Juan Basombrio
Head of Southern California
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
We have cautiously navigated the economic downturn by carefully managing our costs, maintaining high levels of customer service with all of our clients, actively pursuing new business and seizing opportunities to grow our footprint in Orange County. In 2010, our corporate attorneys represented local businesses in a variety of transactions, including the sale of Buy.com to Rakuten, Inc. for $250 million.
We are pleased that our international practice has grown through the representation of foreign governments and local companies that are involved in international matters.
We made a strategic effort to grow our office through lateral acquisitions and were delighted to welcome prominent attorneys Chris Dubia and Mike Tenerelli.
Clearly, the business climate remains challenging but we believe the combination of an exceptional group of lawyers in Orange County and the global reach of Dorsey puts us in a position to continue to be successful.
Robert Beall
Managing partner
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP
Our Orange County office has weath-ered this latest economic downturn remarkably well.
The office has continued to grow over the last few years, both at the partner and associate levels.
We are very fortunate that the same is true for the firm as a whole. Sheppard Mullin has always maintained strong counter-cyclical practices, including bankruptcy/workout, labor and employment, and consumer class action litigation, which have held us in good stead during tough economic times.
All of these groups are quite busy in Orange County.
A significant portion of our practice is statewide and national, which makes us less susceptible to local market disruptions. The firm’s strong economic performance has enabled us to make strategic acquisitions in other practice areas, such as real estate and IP.
We believe we are positioned to emerge from the economic downturn as a stronger and more competitive law firm, better able to serve our clients’ needs in the Orange County legal market and beyond.
Mike Flynn
Chairman, corporate and securities practice
Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth
I don’t think that any law firms in Orange County were immune from the downturn, whether they’re national or regional law firms. Certainly Stradling was no exception. Having said that, the good news for Stradling is that we weathered the storm fairly well.
From a fiscal standpoint, Stradling has always been very conservative and that philosophy served us well. For example, we do not, and never have had, indebtedness to banks or third parties. This made navigating the downturn less severe for us because we didn’t have lenders putting pressure on our firm to make changes which were inconsistent with our long term goals.
In addition, as is the case with many of our clients, we have an entrepreneurial culture. Like most entrepreneurs, we have always been very cautious in decisions which involve increasing overhead. As a result, we never let our firm’s cost structure get too bloated in the good years.
All in all, given our lack of debt, entrepreneurial culture and relatively lower overhead, the downturn did not adversely affect Stradling as much as it might have otherwise.
We did make some changes between 2008 and 2009, but they were relatively modest overall. In addition, we have always tried to maintain a relatively balanced practice, both in terms of legal specialization and industry, and this “practice balance” kept us from being too one-dimensional and served us well.
Having a robust litigation practice was clearly a benefit during 2008 and 2009 as our transactional practice slowed along with market conditions. 2010 seemed to be more of a return to “normal” for Stradling as public law and corporate practices were robust and litigation has remained in a constant state of “busy.”
During the downturn, we continued to recruit and hire exceptional new lawyers from law schools because we believe that they are the keys for our long-term future. Just last year we brought on three lateral partners in strategic legal specialties.
As we head into 2011, I think that Stradling is stronger than before. As a partnership we recognize that we thrived during the worst economy in many decades and, as a firm, I believe that says something positive about who we are and who our clients are.
Richard Grabowski
Partner-in-charge
Jones Day
Jones Day’s Irvine office hasn’t simply weathered the economic downturn—we’ve achieved the most robust and steady growth in our 25-year history here in Orange County.
In 2007, when the economic crisis hit, our Irvine office consisted of a strong trial practice with 25 lawyers, including 10 partners. Over the next three years, we attracted some of the top senior legal talent in Orange County and experienced significant growth in our client base.
We now have 50 lawyers in our Irvine office, including 20 partners, in multiple areas of practice: health care; intellectual property; labor and employment; mergers and acquisitions; securities litigation & SEC enforcement; tax; and trial.
How have we been able to achieve this growth amidst what has been the most difficult economic environment for U.S. law firms in a generation?
We believe that the way we have applied our foundation values in firm manage- ment and governance is an important reason for our success in satisfying client needs, and client satisfaction is the entire reason for the firm’s success during this period.
Jones Day is a global legal institution, but because of its reliance on a set of values and principles to guide decision-making, it operates with a relatively small amount of internal organization. We want and expect our lawyers to do the right thing in serving clients, whether that is referring the client to another lawyer in the firm—or if necessary elsewhere—who is more suited to meet the client’s needs, or responding without hesitation when asked by a colleague to help deal with a client or firm issue.
In other words, we try our best to make sure that the firm and its internal processes do not get in the way of lawyers serving clients effectively and efficiently.
Ski Harrison
Managing partner
Rutan & Tucker LLP
As we all know, the economic downturn has impacted all businesses and the legal market is no exception.
Based on my observations and reviewing information from sources which review the legal market, it is generally thought that the bottom has been reached and there will be a slow but upward increase in demand for legal services in 2011.
