Sarah Downey talks to chief executive Joe Conroy about its high-impact City launch
‘Eight years ago, I couldn’t get anyone to talk to me – I couldn’t even get my face slapped,’ says Cooley chief executive Joe Conroy on his attempts to establish a London presence for the Palo Alto-based leader.
It’s difficult to picture such a scenario now. Despite its late entrance in the UK, Cooley is undoubtedly a major force in the US, being well-established as one of the premier names in California’s legal technology community. After much speculation and one or two false dawns, largely due to long, drawn-out negotiations with prospective laterals, the firm announced in early January it would create a 55-lawyer UK practice, including a 15-strong partner team from Edwards Wildman’s beleaguered London office and a further five from Morrison & Foerster (MoFo).
Justin Stock, MoFo’s former corporate head, will now manage the London office and is joined by Edwards Wildman’s former London chief, Nicholas Bolter.
For Conroy, the firm’s UK offering should strike a balance between business and litigation. Traditionally the firm represents entrepreneurs, investors, and financial institutions and boasts a muscular technology and life sciences practice.
Whether Cooley establishes a formidable and profitable presence in London with lateral hires to complement its Silicon Valley offering is too early to predict. What may help is its experience with bringing fresh blood into the fold, as evidenced by its 2013 acquisition of nearly 100-year old Washington DC firm, Dow Lohnes. Conroy says there are clear parallels between that takeover and the acquisitions from Edwards Wildman, in that ‘in a troubled situation there was real opportunity’.
Conroy says the firm will also be making ‘significant investments’, including the appointment of two London lawyers to its management committee and a further two to its compensation committee. Ballpark predictions for turnover are upwards of $40m for the London office (the firm’s total revenues stood at around $674m for 2013), and for the practice to expand ‘pretty aggressively’. He says: ‘we will build around two concepts – hire pre-eminent lawyers that are the Pied Piper type, and build vertically around core M&A and finance, and then add the full range of services these practices require.’
But cross-firm reaction to the London launch wasn’t comprehensively enthusiastic. When Conroy, who was elected the firm’s first full-time chief executive in 2008, first spoke to the partnership about becoming ‘outwardly global’, a statement he thought was ‘utterly uncontroversial’, partners took some persuasion. ‘They didn’t throw rotten fruit at me because they didn’t have any to throw,’ he adds. Ultimately, however, clients have driven the firm to broaden their horizons.
‘You want the right people because there’s a high level of cynicism about US firms and their execution in this market.’
Joe Conroy, Cooley
‘This is something I passionately believed in,’ says Conroy. ‘We’re a very conservative partnership – there’s a California contingent more conservative than the rest. But we were driven by clients about the need to be global and in London – and not with some sort of correspondent office. Likewise, we’re considering growing and expanding in China. Dotcom bubble aside, we’ve had the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and now it’s the technology revolution – having shops in this will be enduring.’
Indeed, under Conroy’s reign, the 850-lawyer firm had been scoping the City for the right opportunity for years. One highly publicised example was its talks with Olswang. Although the firms entered into ‘serious’ discussions over a potential combination, the deal broke down thanks to fundamental economics; the Cooley partnership – which operates on a single-tier compensation system – was unwilling to consider a verein structure, which would have been necessary to make the combination work. Likewise, there was little appetite expressed over trying to bring parts of Olswang’s practice into the firm. Profitability at the firm – averaging $1.567m per partner in 2013 – was considerably higher than at Olswang.
Both firms still had a referral relationship, one which was relied more heavily upon by Olswang. ‘They sent a lot of stuff to us, we sent less to them. We don’t understand the best friend relationship – I’m not going to dictate to my partners in California and say “you must send work to these folks” so it was never formal. But we looked very hard at that. There are some really good pieces there.’
Olswang may not have been the right fit for Cooley but, strangely, the disputes and corporate pieces of Edwards Wildman were. Talks began in the winter of 2013, and were primarily driven on the Edwards Wildman side by its commercial litigation head Laurence Harris. Incidentally, Cooley has now taken on all of Edwards Wildman’s old office space at 69 Old Broad Street and carried out a complete refit, which has room for up to 100 lawyers.
Conroy comments: ‘This office was one of Edwards Wildman’s most profitable practices but we’re not just going to stick with this group we have – we’ve got our arms around some pretty pre-eminent fellas. People said: “Insurance, asset tracing – what does that have to do with Cooley?” Well, actually, its complex, high-stakes litigation – the hallmark of Cooley. This is about risk mitigation – you want the right people who are committed because there’s a high level of cynicism about US firms and their execution in this market. You don’t want to build a brand and spend money for people to then ask “what happened here?”‘
With a high-profile brand and an emphatic beginning to its City campaign, Cooley looks to be off to a strong start.
sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk