Dechert pays $2.4m to settle long-running dispute with Coudert Brother's estate
Dechert settles litigation ten years after hiring teams from the defunct law firm's Brussels and Paris offices
August 14, 2015 at 08:11 AM
2 minute read
Dechert has agreed to pay $2.366m (£1.51m) to settle a lengthy dispute with the administrator of bankrupt law firm Coudert Brothers.
The dispute centred on Dechert's hire of partners from Coudert's Brussels and Paris offices in 2005.
Dechert took a six-partner team from Coudert's Paris office and five from its Brussels office within months of Coudert's bankruptcy in August 2005.
The claim, brought by Coudert's administrator Development Specialists in 2009, focused on claims that partners had left without billing for work they had done while at Coudert Brothers.
Dechert has now agreed to settle the case for $2.366m.
Development Specialists was represented by McCarter & English partner David Adler in the case, while Miller & Wrubel managing partner Joel Miller acted for Dechert.
Coudert Brother's collapsed in 2005 after a string of defections and a failed 2004 merger with then legacy Squire Sanders Dempsey. At its 2005 peak the firm had 28 offices in 15 countries and employed over 1,350 people.
A number of firms snapped up Coudert lawyers including Baker & McKenzie, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe and legacy DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary.
The administrators of Coudert's estate made a number of claims against firms that had hired Coudert lawyers, mostly for "unfinished business" – that is, work and consequent billings that should have been part of the winding up of the estate – that benefitted the firms that had hired Coudert lawyers.
In 2010 Baker's paid $6.65m (£4.2m) to Coudert's estate in one such claim.
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