Heller CFO Lands New Gig

A lot has been written about where Heller Ehrman attorneys have found jobs — or not — but not as much has been said about non-lawyer executives. We heard today where the former firm’s finance chief, Richard Holdrup, has landed.

When word of Heller’s dissolution hit the street last fall, John Buchanan at Howard Rice called Holdrup right away. The two had worked together at Heller in 2006, with Holdrup joining some months before Buchanan left for Howard Rice, as Buchanan recalls. Holdrup had been CFO of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey. Before his career change, Holdrup was with consumer products company S.C. Johnson & Son.

Howard Rice, a San Francisco business and litigation firm known for representing Charles Schwab and RIM, among others, had been searching for a new CFO for months, since CFO John Delaney had resigned.

They had him at hello, after the jump …

“I looked at a number of opportunities,” Holdrup said. “I was really very attracted to the whole Howard Rice package,” he said, which included a lot of very good people, well known practices, and high-profile litigation and clients. “The fact that a firm like Charles Schwab would continue to work with a firm like Howard Rice year in year out says a lot about the quality of work that Howard Rice does.”

Jan. 2 was his first day there, and his immediate goal is to help the 110-lawyer firm get through its fiscal year, which ends in February.

It turns out that he’ll be working closely with Buchanan, who is chief marketing officer. The firm is overhauling its business development systems, Buchanan said, analyzing where business comes from and how more can be brought in. “We are looking at our revenue, where it comes from and what types of work are generating the big portion,” he said.

Holdrup likes that in a CFO job. “I would argue that enlightened firms say that the senior financial person doesn’t just keep the accounts and pays the bills but contributes to the overall success of the firm,” he said. In this economy, most businesses are homing in on expense control, cash management and making sure clients pay, he said, but law firms, like all businesses, have to be “incredibly focused on generating revenue.”

Holdrup declined to share his salary at Howard Rice, but he did say that as an ex-Heller employee, he’s still owed vacation pay.

Get in line, dude …

— Petra Pasternak