Cooley Godward Kronish is losing four more prominent partners to larger rivals, reports sibling publication The Recorder.
Corporate partners John Brockland and Jane Ross in Palo Alto are leaving the firm for Dewey & LeBoeuf. Both lawyers worked closely with a trio of Cooley lawyers--what many considered the cream of the firm's practice--that defected for Dewey two months ago.
Also leaving Cooley is Craig Waldman, the chair of the firm's antitrust practice in San Francisco, and antitrust partner Michael Knight in Washington, D.C. Both lawyers will be joining Jones Day.
According to Am Law 100 financial data, Jones Day had profits per equity partner of $810,000 in 2008. Dewey's PEP came in at $1.5 million last year, compared with $1.42 million for Cooley. With comparable compensation at Cooley for the Dewey defectors and Jones Day not matching up in the PEP column, what lies beneath the departures?
"[Cooley's] not an international platform," legal recruiter Carl Baier of Baier Legal Search in Silicon Valley told The Recorder. "And I think that has an effect on the people that are defecting."
Waldman seemed to indicate as much when he told The Recorder's Zusha Elinson that while he thinks "very highly of Cooley," the opportunity to join a Jones Day platform with "top-notch antitrust talent in every part of the world" was "too good to pass up."
In late July another corporate partner, James Donato, a former president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, left the firm for Shearman & Sterling.
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