Rutan, like most law firms, looked first at expense reduction and we were able to significantly reduce expenses starting in 2009. We built conservative budgets in 2009 and 2010 and were able to meet or exceed those budgets.
We remain a very strong law firm and are well positioned going into 2011.
James J. McDonald, Jr.
Managing partner
Fisher & Phillips LLP
As a labor and employment law firm, we are in the business of unhappy people and the recession produced plenty of them.
We were fortunate in that our business did not decline, but it changed.
Until the last quarter of 2010, many clients were reluctant to call their lawyer, knowing the call would result in a bill. So we spent more time defending wrongful termination and wage and hour lawsuits, and less time handling more discretionary matters such as employment contracts, trade secrets issues, employee handbooks and training, and general employment advice and counsel. Beginning in the last quarter of the year, however, clients seemed more willing to seek assistance again on these matters.
Steven Nataupsky
Managing partner
Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP
I think, in general, Orange County firms have survived the recession very strongly— and I think that’s a reflection of the strong nature of the industry in Orange County compared to some other regions of the country. In New York and D.C. they laid off tremendous numbers of people, but Orange County itself didn’t have to do as many layoffs throughout the recession in such a devastating way.
As far as my firm, we’re much stronger than we were three years ago.
We continued to grow through the course of the recession, which is largely because intellectual property is somewhat countercyclical. When all of our clients are doing incredibly well and they find small infringers they may not enforce their rights because they’re doing so well. However, when the market tightens up and companies are fighting for every little part of the market share, they tend to enforce patents and trademarks. And we have seen that over the last couple of years so we have continued to hire attorneys to meet that demand.
As an example, we brought in about 31 attorneys this fall and plan on bringing in another 35 next fall. I think that the key to our success has been to hire steadily.
Some firms, when they get busy, hire enormous numbers of people. When work slowed down they had to shed people. We’ve just grown very steadily in response to client demand. Slow and steady growth is important to us.
William O’Hare
Administrative partner
Snell & Wilmer LLP
In anticipation of the downturn, the leadership of Snell & Wilmer closely examined the firm’s business strategy and finances. Lawyers and staff worked collaboratively to build a firm that is leaner and even more capable to meet clients’ demands for increased project management efficiency and alternative billing considerations.
Key management decisions were made to position Snell & Wilmer for success in the new economy, including:
• A firm policy to carry no debt or capital leases that has proven to be especially sound in more unforgiving economic times.
• The decision to remain a full-service law firm which promotes stability and balance, as well as the ability to continue to serve clients in a variety of legal capacities.
• Strategic growth through geographic diversity and lateral hiring with a commitment to the Western region. Thriving offices help sustain the firm in a struggling economy.
• Support and investment in community service and marketing to stay connected with clients and continue to build valued relationships.
• Continued investment in the tools and training necessary to support efficient project management of client matters and alternative billing structures.
John Simonis
Office chair
Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP
The difficult economy of the past few years has been painful for law firms.
We have seen a significant decrease in market demand, particularly for transactional legal work. Clients have become more cost-conscious and demanding, and our competitors have become increasingly hungry and aggressive. Like other businesses, we had to focus on becoming as efficient and client-focused as possible.
Although we have a substantial transactional practice, we are fortunate to have a very diverse practice base.
We did not need to undertake a significant amount of retooling per se, but we were able to redirect some of our resources to restructuring employment and litigation matters, which remained fairly strong throughout the downturn.
We also did some serious belt tightening, and have found that we were able to significantly reduce our overhead by centralizing some administrative functions and reducing or eliminating non-critical expenses. Like most firms we have reduced our recruiting and hiring to some degree.
We continue to hire, as we believe it is critical that we hire top talent, but we are certainly a leaner firm coming out of the downturn.
As the market has improved, particularly in the last quarter of 2010, many of these changes are really beginning to impact our business model and our bottom line, and we expect to see continuing benefits and efficiencies in the future as the market recovers.
We believe the legal markets will remain highly competitive and client driven for some time to come, but we think we are likely over the worst of the downturn and that many of the difficult changes we made during the downturn will make us stronger, more efficient and more competitive going forward.
Brett Williamson
Managing partner
O’Melveny & Myers LLP
We have structured the Newport Beach office with the right mix of clients in high growth markets, excellent lawyers, and in-demand practice specialties. Client demand is robust in the area served by the Newport Beach office: We have just promoted two associates to partner, one in our vibrant financial services litigation practice, and the other who’s quite busy with labor and employment litigation work.
Also, we’ve continued to put the needs of our clients first, which has always been our priority.
Just a few examples: We were ahead of the curve in emphasizing creative fee arrangements; we reached out to clients to see how we could assist them in their own efforts to manage the downturn; and we’ve focused on delivering services with maximum efficiency that aligned with our clients’ needs, as illustrated by the creation of a new firmwide financial services litigation practice last year.
