Last week in an internal memo, Shearman senior partner Rohan Weerasinghe announced the firm is revamping its management. The executive group will be reduced from six members to three, comprising Weerasinghe, executive director Kim Gardner and partner Fred Sosnick. Previous group members John Madden, Georg Thoma, Kenneth MacRitchie and Linda Rappaport will focus their efforts on client work, as well as being called upon in various management roles.
Below the executive group five teams take control of areas such as client development and risk management and a further, four-partner group, including Thoma from Europe and Matthew Bersani in Asia, will focus on strategy. There is logic in this, not least in creating a formal strategy team. In addition, centralising day-to-day power in a smaller executive group should streamline decision-making while further management responsibilities will be better spread around the firm.
But, whoever is in charge, Shearman’s management in-tray remains considerable. Make up lost ground on the likes of Latham & Watkins and Weil Gotshal & Manges Ñ once two of Shearman’s closest rivals but now creeping ahead in profitability; re-establish Shearman’s place among the global elite; and reinvigorate a partnership that appears to have listed of late. In Europe, a network that has often appeared to be eclipsing the US practice now has question-marks hanging over the direction of both the London and German practices thanks to partner departures and a split with the Mannheim office. Doing this during a downturn at a firm that has never been noted for its counter-cyclical litigation and bankruptcy practices makes the task look challenging.
It wasn’t so long ago that it all looked very different for Shearman. In 2003, while the firm was ramping up its English M&A practice, an excited MacRitchie told Legal Week: “If we don’t do the biggest M&A deals in the next five years we will have failed.” Half a decade later and Shearman is far from MacRitchie’s vision, but the lesson here is to outline a clear message to the market about what the firm stands for and where it is heading. Perhaps then that in-tray will start to look less daunting.
