Litigation boutique Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht is growing again, this time with the addition of a chief financial officer to help manage the expanding firm's finances.

Kevin Cash, who was chief financial officer for Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, is joining Pierce Bainbridge as its first-ever CFO. Cash joined Orrick in Washington, D.C., in 2016 after spending seven years as CFO at Baker & Hostetler.

The move came about from a phone call Cash got from his former BakerHostetler colleague Thomas Warren, who joined Pierce Bainbridge in January.

“I had no idea about Pierce Bainbridge, I wasn't all that familiar with them,” said Cash, who spent 23 years at professional services firm Ernst & Young prior to joining BakerHostetler.

He said discussions with Warren and with Pierce Bainbridge founder John Pierce persuaded him to take the leap to the smaller firm, which is just 2 years old.

“It all just seemed to click,” Cash said. “This is a tremendous firm, [and] the vibrancy, the enthusiasm of every single person in the organization is great.”

Cash called Pierce Bainbridge “a blank canvas” compared to his former firms, which already had a developed financial management infrastructure in place when he joined them.

“They're so new, so young, and growing so fast we need to put some good process in place,” Cash said.

Another important piece in his role will be litigation funding. Shortly after setting up shop in 2017, the firm—then known as Pierce Sergenian—announced a deal with Scottsdale, Arizona-based litigation financier Pravati Capital in a rare public example of a litigation funder investing in a firm's portfolio of contingency fee cases.

“Cash flow is critical for a firm of our size and where we're heading and what we're doing,” Cash said. “Litigation funding allows you to pay the bills today for work that you're going to get paid for two, three, four or five years from now.”

While litigation funding created the capital necessary to get the firm started and is a key part of Pierce Bainbridge's strategy, Cash said the firm may turn to traditional lines of credit and bank financings as operational needs warrant.

“But I think litigation funding has its place and I think we're utilizing it very effectively,” he added.

“We are absolutely thrilled that Kevin has chosen to join us at Pierce Bainbridge,” said John Pierce, the firm's global managing partner.

“The fact that Orrick's CFO wants to work with us shows that our commitment to creating a new law firm model for the next generation of litigation excellence—agile, digital and client-focused—is working. His joining will continue to propel us into the next stratosphere,” Pierce added.

Among its most recent additions, in March Pierce Bainbridge added Baker McKenzie investigations and compliance practice leader Joan Meyer and Ropes & Gray commercial litigator and counsel Michael Winograd as partners in Washington, D.C, and New York, respectively.

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