Kirkland & Ellis Announces First Lateral Hire Under New Chair

Kirkland & Ellis has issued dozens of lateral hire announcements over the past decade, and along with most of those new additions came a statement from the firm’s chairman, Jeff Hammes.

There was a new name attached to the firm’s latest lateral announcement, that of new chairman, Jon Ballis. The Chicago-based private equity partner took the reins this month after Hammes retired and took on the title of chair emeritus, according to Kirkland’s website. Kirkland first announced the leadership transition was in the works more than a year ago.

Kirkland’s first publicly announced lateral hire under Ballis is Houston-based executive compensation and employee benefits partner Rob Fowler, who joined from Baker Botts.

“Rob has a great reputation and strong experience handling executive compensation and employee benefits issues across a range of matters, including in connection with mergers and acquisitions and within the energy sector,” Ballis said in the statement.

Ballis is himself a lateral hire and joined Kirkland from another Chicago-founded firm, Sidley Austin, in 2005. His hire predated Hammes’ tenure as firm chairman, which began in 2010. During Hammes’ 10-year term, the firm’s top line nearly doubled as it grew into the largest firm in the world by revenue, according to the latest AmLaw rankings. It brought in about $3.6 billion in revenue and its equity partners made, on average, nearly $5 million in 2018.

The firm’s growth was fueled in part by a strategy of hiring top talent from rival law firms, including legacy white shoe Wall Street firms such as Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Hammes helped lure away a handful of lawyers from Cravath, raising questions about the durability of the so-called “lockstep” compensation model that limits firms from matching Kirkland’s pay packages.

Some of Kirkland’s headline hires under Hammes include Cravath’s former litigation leader Sandra Goldstein, former Winston & Strawn litigation chair Jim Hurst, ex-Weil Gotshal & Manges partner and leveraged buyout lawyer Stephen Lucas, and capital markets partner Sophia Hudson from Davis Polk & Wardwell. The firm’s global management executive committee, its decision-making apparatus, contains at least six lateral hires.

Hammes’ stature rose after launching the firm’s San Francisco office in 2002. The office now has more than 150 lawyers. More recently, he spearheaded the opening of the firm’s Houston office in 2014, initially with the hire of Andrew Calder from Simpson Thacher. That office, where Porter joined this week, has grown alongside the Texas oil and gas industry and now includes nearly 200 lawyers.

For his part, Fowler negotiates and drafts executive compensation and incentive programs, regularly advising clients on issues under Sections 409A and 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code. He also designs employee benefit plans and counsels clients on the employee benefits aspects of corporate transactions.