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Dewey (Due-ee) is learning that keeping partner payments due is not the ideal way to run a law firm. Despite face-saving statements asserting ‘no impact’ on the firm’s finances, and face-saving exercises like creating a new 5-member board replacing a single chairperson, the ‘dues’ are doing in Dewey.
On Wednesday another six partners including the co-chair of Dewey’s insurance group, James Woods, left the ‘no impact’ firm. And amidst such news comes another – The American Lawyer is revising the published financial information of Dewey and has reasons to believe its previously published figure of $935 million annual revenue for 2011 was inflated by more than $200 million, and may be closer to $782 million in reality. However, Dewey issued a counter statement that there was no “need or rationale now to change or restate our numbers.” No impact.
James Woods joined Mayer Brown as co-leader of the firm’s insurance group while John Nonna, Larry Schiffer and Eridania Perez, all members of the insurance group of Dewey have gone over to Patton Boggs.
Other partners who are leaving the debt ridden firm include Peter Ivanick, who is joining Hogan Lovells and Lawrence Sung, singing adieu to Dewey from the balcony of Baker & Hostetler.
Sources have reported that another partner, Suman Chakraborty, who was a counsel at Dewey, would also join Patton Boggs.
Dewey maintained in an officially issued statement, “We have said for weeks now that there would be additional departures both at the firm’s insistence and from professionals who didn’t feel they fit in with the new structure of the firm … The departures, like the ones before them, will not have a negative impact on the firm.”
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However, partners remain unconvinced as the exodus continues unabated, despite Dewey confirming on Tuesday evening that it has approved the new management system of a five-member committee replacing Steve Davis, the present chairman of Dewey.
However, the trend of leaving partners is showing one thing clearly – it’s the best who are leaving, not the worst.
Kenneth Pierce, the co-leader of the insurance industry group of Mayer Brown said incoming partner Woods was “one of the most experienced and highly regarded insurance regulatory lawyers in the country.”
