When Newport Beach-based partner Patricia Frobes was named vice chair and a member of the office of the chair at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in the summer, she became the first woman in senior management at the firm. “Hopefully it will begin to open up even further opportunities for professional growth and promotion for women in the firm,” Frobes said during a recent interview.
Prior to this position, Frobes was the first woman to head a department at O’Melveny & Myers, leading the firm’s real estate, environmental and natural resources practice from 1996 until September. Frobes’ clients include The Irvine Company, Catellus Development Corp., Marriott International, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., Irvine Apartment Communities, Bank of America, and CIGNA.
She now heads the firm’s transactional department.
Different Perspective
Frobes, who splits her time between the firm’s Newport and Los Angeles offices, says her new role is significant in several respects. First of all, it will make people rethink their perception that a chair position automatically should be filled by a male. Also, as a woman, she may bring a slightly different perspective to the position. With an increasing number of female clients, diversity is a plus, she said.
“People have different personalities, so the more diversity you have, the more you can offer your clients in terms of different kinds of personality types, different styles of practicing law and the like,” she said.
In addition, she said she thinks having a woman in senior management will advance the dialogue on how to keep talented young attorneys who may have family obligations. Frobes said that she was lucky because, when she was a young associate, her first husband was a stay-at-home dad, caring for their son, who was 9 months old when she joined the firm in 1979.
“We totally switched roles,” she said.
The newly created office of the chair is part of a new management structure at O’Melveny that took effect in July. A.B. Culvahouse Jr., of the Washington, D.C., office is the new chair of the firm. Culvahouse appointed Robert E. Willett of the Los Angeles office and Frobes as vice chairs. Other members of the Office of the Chair are former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher of the Century City office, Brian C. Anderson of the Washington, D.C. office, and Charles Wharton in LA.
Willett is in charge of internal functions such as attorney compensation, partner-associate attorney reviews and new partners. Frobes’ duties encompass three main areas: practice and client development, strategic planning, and coordination of all offices worldwide.
New Challenges
Frobes said that besides balancing the demands of her roles as attorney and manager, the new challenges of her position are twofold. First, she is trying to keep people focused on the positive, motivated, and excited about reaching for new areas and changing the way law is traditionally practiced. For example, the firm’s transactional practice is being reorganized to make practice groups smaller and more focused on clients. The second big challenge is coordinating O’Melveny’s 12 offices, which include four overseas locations.
Although much can be done through teleconferencing and e-mail, Frobes, who recently returned from visiting the firm’s offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai, believes that nothing takes the place of face-to-face meetings.
“My feel for what those offices are, the opportunities they have, their achievements and challenges,I could not have gotten on the phone,” she said.
A graduate of the University of Utah School of Law, Frobes began her career at O’Melveny & Myers following a federal clerkship, making partner in February 1986. She was selected to the management committee in 1992, the second woman in such a position at the firm.
Prior to attending law school, Frobes worked for the state of Ohio for four years, organizing migrant laborers and health planning groups throughout the state. Initially thinking that a law degree would be useful for a career in social change, Frobes said that “the last thing in the world I thought is that I’d end up in private practice at a big law firm.” n
