Process

Jeffrey’s practice focuses on select, exclusive search engagements from the world’s leading law firms and the representation of major rainmakers, groups, and top government officials.

Jeffrey’s law firm-focused expertise includes:

  • Identifying strategic opportunities, including individual and group acquisitions and potential merger partners,

  • Evaluating deal economics, including historical performance, compensation and other practice metrics, and

  • Evaluating non-quantitative considerations, such as cultural and practice fit.

Jeffrey’s candidate-focused expertise includes:

  • Advising clients as to which law firms they should consider,

  • Representing them in their discussions with those firms, and

  • Assisting them in the negotiation of their compensation.

Jeffrey is actively involved in every step along the way and brings his 20+ years of experience to each engagement.

Identifying Strategic Opportunities

For the last 20+ years, Jeffrey has been actively following the changes at AmLaw 100, AmLaw 200, and Magic Circle Firms. He regularly interfaces with the Chairs, Managing Partners and Practice Heads of the world’s leading law firms.

Hi 20+ years of experience allows him to identify and assess strategic opportunities at the individual, group and firm level with incomparable efficiency and expertise.

Exploring Other Opportunities

The thought of finding a new firm can be overwhelming. Most partners are so busy building their practices and attending to their clients that they don’t have the time or energy to track what’s going on at other leading firms. For the last 20+ years, Jeffrey has been actively following the changes at AmLaw 100, AmLaw 200, and Magic Circle Firms.

Jeffrey has counseled thousands of law firm partners and high-ranking government officials on potential moves. His experience enables him to efficiently distill the dozens of potential opportunities into a narrowly tailored list of firms that best mach the partner’s preferred criteria.

His role extends far beyond identifying the right firms to consider — it includes preparing clients for their interviews, facilitating the interview process, advising on compensation, and negotiating compensation and other terms of the offer with the firm.

Determining and Negotiating Market-Appropriate Compensation

Jeffrey is one the legal industry’s leading commentators on partner compensation and is regularly quoted by publications such as The American Lawyer, The Wall Street Journal, Law 360, and Bloomberg Law. His knowledge of firms’ compensation systems and his experience negotiating compensation for partners is invaluable to his clients.

Determining market-appropriate compensation requires the ability to critically assess and value a partner’s practice in the same manner a new firm will when considering a partner’s candidacy. This assessment involves much more than simply knowing how much origination credit is allocated to a partner by their current firm. It requires understanding, among other things: the partner’s client mix; their relationships with the decision-makers at those clients; their historical billings, collections and billing rates; and how the allocation of origination credit is determined at their firm. All too often, partners with vibrant practices find themselves receiving below-market compensation because they are unfamiliar with all of the qualitative and quantitative factors that should be used to value their practices and are unsure how to broach this subject with their current firms. Having placed hundreds of lawyers at the world’s leading law firms, Jeffrey is extremely familiar with these factors and is able to help partners best position themselves to receive market-appropriate compensation.

Preparing a Business Plan

For many government officials (and more junior partners), having an excellent business plan can often be the difference between receiving an offer or not. It can also greatly impact their starting compensation if they were to receive an offer. Jeffrey has reviewed and edited the business plans of literally hundreds of leading government lawyers and partners. He understands what resonates with firms and what does not, and is able to offer specific advice as to how to craft the business plan most effectively, drawing upon the drafting skills he honed as a partner at Washington’s largest law firm.