They’ve Got Next: The 40 Under 40 - Ryan McLeod of Wachtell

July 14, 2021, 5:21 AM UTC

Please describe two of your most substantial, recent wins in practice.
Most of my practice is intertwined with our corporate work—I defend directors, deals, and governance structures. For example, I represent the board of directors of Presidio in stockholder litigation in the Delaware Court of Chancery challenging the company’s 2019 sale to a private equity firm. We defeated plaintiffs’ expedited effort to enjoin the transaction, and then, earlier this year, persuaded the court to dismiss all of the outside directors from the case. And late last year, I argued and won a motion for temporary restraining order on behalf of Gilat Satellite Networks against its would-be merger partner Comtech Telecommunications, which win we used as leverage to terminate the deal favorably and extract a $70 million payment for Gilat.

What is the most important lesson you learned as a first-year and how does it influence your practice today?
The most important lesson I learned in the first year was that you can never rewrite something enough times. And the more you rewrite things, the more succinct and the more powerful they can be. This affects my practice today—I still rewrite everything 300 times. We do a lot of our own drafting at Wachtell Lipton, we are not conventionally hierarchical, so although our associates will often write first drafts, partners write first drafts too, and we rewrite our own drafts, and then associates rewrite those drafts, and then we rewrite them ourselves over and over and over again. It’s all in the pursuit of, perhaps not perfection, but something that is more perfect all while making things more concise and to the point. Nothing is more important in a successful legal campaign than writing; even when a case is ultimately won by oral advocacy, or an issue is resolved via a settlement, the investment we make in our writing lays the foundation for everything else.

How do you define success in your practice?
I believe that success in any practice of law begins and ends with having satisfied clients—we are a service industry, after all. The fun comes in personally when situations are intellectually satisfying and engaging for practitioners, but I think I speak for all of us at Wachtell Lipton when I say that we never lose sight of the fact that our job is to help our clients navigate difficult situations – often ones that may dictate the very survival of their businesses. Maybe you don’t win every motion, or win every negotiation, but when the client knows that they were well attended to and their commercial objectives were met, that is success. And that success is, in my experience, the sort that produces lasting relationships.

What are you most proud of as a lawyer?
What I am most proud of as a lawyer is helping people solve problems. Getting a JD, being a lawyer, is sort of like gaining a superpower, and you can use it in a lot of different ways. I get to solve really interesting problems for large sophisticated corporations or their directors. But through my pro bono practice, I also have the privilege to try to solve problems for many others, including, for example, people who are trying to navigate the immigration system or LGBTQ+ advocacy groups that are fighting for people’s lives and rights. Recently, I’ve done some work for the Trevor Project to revamp their corporate governance system, which is not, of course, the most glamorous part of what the Trevor Project does. But corporate governance is important to any organization, and it happens to be the one thing I at least know a little about. The fact that I have been able to, I hope, use my “lawyer powers” to help make their organization function a bit better makes me proud.

Who is your greatest mentor in the law and what have they taught you?
Definitely Chancellor Chandler. William B. Chandler III was the head of the Court of Chancery from 1997- 2011. I clerked for him after I went to law school and he taught me just about everything I know—and not just in the law. He instilled in me, of course, my passion for corporate law, but also—more importantly—for equity. The most important thing he taught me was that you can have a sophisticated practice, one that’s intellectually engaging and dynamic, and it can be about really stressful, important, big deals—but you can still have fun doing it, be a pleasant person while you do it, and also be kind to people on every side of every issue in every case. His temperament and magnanimity were and are without equal, and I continue to try to comport myself in accordance with the way he always has and still does.

Just for fun, tell us your two favorite songs on your summer music playlist.
“You” by Troye Sivan, Regard, and Tate McRae—it’s a bop.

“Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” by Aretha Franklin—what better way to celebrate the final (I hope) summer of “Zoom”?


To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Helem at lhelem@bloombergindustry.com

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