Last year was another busy one for Greenberg, which continued the rapid growth that has brought it from a regional powerhouse in Florida into the top tier of the country’s biggest law firms. And 2016 is off to another hot start for the firm, which made headlines by hiring Rudolph Giuliani in January to head its cybersecurity and crisis management practice. Even before the former New York mayor joined the firm, Greenberg netted 73 U.S. attorneys last year — nearly half of them partners — to end the year at 1,681.
But Executive Chairman Richard A. Rosenbaum told Law360 in an interview this week that despite the rate of the firm’s expansion in 2015 and early 2016, he views the hires as part of a larger mentality focusing on carefully adding attorneys who would fit well with the firm’s culture and goals to provide elite-level service in specific practice areas and cities.
Despite the firm’s recent dramatic expansion, Rosenbaum stressed he does not view growth for its own sake as a sound strategy.
“We've had relatively rapid growth at the beginning of '16,” he said. “But if we look at the rest of '16 or '17, if we don't see great-quality opportunities that fit our culture, that fit the strategy in the core areas that we’ve defined for ourselves that we really want to be top players in those areas, then I don't care if we get any bigger. We don’t set our success on size."
Instead, the firm has grown where it has to in order to improve its service quality in certain practice areas — mergers and acquisitions, real estate, technology and white collar defense, for example — and global cities, Rosenbaum said, describing a plan the firm plotted in the early 2010s.
“When we sat there four or five years ago and said, ‘We want to be the best — or certainly among the best — in certain key areas,’ by definition, that meant getting bigger in certain markets and in certain practices, and that’s what we’ve done,” he said. “I don’t feel any more successful because we’re larger in size. I feel successful because we’re better.”
Regardless of the reasons, last year’s expansion at Greenberg put the firm within striking distance of the distinction of largest firm in the country. The year-end headcount of 1,681 signified a 4.5 percent increase in attorney headcount and a 2.9 percent jump in the number of partners from the end of 2014, when the firm was the third-biggest in the country, according to Law360 400 data.
Law360’s data on lateral moves shows that Greenberg added 63 partner laterals in 2015, along with eight notable counsels. Revenue for Greenberg also jumped in 2015, increasing 4 percent to $1.32 billion.
What spurred the firm's attorney headcount in 2015 were acquisitions of entire five-attorney teams at Chicago boutique Henderson Law LLP and Boston-based Michaels Ward & Rabinovitz LLP. These acquisitions were part of what Dan Binstock, a partner at legal recruiting firm Garrison & Sisson, said was a strong record of hiring high-profile lateral partners.
“They’ve been one of the firms most recently that has been most visible in terms of significant lateral hires,” he said.
The firm was also recognized by BTI Consulting Group as among the most innovative in the country, and Binstock said Greenberg’s success in recruiting partners with entrepreneurial tendencies was due in part to it running more like a successful company than a typical law firm.
For example, top-down management is de-emphasized in favor of giving partners the freedom to build their own practices. That style is more common in the business world and attracts self-starters, according to Binstock.
“They’ve taken a lot of the good qualities of running a business and applied it to the law firm model, and I think certain types of partners who are drawn towards a global platform without the bureaucracy and top-down management that can come with some of those types of structures are drawn to Greenberg,” he said. “Lawyers are given a lot of autonomy. But with autonomy also comes accountability, which is particularly welcomed by more entrepreneurial-type lawyers.”
Rosenbaum agreed that lateral hires appreciate “going somewhere where they feel empowered … to do what they feel they need to do to satisfy their clients' needs without the obstacles that many traditional firms put in their way.”
The global firm’s New York office boasts more attorneys than any other, but Greenberg’s impact on the legal industry extends far beyond the Big Apple as it operates in 38 offices from its first in Miami to an outpost in Berlin that opened last year. The office in the German capital opened with 50 attorneys from a recently divorced branch of U.K. firm Olswang LLP.
Much of Greenberg’s recent growth has been spurred by hiring entire offices of smaller firms, such as the Olswang group, Henderson and Michaels Ward, but the firm has never been part of a traditional merger, according to Rosenbaum, though one was scuttled last week. He said that history has allowed it to keep its own culture firmly intact.
However, the firm’s executive did hint the next year could include Greenberg’s first major merger, but only if the circumstances are perfect and the move fits a need in an international city where the firm sees an opportunity in its core areas.
“The only thing I would say is that in certain world markets, if we ever wanted to enter them in a much bigger way, we might want to consider a larger transaction,” he said. “But we still haven’t done one because, again, no matter how tempting a large transaction might be, we won’t do it if it’s going to potentially interfere with either our quality or our culture or our financial position.”
Methodology: Law360 surveyed U.S. law firms and vereins with a U.S. component on domestic attorney and partner headcount information as of Dec. 31, 2015. Firms based outside the U.S. were not surveyed, and only attorneys based in the 50 states and the District of Columbia were included in the responses.
Correction: A prior story misstated the opening date of the firm's Berlin office.
--Editing by Christine Chun and Philip Shea.
