Big Law Firms Are 'Poorly Run Businesses,' Says Ex-Heavy Hitter
William Glasgow helped intellectual property boutique Fish & Neave merge with Ropes & Gray a dozen years ago. Now, as the Am Law 100 firm unwinds part of that union, the semi-retired Glasgow reflects on the current state of Big Law. Oh, and he once tried to do business with President Donald Trump.
August 10, 2017 at 06:11 PM
37 minute read
As chief operating officer of intellectual property boutique Fish & Neave in 2004, William Glasgow saw his 160-lawyer firm face two simultaneous problems.
The firm's talented patent litigators were being poached by high-powered corporate firms that were beginning to find an interest in patent litigation and could pay partners double or even triple what they made at a boutique. At the same time, those corporate firms were no longer referring patent work to boutiques like Fish & Neave, dwindling a large source of work.
Fish & Neave found what may have been a silver-bullet solution through its 2005 merger with Ropes & Gray. Glasgow, a former Stoel Rives and Perkins Coie partner who founded the latter's office in Portland, Oregon, before becoming CFO of Northwest electric utility PacifiCorp, calls the union between Ropes & Gray and Fish & Neave one of the most successful combinations ever in the legal industry.
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