Growing Pains

In November 2008, just as the recession was kicking in, Nixon Peabody bullishly announced plans to double the firm’s size within four years and to increase the number of attorneys working abroad to 25 percent by 2013. “The economy presents opportunities as much as it presents challenges,” the firm’s managing partner and CEO, Richard Langan, Jr., said at the time.

But today’s numbers tell a different story: Head count is down 17 percent since 2008, and the equity partnership has dropped to 192 from 214 this past year. The top-billing partners of four premium niche practices based in New York all recently left with their core teams. Michael Murphy, the insurance and reinsurance chair, and Peter White, the firm’s marquee sports finance partner, went to DLA Piper; Mats Carlston, the global finance head, left for Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman; and Dominick DeChiara, a private equity rainmaker, went to Winston & Strawn. Carlston, Murphy, and White were longtime Nixon Peabody partners; DeChiara was a 2006 lateral.