A New Endeavor
on Mar 3, 2006 at 12:00 am
In a post yesterday, I wrote up the results of my survey on the state of the Supreme Court bar. I thought a number of the comments on the post were thoughtful and on the mark. (I’ll have a follow-up post within the next day that is based on two very thoughtful emails I received.) My personal view is that it is always useful to have Supreme Court counsel in a case in that forum. That said, I certainly don’t think that every case at the Court should be argued (or even principally briefed) by a Supreme Court specialist. The role that Supreme Court counsel should play varies considerably depending on the stage of the case, the nature of the case, and the skills of all of the lawyers involved.
My post in any event was directed more towards the changing shape and size of the bar and less towards the question whether the changes are good or bad. It is in part those changes that have convinced me to reshape my own practice, moving from a three-lawyer boutique run out of my house to a large, international law firm. The other critical factor in my decision was finding a perfect fit with a firm.
The emergence of large-firm practices described in my post demonstrated to me that even if a Supreme Court practice isn’t a dramatic source of revenue, it does provide the firm with significant benefits. (This is an issue helpfully discussed in the comments as well.) Law school and post-clerkship recruits to a substantial extent consider a firm’s Supreme Court practice a bellwether of its appellate and litigation practice generally. Clients treat the practice as demonstrating the firm’s ability to take a litigation matter “all the way†and as a proxy for excellence generally.
So, having found a great match for my own practice and personality, I have decided to make a move. Here are the details. I will start in my new job on May 1. My nominal title will be the Head of Supreme Court Litigation. Most of my time will be spent on Supreme Court cases, but I’ll serve the firm’s litigation clients generally on trial and appellate matters as well. I love business development and recruiting more than anything else I do day-to-day, so those efforts will occupy me as well. Over time, the firm will be hiring other lawyers to work with me. I will continue to teach in the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, as well as our class in the Harvard Winter Term. And I’ll continue to contribute to the blog.
Also on May 1, Amy Howe and Kevin Russell will form Howe & Russell, which is the successor to Goldstein & Howe. They will have a very interesting practice – their time will be almost entirely devoted to working on pro bono Supreme Court cases with the law schools. In cases in which my new firm doesn’t have a conflict, we will be working with them.
The blog should only continue to get better. The new firm will be contributing a lot of resources to expanding its coverage of the Court. The students will continue to write, and they will be joined by a number of attorneys from the firm. Most important, we will still have the benefit of Lyle Denniston’s invaluable reporting.
I’m very pleased that summer associates who had been lined up for Goldstein & Howe will be coming to the new firm as well, together with some of our former summers who are making a repeat appearance. Two have Supreme Court clerkships lined up. Others are getting ready to start terrific court of appeals clerkships. And others are in the traditional summer associate position of working through their second years. It will be wonderful to have them.
And the new firm? Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, one of the nation’s truly great law firms. I have been talking with lawyers from the firm for several months now, and have been blown away by their enthusiasm for the law and for this practice in particular. Akin has not only an enormous and very well respected litigation group but also an extensive and very successful appellate practice centered in Los Angeles, which in fact has two merits cases at the Court this year. Their appellate group is a perfect fit for me because they do not yet have as substantial an appellate practice in Washington or anyone with a great deal of Supreme Court experience.
Regular readers of the blog know that I try to avoid using as a forum for expressing my own opinions and emotions. (That’s a good model for blogging, but one that just doesn’t appeal to me personally.) So I won’t belabor my thoughts on how much I have enjoyed building a firm essentially from scratch, first alone, then with my wife, then over time with two terrific associates and a partner, as well as our fantastic office manager, bunches of summer associates, students, and others. It has been great to be home for the first several years of our daughter’s life. I also won’t belabor the excitement of moving to a new firm, with lawyers that I’ve loved getting to know and from whom I have so much to learn. I am very lucky, and I do look forward to it.
