Chicago-Founded Firms Itching to Start Talent War on Home Turf

Welcome back to the Big Law Business column. I’m Roy Strom, and today we look at how Chicago-founded firms are trying to grow in their own backyard. Sign up to receive this column in your Inbox on Thursday mornings.

A group of major law firms founded in Chicago want to reverse a trend of shrinking local headcounts and start growing their Windy City offices by poaching talent from neighboring competitors.

At Sidley Austin, launched in Chicago in 1866, Chris Abbinante is leading a nascent recruiting effort that’s already reached out directly to “dozens” of local partners at marquee firms. The Sidley lifer, who has held a variety of management roles, took the job of Chicago office co-managing partner in May with the intention to grow. The firm is in “active discussions” with Chicago-based partners that are expected to result in hiring announcements “sooner rather than later,” a firm spokesman said.

“We probably haven’t been as proactive in Chicago thinking about laterals as we have in other markets,” Abbinante said in an interview. “I intend to change that, because I think it’s accretive growth not just here in Chicago but globally for the firm.”

Conversations about the Chicago legal market in the past five years have more often focused on a string of new firms that have come to town: King & Spalding, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Cooley LLP, and Norton Rose Fulbright, to name a handful.

What’s garnered less attention is the fact that a group of successful, Chicago-founded law firms have seen their local ranks dwindle in the past decade.

Out of six Chicago-founded firms that are now among the country’s 50 largest by revenue, four have suffered local headcount declines compared to a decade ago. Those firms are Sidley Austin, McDermott Will & Emery, Winston & Strawn and Baker McKenzie. Mayer Brown’s local office headcount is virtually flat.

Only Kirkland & Ellis, founded in 1909, has seen its office meaningfully grow in the past 10 years—by roughly 27% to 769 lawyers, according to data compiled by Chicago Lawyer magazine. The world’s largest firm by revenue now has 300 more Chicago-based lawyers than the second-largest office in town, that of Sidley Austin.

“We want to grow in areas that are talent rich markets, which Chicago is and always has been,” said Andrew Kassof, a Chicago-based Kirkland litigation partner and executive committee member. “It’s got great law schools, sophisticated global businesses, and high-end legal talent. That hasn’t changed at all.”

Headcount declines in Chicago are not unique to its hometown firms. Most firms with a long presence in the city have seen their rosters trimmed. There were 13 law offices in Chicago with 200 or more lawyers in 2014, but only eight at the start of the year, according to Chicago Lawyer magazine data.

A dwindling founding office shouldn’t be mistaken for poor firmwide performance. The six largest Chicago-founded firms grew revenue, on average, 94% from 2014 to 2023, the most recent AmLaw data available show.

Leaders of Chicago offices said in interviews that their firms remain committed to their founding market. Most of those offices are still the largest within their firms, and the leaders stressed that the city is full of talented lawyers and important clients.

Like with Abbinante at Sidley, most of the firms who say they’re going to prioritize Chicago hiring now pointed to a recent change in leadership or a new strategic plan as the reason.

Kirkland has hired more than 10 partners in Chicago over the past 12 months, according to data from Leopard Solutions. Baker McKenzie has hired five partners in that time, while none of the other four firms have hired more than two, according to Leopard, which tracks lawyer moves.

The headcount declines, leaders said, were a result of focusing growth efforts elsewhere, retirements, people moving to new cities during Covid, and less investment in practices historically based in Chicago. But replacing those ranks may prove especially challenging in the insular midwestern ecosystem.

“It’s often described as a sticky market. People are loyal,” said Joanna Horsnail, leader of Mayer Brown’s local office, and a 26-year veteran of the firm. Horsnail added the firm recently finished its next three-year strategic plan, and intends to focus hiring in Chicago around finance, insurance, M&A and private equity, and projects and infrastructure, including renewable energy.

Sidley’s Abbinante is determined to free up some top talent in that sticky market. He thinks the same pitch that has worked elsewhere will take hold in Chicago: Sidley has a well-rounded group of practices, and the firm is strong and growing. The twist he’s introduced is a personal touch. He’s calling partners directly to see if they’re interested in a move.

“There’s an opportunity to be a bit more disruptive with a proactive outreach approach by directly reaching out to talent, which is what I’ve started to do,” he said. “When I or one of my colleagues picks up the phone and calls people who are succeeding at another firm, they’re interested in the conversation more than ever.”

Michael Boykins, Chicago managing partner at McDermott, said he wants the office to grow back to around 300 lawyers, up from about 250 at the start of the year. The firm’s Chicago office, launched in 1934, has built out new practices including real estate capital markets and restructuring.

Despite the headcount declines, McDermott’s local revenue has grown in recent years, said Chicagoan Michael Poulos, the firm’s partner in charge of strategy, who joined in a major move about six years ago from DLA Piper. The team Poulos brought with him eventually numbered around 100 lawyers, he said.

The firm sees an opportunity to recruit partners who joined new offices in the city, Boykins said.

“They’ve had some ability to pull some talent into those startup offices, and Chicago isn’t one of those towns where you can hang out your shingle and they’ll come,” Boykins said. “It’s a relationship town.”

Winston & Strawn, founded in Chicago in 1853, recently elected another Chicagoan as the firm’s chair, litigator Steve D’Amore. He and a team of deputies are rolling out a strategic plan focused on hiring in certain practice areas: financial services, healthcare and life sciences, technology, media and telecom, and energy and infrastructure, said Eva Davis, managing partner for external affairs.

“Under this new leadership, we do want to grow in Chicago,” Davis said. “We don’t currently have plans to open any new offices, so we are focusing on our existing footprint.”

At Baker McKenzie, Chicago office managing partner David Malliband has hired five new Chicago partners in the past nine months, with plans to continue recruiting.

Those hires come after a wave of retirements that were accelerated by Covid, Malliband said. Laterals have an “opportunity” to join an office that serves major multinationals based in the Midwest, he said.

“We as an office were working through some of those demographic challenges,” he said. “And we’ve now refocused our efforts to grow this office.”

The firm will celebrate its 75th anniversary in October by flying more than 600 partners from the firm’s 70-plus offices to Chicago, where Baker McKenzie got its start in 1949. By then, there might be some new faces in the crowd.

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That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading and please send me your thoughts, critiques, and tips.