Triple Winners, and R.I.P.
from
July/August 2003
by Bill King
As the corporate world crackles with regulatory change and rising liability, the choices directors make on which law firms to turn to first are critical. Doubly so, in fact. Board members must help find the best possible representation not only for the companies they serve but also for themselves. “Seven Questions to Ask Your Own Attorney Now,” which begins on page 82, underscores why directors should not rely solely on corporate counsel for legal advice but at least give serious consideration to hiring their own lawyers.
Two other stories in this issue point to how board members are threatened by legal woes. Gary Brown, a Nashville attorney who served on the Senate committee investigating Enron’s implosion, describes how its directors came to step too close to the brink. Wendy Lane, a director of Tyco International when scandal hit that company, recalls the legal nightmare in which she found herself—and what she did about it.
Where do you get good legal help? Our third annual listing of America’s best law firms, ranked by our readers nationally and in 50 metropolitan areas, is a fine place to start. The listings show a remarkable consistency. For the third year in a row, the top 20 national firms are led by Skadden Arps, with Cravath Swaine in second place and Sullivan & Cromwell in third. A threepeat in basketball or a horse-racing trifecta deserves more than a mention, so let’s give these three firms a cheer too.
Similarly, 34 firms in the 50 local markets repeated last year’s wins. They range from well-known giants such as Cleveland’s Jones Day, which fields a total of 2,111 lawyers in all its offices, and Philadelphia’s Morgan Lewis & Bockius, which has 1,200, to tiny titans, including the 64-attorney Jones Vargas shop in Las Vegas and 78-lawyer Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel in Honolulu. Their clients represent a cross section of American life, from major-league baseball to Coca-Cola, from the Mayo Clinic to companies that provide Internet communications and cable TV.
Of course, some firms have fallen off our lists, nudged aside by competitors who did better in winning the admiration of our readers. In one case, the firm itself is no more. San Francisco’s Brobeck Phleger & Harrison— by any measure a leading law firm, and noted for several star attorneys—folded during the year, a victim of debt, the swooning dot-com economy, and a failed effort to merge with Morgan Lewis & Bockius. Many of Brobeck’s top lawyers had already moved on. Among them: former chairman Tower Snow, one of our 2001 roster of superstars, who joined Clifford Chance. The defunct firm’s biggest client, Cisco Systems, took its business to Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley.
This special issue also looks at those who practice the law—or plan to. Beginning on page 28 is “The Human Faces of Corporate Law,” a roundup of men and women who bring something special to a profession that often seems all too dry and, yes, inhuman. And on page 114, you will meet students from the law schools that have proved the richest sources of young talent for our top 20 firms—future lawyers that you may before long be hiring to watch out for your company’s best legal interests, and your own.
