Nixon Peabody is in serious expansion mode and anybody in the mob of lawyers joining the firm had better be on board with that.
The firm, which ranked 64 on the 2008 AmLaw 100, is adding some 90 lawyers from Thelen in the United States, following about 25 through a September merger in Paris. Its leaders also announced plans to add lawyers in London and to double their 825 – lawyer organization’s size in the next four years.
New York partner Mats Carlston, just appointed co-chief of global expansion, admitted to Legal Pad that some potential laterals have expressed concern about Nixon’s ambitions.
“A number have said they will not embrace [the firm’s goals] simply because they are concerned about our growth and ambitions,” Carlston said, adding: “Most are very intrigued by our visions and our values.”
Over the past year and a half, the firm has defined and promoted those values and goals to the partnership — and to potential hires. Top of the list is cultural cohesion, built around compensation based not on origination, but on team work, Carlston said. “We are one firm, we don’t operate as silos, we don’t have separate plans, we value team work, we compensate based on efforts as members of larger teams,” he said. “Opportunistically, we want to be able to move quickly if we find the right group with the right teams in various places.”
The vision includes a bigger office in Shanghai, where Nixon just added its first full-time partner.
Aaron Wininger joined today from now-defunct Thelen’s Shanghai office. Since it opened in March, Nixon’s office there has been staffed by three U.S. partners rotating in and out. A paralegal and some staff are coming with him, San Francisco partner Dan Deshon said today.
Deshon, one of the three rotating partners, is slated to spend six months of each year in China. He said the firm is working with a headhunter to boost its numbers in Shanghai. Recruits fall into two categories, he said. Some, like Wininger, are lawyers who have moved to China and been on the ground for some time. Others come from the pool of native Chinese who have earned international or U.S. J.D.s. “We have a number of candidates we’re continuing to talk to,” Deshon said. “We’ll have a much better sense of whether they’re willing to come on board in the next month or so.”
Stay tuned.
— Petra Pasternak
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