
keep quiet about it. The advice didn’t take.
Wetmore was the first openly gay partner
to rise from the associate ranks at MoFo.
Then, in 2000, when he was elected MoFo’s
chair, he became the first openly gay head
of a major law firm. Throughout his career,
Wetmore has led initiatives that helped
set new standards for gay rights in the law
firm workplace. In the 1990s, for instance,
MoFo became one of the first law firms to
expand its benefits coverage to include
same-sex partners; more recently, in 2010,
it announced that it would offer health care
tax offsets to employees and attorneys in
same-sex domestic partnerships, one of the
first firms to do so.
DETERMINED TO TACKLE the “justice gap” that
leaves so many people without access to legal
services, New York State Chief Judge Jonathan
Lippman last year devised a novel solution. He
proposed that all law students who want to be
admitted to the bar in New York perform 50
hours of pro bono service in law school. That
rule was adopted by the other judges on New
York’s highest court.
The justice gap is “a crisis in this country that
needs to be addressed,” says Lippman, adding
that the private bar’s volunteer efforts are essen-
tial. With the New York State Bar Association
signaling its opposition to mandatory pro bono
for lawyers, Lippman turned his sights on the
next generation in law school. “I want to get into
their DNA the idea that if you want to be a law-
yer, you have to embrace the core values of the
profession,” he says. “More than anything else,
that means services to others.”
Lippman knew his idea would meet with re-
sistance, and not all law schools reacted enthu-
siastically. But he pushed ahead. “I needed to
exercise leadership and not take a public opinion
poll on whether this is a good idea,” he explains.
