Morgan Lewis Leader McKeon Prepares to Hand Over Reins Next Year

Jami McKeon says she understands the dangers of law firm leaders overstaying their time at the top.

“The health and well-being of the institution is better if people don’t stay too long,” said McKeon, who has led Morgan Lewis & Bockius since 2014. “Law firms have had a history of people staying maybe a little too long and then they struggle to get their footing.”

McKeon is stepping down when her term expires in September. She said she turned down a chance to extend her term and instead plans to retire and leave the firm by the end of next year.

Her exit paves the way for a new leader at Philadelphia-headquartered Morgan Lewis, a $3 billion operation with 2,000-plus lawyers in 33 offices around the world. Whoever takes the helm—the firm’s partners will elect the next chairperson in the spring—will have the daunting task of following McKeon’s successful “strong chair” leadership approach in a rapid evolving industry.

Her successor will need to contend with a “frenetic” lateral hiring market, private equity’s emergence into legal business ownership, and a volatile Trump administration that views “unpredictability as its stock and trade,” McKeon said.

Jami McKeon

Photo: Morgan Lewis

“When institutionally and governmentally and globally there’s kind of chaos and unpredictability, it’s harder to lead an organization,” she said. “I think you live in a world now where there’s risk if you act and risk if you don’t act.”

McKeon, who headed the firm’s litigation department before taking the reins, saw Morgan Lewis add 750 new lawyers and staff six weeks into her tenure through a merger with Boston’s Bingham McCutchen. Morgan Lewis has positioned itself among the country’s 10 largest law firms by revenue in the decade-plus since, according to data from The American Lawyer. The firm’s clients have included Verizon, Walgreens, Apple, Amazon, and Tesla, among a wide range of other companies.

The firm, which dropped President Donald Trump and his businesses as clients in the weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021 US Capitol riot, was among those targeted by Trump when he returned to the White House this year. Morgan Lewis and 19 other large law firms were hit with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission inquiries into their diversity programs.

‘A Lot of Choices’

McKeon served two consecutive terms as firm chair, with the latter initially set to expire in 2024. The firm’s policy limits chairs to a pair of five-year terms, but partners voted to extend her tenure two years during the pandemic.

Steve Wall, McKeon’s handpicked managing partner of practice, will also leave the firm at the end of next year. McKeon said she doesn’t have a particular person in mind as the top candidate to take over her position. “We have a lot of choices,” McKeon said.

An advisory board will consider possible candidates in January, with the goal of eventually recommending a single person to the full partnership, according to McKeon.

“It’s always a strong practitioner and somebody who knows the firm really well,” she said. “We have 15 practice groups and each of them is led by a practice group leader who is an extremely successful practitioner who’s experienced in running their group. And we have 21 members of our advisory board and we have 33 office managing partners.”

McKeon credits the firm’s success to its commitment to remain “broad and deep,” providing clients with a full range of services, including those that other firms have scaled back due to rate pressure. She said the firm uses flat fees to counter rate pressure in areas like labor and patent litigation.

“When you’re buying or selling a giant sports team, you’re not really focused on what the hourly rate is,” she said. “When you’re talking about a whole portfolio of single-plaintiff employment work or when you’re talking about a whole bunch of patent prosecution work, you’re not going to pay for that at the same rate.”

Flat fees discourage lawyers from billing clients for an exorbitant amount of hours. That may benefit client services, but McKeon said it means the firm will never top the industry in terms of profits for its equity partners.

“We’re not looking at things as, ‘oh boy, we can bill 100 hours to this and get X amount of money,’” she said. “If we can do it in 20 hours, we’re thrilled.”

McKeon oversaw the firm as it initiated a partnership with Thomson Reuters to beta test its Co-Counsel legal AI tool, a partnership she has so far found satisfying: “we’re actually customizing something for the way we think a product should be.” The firm’s AI teams are “co-developing products with clients of ours where we see a need in the market.” As for AI use within Morgan Lewis, McKeon says training is mandatory.

Morgan Lewis also recently opened an office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—a hot spot for US law firms—after having relationships in the region for several decades.

Next in Line

McKeon said the process for selecting a new chair will resemble her own.

The firm will convene a nominating committee to solicit input from the firm’s partners early next year. Based on that feedback, the committee will recommend a candidate to the partnership in the following months. Partners are expected to vote on the firm’s next chair in March.

The leader-in-waiting will then work with McKeon for six months.

“By that point, you have your team in place and you’re ready to go,” she said. “What you don’t need is someone hanging around and second-guessing whatever you’re doing or people still going to that person.”