White & Case wrestles with discord again

With White & Case once more hit by departures, it's starting to feel as if my job description involves writing about internal tensions at the firm every year or so. The background has been well published: for a long time there was a sense the firm's City arm had not always sat happily within its global network, despite the practice achieving explosive growth during the credit boom. Tensions had also simmered for years within a firm that could not count on the clear sense of identity that comes from fitting easily into Manhattan's clubby legal market – the firm's internationalism since the 1980s has made it an outlier on Wall Street.

For years such issues could be dismissed as the by-product of the rapid expansion and cultural diversity inherent in such a large global organisation. But since the divisive leadership election in 2007, which led to the appointment of Hugh Verrier as chairman, the situation has seemed more pronounced. That election contributed to the turbulent departure of Maurice Allen and Mike Goetz in 2008, but it appeared the firm may have seized the chance to heal its divisions. The firm's global restructuring last year in response to the recession wasn't pretty, but then it wasn't much prettier at most global firms. There was hope that the worst had passed.