Stepping Down, But Not Out

After leaving his role as chair and CEO of Dechert in 2011, Barton Winokur, 72, returned to his transactional practice. Winokur’s practice is more than a token valedictory tour in which two-martini lunches outnumber deals closed. Take, for instance, the $11.6 billion deal he and partner Mauricio España helped broker with Bank of America Corporation for firm client Fannie Mae in January. The mega-settlement resolved mortgage repurchase claims relating to soured loans that Fannie took on from BofA’s Countrywide unit in the run-up to the housing crisis. “It is what I’ve done all my life, which is to take a problem with a client and find a solution that they probably don’t think is there,” Winokur says.

Winokur is at the vanguard of a generation of law firm leaders that are returning to their rainmaking roots. As lawyers are taking on executive roles earlier in their careers, and professionals of all sorts are working later in life, there’s been a recent wave of at least a half-dozen firm leaders stepping down from the helm to return to full-time practice. “I never looked at being a managing partner as being the peak of a career,” Winokur says.