Herrick, Feinstein Appoints Schwartz as First Female Chair

Herrick, Feinstein has named real estate practice leader Belinda Schwartz as the first female chair, a role she plans to use to expand profitability at the New York firm.

Schwartz took charge of the firm’s executive committee last week in success of Irwin Kishner, who will stay on the executive committee and keep leading the sports law group after serving as chair since 2010.

The firm is “not everything to everybody, but what we do, we do really well, and that’s going to be a continued building block in my opinion as we move forward,” Kishner said.

Schwartz takes over 95-year-old Herrick as it concentrates on building a brand in markets and practice areas where the firm views itself as standing out, including real estate, state court litigation and sports.

The firm, which has 150 lawyers, brought in $125 million in 2021, according to figures reported by the American Lawyer. The firm is still compiling data from 2022 though it was “a very strong year,” Kishner said.

Schwartz said her “goal is to not to walk backwards from everything that Irwin has accomplished.”

As law firms explore combinations to fulfill their need for scale in a competitive market, Herrick is not seeking a merger for now, Schwartz said. In 2017, the firm called off merger talks with Washington’s Crowell & Moring.

“We’re actually looking at in the reverse—not a big merger, but definitely always interested in hearing about people who might want to join our firm,” she said.

Schwartz joined the firm in 1997 and has chaired its real estate department since 2014. She has advised on several of New York City’s largest development projects, including Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Empire Stores complex and Downtown Brooklyn’s 1.8 million square-foot City Point project.