Lewis Brisbois C-Suite Shakeup Continues With Fresh Departures

Two executives will leave Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith in the coming months as the law firm’s leader continues to overhaul its business operations.

Chief Financial Officer Tim Armstrong plans to return to retirement next year, capping a nearly two-year stretch at Lewis Brisbois. Luann Perez, the firm’s chief administrative officer, will leave in January after 26 years at the firm.

The departures come as Managing Partner Greg Katz seeks to remake the firm’s back office functions. Katz, who took the helm after a tumultuous period in which more than 100 lawyers fled Lewis Brisbois, has installed several new C-suite officials to tackle billing and technology problems.

“The firm’s operations have evolved significantly under new leadership while our growth has continued at a strong pace because of client demand,” Katz said in a statement. “Our eyes are on the future.”

Armstrong will help integrate the firm’s billing software with other functions, such as human resources, before leaving within the first half next year, he said in an interview. The former Vinson & Elkins executive, who joined Lewis Brisbois in 2024 to focus on upgrading the firm’s billing systems, said he wants to spend more time with his family.

Perez is one of the last remaining executives from before Katz was named managing partner in 2023. She previously oversaw human resources functions at the firm before Lewis Brisbois hired Stephanie Peters from McGuireWoods to serve as chief people officer in late 2024.

Perez declined to comment on her departure, which was confirmed by the firm’s Chief Operating Officer Rich Davis.

Lacking Infrastructure

Armstrong joined Lewis Brisbois as interim finance chief in February of 2024. By the summer, Katz asked him to join the firm full-time.

It became clear early on that there were many gaps to fill in the firm’s financial planning and analysis, he said.

“It was a firm that grew too quickly and they didn’t build the infrastructure to support it,” said Armstrong, who retired from Vinson & Elkins in 2022 after 30 years in senior leadership roles. “In my prior life, we were very focused on law firm operations and economics. It was clear that this wasn’t the case.”

Some of the partners who left Lewis Brisbois in 2023 complained about the firm’s billing and collections processes and lack of financial forecasting, according to internal messages in 2022 and 2023 reviewed by Bloomberg Law. Partners noted slow invoicing and the firm failing to return duplicate client payments.

Early in his tenure, Armstrong helped the firm clean up the fallout of a messy transition to a new billing software. The initial software launch had had several glitches, as the firm attempted to import 30 years’ worth of data into the newly adopted software—an “unheard of” data haul, Armstrong said.

Lewis Brisbois has made progress in the effort to modernize, according to Armstrong. The firm is ahead of revenue projections for the year, thanks to upgrades to its collections process, he said. It also has formed new business lines of credit with banks to hold the firm over to fourth-quarter collections.

“I brought in a number of people to deal with the finance aspect of the house,” Armstrong said. “There was a lot that needed to be done from proper tax accounting to financial forecasting, which was very limited.”

Along with updating infrastructure, the firm said it is also overhauling its compensation system with the aim of recruiting and retaining lawyers and staff. It delayed handing out attorney pay raises in March, citing “logistical challenges.”

The adoption of new billing software has been uneven, said a firm employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. The accounting department is still slow to process invoices, the employee said, and a variety of outside counsel guidelines has made uniform implementation of the software difficult.

The firm’s bread-and-butter clientele of insurance companies limits the firm’s ability to raise rates, Armstrong said. Insurance defense cases cap hourly rates for lawyers because the work is generally high-volume and routine.

The firm’s revenue grew nearly 6% to $759 million last year, according to data published by the American Lawyer. Lewis Brisbois saw revenue per lawyer grow to $484,000 during the same time period, a 4% gain.

Changing of Guard

The firm last year parted ways with co-founder and longtime chair Bob Lewis and two family members—son Tommy and grandson Ryan—who served as chief technology officer and an IT administrator, respectively. Perez’s departure will leave Chief Strategy Officer Janet Eskow as the last remaining holdover of C-level leadership from the Bob Lewis era.

Perez is a “valued employee of Lewis Brisbois and the firm appreciates the meaningful contributions she made during her tenure with the firm,” said Davis, the firm’s COO.

Perez’s human resources duties were allocated to Chief People Officer Stephanie Peters, who worked with Davis at McGuireWoods before he joined the firm last year.

The wide-reaching recast of C-level roles goes hand-in-hand with the shift in direction for the firm, as it seeks out leaders who can build new features of the firm’s infrastructure rather than oversee historical processes, Armstrong said.

“The old guard controlled the firm until early 2023,” Armstrong said. “You have to come in here and be a builder. You can’t attach yourself to the systems that have been in place and manage it.”