A lot has happened since early March, when David Malliband learned he was going to take over as the managing partner of Baker McKenzie's Chicago office.

David J. Malliband partner with Baker & McKenzie.

His three-year term as the head of Baker McKenzie's second-largest office began Wednesday, at a time when he's seeing more law firms enter Chicago and the aggregate demand for legal services across the industry drop.

Although he's not walking the seven floors that comprise Baker McKenzie's office in downtown Chicago, Malliband said he has been reaching out and talking to both partners and associates for one-on-one chats with them.

"In terms of key objectives, they haven't changed. Fundamentally, my focus is going to remain on our clients and our people. I think the way we're thinking about those have obviously changed as a result of the pandemic," Malliband said.

Malliband is taking over for the position from Regine Corrado, a partner with a cross-border practice who is retiring after nearly 30 years at the firm. Malliband is a former chair of Baker McKenzie's corporate and securities practice group in Chicago.

Like other law firms in Chicago, Baker McKenzie's office in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower is largely empty, populated by a skeleton crew as well as some lawyers who need to come into the office, Malliband said. And like other managing partners in Chicago, Malliband is no rush to get the office's 580 employees—including 230 lawyers—back into the office, even though Illinois has entered into Phase 4 of its reopening plan.

"We were early to close down, but I don't think we'll be early to open up," he said. Malliband added that he wouldn't "even hesitate a guess as to when" the firm's employees would be back in the office.

Since 2019, firms like Eversheds Sutherland, Blank Rome, Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Hilliard Martinez Gonzales have all set up shop in the Windy City, which was already home to several large firms, Malliband noted.

At the same time, the wider legal industry was already seeing relatively flat demand for its services that has since plummeted during the pandemic, Malliband said. Demand was up in the first quarter of 2020 by 2.3%, according to Gretta Rusanow, the managing director and head of advisory services within Citi Private Bank's Law Firm Group. But by mid-May, Rusanow said they were projecting double-digit drops in both demand and revenue.

The numbers also weren't good from Wells Fargo Private Bank's perspective. Although aggregate demand was down only 1.4% since Jan. 1, the demand for legal services dropped 10.4% in May alone.

"How do we all reach that same nut? That's going to be the question now," Malliband said.

As the managing partner of the office, Malliband said he wants to renew the firm's outreach to not just its clients but "the people in those corporations." In talking with his clients, Malliband said many of them described the weeks after the country began shutting down and staying at home as being some of the hardest periods of their lives.

Additionally, Malliband said he wants the firm to continue its diversity and inclusion initiatives, adding that he does not want them to be a "casualty" of the pandemic. In his role as managing partner, Malliband said he can "continue to make space" for internal conversations about race. He said the firm has held a series of town halls on race, including panels of Black attorneys who detailed the micro and macro-level aggressions they've experienced.

"We need to continue to find ways to do that, even when it might have slipped off the news cycle," Malliband said. "And that's something I think I can help make space for. I'm a white male. I probably need to talk less and listen more."

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