McDermott votes in litigation duo as co-chairmen

McDermott Will & Emery has elected Jeffrey Stone and Peter Sacripanti as the firm's new co-chairs of after a management committee vote in Boston on Friday (3 April).

Current chairman Harvey Freishtat, a founding partner of the Boston office, will step down at the end of the year after six years leading the US firm. McDermott's partnership agreement requires that partners relinquish management duties in the year they turn 63.

By mid-February, that requirement prompted a six-week process in which three partners - Sacripanti, Stone and complex litigation head Bobby Burchfield - travelled among the firm's 16 offices to solicit support among the partnership.

However, fellow litigators Sacripanti and Stone had been discussing combining campaigns for about a year, and the duo formally announced their alliance two months ago. They campaigned together and submitted their joint leadership bid to the 21-member management committee on Friday.

"We thought that the two of us working together could achieve more and give us a greater capacity to address the challenges that exist in today's economic world," said Stone, who heads the firm's trial department from Chicago. "We also believed that our complementary skills made both of us stronger than either of us would be individually."

Sacripanti, who has been a friend and partner of Stone's for nearly 15 years, believes that relationship will make for a more creative approach managing a firm left with roughly 1,000 lawyers and 1,100 non-lawyer employees after a round of layoffs in early February.

Stone, who joined McDermott during a previous recession in 1991, does not expect any further layoffs. He says the firm continues to look at laterals and evaluate the possibility of new offices. "We have been going through a [firmwide] strategic planning process for the past year," he says, "and we're well-positioned to build on that vision through our platform of offices around the world."

The geographic distance between the two does not worry Sacripanti, who serves as partner-in-charge of the New York office. "We want to be able to project in different places at the same time, and Jeff and I are in constant communication on a daily basis," says Sacripanti, 53. "Chicago is our largest office and New York our third-largest office, so we are looking at this [union] as a strength."

Sacripanti says that sharing the position will enable both lawyers to continue practising law, which will only enhance their leadership of the firm. Stone agrees.

"If you have not been in the marketplace the last 12 months, you cannot understand the fundamental changes that are occurring in the legal industry," he says. "Peter and I are out there in courtrooms, boardrooms, and sitting with general counsel. And that will help us be smarter and more receptive leaders, so we are doing things our clients want us to do."

This article first appeared on The Am Law Daily blog on americanlawyer.com.