As we reported last week, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal hired 100 lawyers from the dissolving Thacher Proffitt & Wood.
This week, the National Law Journal spoke to Sonnenschein chair Elliott I. Portnoy about the hires and the future of his firm. From the interview:
NLJ: Mergers often led to tensions. Any worries?
EP: All the research, all the studies, suggest when lawyers move to new law firms, groups do better than individuals. The Thacher lawyers survived the attack on the World Trade Center. They lost everything, except, thank goodness, their people. They stayed together, rebuilt and moved back downtown. Now they have survived the economic collapse. That could have torn them apart; instead it binds them. We find that enormously attractive. It is a home run for us. The fact they come together gives us great confidence the work will follow them.
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP is an international law firm with 700 lawyers and other professionals in the United States and Europe. The firm was started in Chicago in 1906.
Read the whole interview.