The American Lawyer - Sample Issue

Andrew Grech Slater & Gordon Melbourne

LARRY SONSINI

Market Driven

Wilson Sonsini
Goodrich & Rosati
Palo Alto

Under Grech, Slater & Gordon became the first law firm to go public.

IN 2007 Slater & Gordon managing director Andrew Grech led his firm through an initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange, making it the world’s first publicly listed law firm. On its first day of trading, Slater’s experience has demonstrated vividly what a multimillion-dollar capital injection can do for a law firm. Since its IPO, the Australian firm has acquired more than 20 local competitors. In 2012 it opened in London by buying a U.K. personal injury firm, and expanded further

this year by acquiring three more U.K. rivals. Revenue has grown from $61.7 million in 2006 to $198.8 million in 2011. We couldn’t have “ expanded in the way that we wanted and needed if not for our listing,” says Grech.

An IPO is still not an option for U.S. firms, and although the United Kingdom’s Legal Services Act allows outside investors to hold stakes in law firms, no U.K. firms have yet listed. Even in Australia, not everyone thinks going public is a smart move. At Slater’s domestic competitor Maurice Blackburn, chairman Steve Walsh has said that a public company’s obligations— including investor meetings and analyst calls—are a distraction from practicing law. So far, only two smaller Australian plaintiffs firms, Shine Lawyers and ILH Group Ltd., have followed Slater’s model by listing.

But Grech is undeterred. The firm has earmarked its next capital raising for further U.K. expansion in personal injury. “We are looking to dominate the market in the U.K.,” he says.

LARRY SONSINI’S “three circles” strategy
of serving companies throughout the corpo-
rate life cycle—start-up, initial public offering,
and maturity—has become part of the legal
culture throughout Silicon Valley, not just at
Sonsini’s own firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich &
Rosati. Sonsini realized early on that start-up
work would keep lawyers on the cutting edge
of tech business. Work for mature public com-
panies, in turn, helps lawyers identify potential
issues on the horizon for young companies.
Says Sonsini: “I think the experience of seeing
growth and the hazards along the way makes
you a very, very valuable [partner].”

SCOTT GREEN

Pepper Hamilton New York

Counsel to the Trolls

Raymond Niro Niro, Haller & Niro Chicago

Niro shook up the IP world by winning big damages for patent holders.

IS LAW A BUSINESS or profession? We might finally have an answer. In February 2012 Pepper Hamilton partners hired Scott Green, a nonlawyer with a background in business and accounting, as the firm’s CEO. Although Green answers to the firm’s board, he’s the first nonlawyer executive in The Am Law 100 to have a managing partner and practice heads reporting to him. His approach so far has been reformist, not revolutionary: hiring project management experts to analyze the staffing and pricing of matters. Other large U.S. law firms haven’t made a similar CEO hire. But if Green is successful, he’s not likely to be one-of-a-kind very long.

PATENT TROLL—the pejorative term for someone seeking compensation for patents that they have little or no intention of using to make a product—has become such a part of the parlance that the Obama administration used the term when seeking new patent litigation reform legislation in June. That was just the latest example of the impact that Chicago’s Raymond Niro of Niro, Haller & Niro has had on the profession. An in-house Intel Corporation lawyer dubbed Niro’s client TechSearch LLC the very first “patent troll” in 2001 in the pages of The Recorder, an affiliate of The American Lawyer. (TechSearch had earlier sued

Intel for libel after being called something even less flattering—a patent “extortionist.”)

Defense lawyers might be irked to hear it, but Niro has had more influence on big-firm patent litigation practices than almost anyone. He made a name for himself by winning a string of eight-digit damages awards on contingency for inventor and patent-holding company clients in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Niro’s detractors may criticize him and myriad copycats as shakedown artists who exploited the patent laws to garner outsize damages awards and scare up nuisance settlements, but critics don’t often pan Niro’s courtroom skills. He brought a trial lawyer’s approach to the dry and technical world of patent law by playing up the role of the inventor before judges and juries.

“I have given the little guy the opportunity to fight the big guy,” Niro says. And that’s kept the defense bar busy.

SIMON HARPER

Berwin Leighton Paisner London

IT’S GOOD TO get out of the office once in a while. Sitting on a Caribbean beach in 2006, Berwin Leighton Paisner partner Simon Harper dreamed up a new way of servicing clients to let them more flexibly manage their in-house resources. Lawyers on Demand is a pool of more than 120 freelance lawyers, backed by BLP training and support, available to temporarily bolster clients’ legal departments. With clients like Google UK Limited and The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc and revenue of almost £ 9 million, LoD spun out from BLP into a separate corporate entity in 2012, and Harper left the firm to manage LoD full-time.