After months of trying to read the future of Boies Schiller based on the lawyers who’ve decided to depart the firm, we now get a look at what Boies Schiller will become based on who they’re adding. This morning, the firm announced that it’s adding Lawrence Brandman, the former head of bankruptcy at Lehman Brothers Holdings, and Neil Pigott, a senior UK bankruptcy lawyer, as partners.
This tracks the idea that BSF is trending toward gathering expertise to address the big ticket issues of the moment. The global economy is in shambles, and while that’s driven a lot of firms to stockpile bankruptcy talent, these hires are unique.
Brandman was the guy at Lehman Brothers Holdings responsible for resolving the disputes that evolved from the unwinding of its derivatives book after the financial crisis. If a firm is looking to bring in practical experience in dealing with truly cataclysmic restructurings, it’s hard to imagine a person bringing more practical expertise in dealing with a financial apocalypse to the table. Before his time at Lehman Brothers, Brandman spent nine years as Managing Director at Goldman Sachs and worked at CSFB before that.
Pigott, meanwhile, is a former counsel at BSF who decamped to serve as Executive Director in distressed special situations for Nomura International PLC. Pigott also has worked as an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley for nine years.
From the press release:
“Boies Schiller’s reputation in special situations and finance litigation is second-to-none, and respected across the market. I am thrilled to be joining their peerless team at this incredibly significant time,” Pigott said. “As a litigator with a transactional and investor background my experience will combine well with the team’s well known ability to find novel and creative approaches to provide value to clients,” he said.
Boies Schiller has lost a lot of lawyers over the last few months. With the firm losing the bulk of its California presence and then losing its highest profile Washington team to Paul Weiss, most commentary about Boies Schiller kicks off with a lament about how the firm must be “blindsided” by everything. That angle never seemed to make much sense to me.
A lot of people wonder if I’m just being doggedly contrarian. Perhaps. But it’s also that BSF told us that the firm would be changing a lot and, frankly, I’d harbored some questions for a while about the long-term sustainability of the BSF confederacy. Was it aiming to establish itself as another large Biglaw player? That didn’t jive with some parts of the firm’s outlook. Was it aiming to offer more high-stakes services in select practice areas? That didn’t jive with the other parts of the firm. The idea that BSF was going to change in big ways and that the faces of BSF 1.0 wouldn’t necessarily be the faces of BSF 2.0 just didn’t surprise me. And some of those departures would, by necessity, be people we’d all consider huge parts of the firm as we’d come to know it. No one is blessed with the crystal ball required to know if this specific strategy ultimately ends up best for the firm, but the point is that any serious strategic rethink of the firm was going to involve changes and so big departures don’t shock me. And I certainly don’t need to come up with theories about Harvey Weinstein to explain why people are moving around.
Indeed, as the firm adds to its bankruptcy practice, word comes that it will see the departure of Bob Cooper from the DC commercial litigation team. This is going to be par for the course with BSF for the next several months. Let’s just wait to see where everyone is when the dust settles.
Earlier: Everyone Seems To Be Overreacting To These Boies Schiller Departures
Paul Weiss Bolsters Technology Practice Bringing On Dunn And Isaacson
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.