Bryan Cave names first-ever chairwoman

Updated 12/23 at 9:40 a.m.

Bryan Cave, Missouri’s largest law firm, has revealed that Therese D. Pritchard is chairwoman-elect of the 1,100-attorney firm.

Pritchard, 60, who goes by “Terry,” joins an elite group of women in the U.S. to lead large law firms, and she will be the first woman to lead St. Louis-based Bryan Cave in its 140-year history. She is also the first firm chairperson to come from outside of the St. Louis headquarters.

Don G. Lents, 64, who has been Bryan Cave’s chairman for two terms beginning in 2004, said Pritchard is an exciting choice for the firm.

“We were looking for someone who is smart, analytical, willing to be bold and direct and help us with the kind of challenging environment we’re all in, and Terry brought all those skills and attributes,” Lents said.

Pritchard, who takes over the position Oct. 1, is based in Washington, D.C., but she plans to have an office and apartment in St. Louis.

“The chair is really a firmwide position, so there’s always been a lot of travel involved, but we also have a ‘one firm’ philosophy,” Pritchard said. “This will not impact the firm or our commitment to the St. Louis office,” or others in Missouri, she added later.

She said she expressed interest months ago in pursuing the position.

“It was an interesting series of discussions with the senior leaders, and it’s always interesting to have the feeling you’re going to be judged by your peers, but it was a very positive experience,” she said last week in a telephone interview.

Lents, also in a telephone interview, said the executive committee was interested in learning from and listening to the partners who wanted to lead the firm.

“Our commitment was to build on our existing platform with someone who not only understood but embraced and [was] focused on our cost/value efficiency, on our ‘one firm’ philosophy of looking across the whole firm for the resources that best fit the situation, not office by office, and Terry was very committed to those ideals.”

Lents has nearly reached the mandatory step-down age of 65 for that position. Pritchard is eligible to serve one five-year term.

Securities enforcement

A Boston native who graduated cum laude from both Boston College Law School in 1978 and Bryn Mawr College in 1975, Pritchard currently leads the firm’s white collar, securities enforcement and litigation client service group.

Other women to lead large, international firms include such luminaries as Christine Lagarde, the former chairwoman of Baker McKenzie who now heads the International Monetary Fund, and Jami Wintz McKeon, who in October was named chairwoman of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Philadelphia.

Currently, three women chair firms on American Lawyer’s AmLaw 50, making Pritchard the fourth, and seven lead in the AmLaw100, making her the eighth. Bryan Cave is ranked 46th on the AmLaw 50.

“I hope it’s a trend, and I hope it continues,” Pritchard said. “The playing field is getting more even, and it’s very exciting.”

Deborah S. Froling, president of the National Association of Women Lawyers and a partner at Arent Fox in D.C., said she was thrilled with the news.

“You have women who have been graduating from law school for decades in equal numbers with men, yet only eight out of 100 — 8 percent — are in leadership positions on AmLaw100″

“Anytime you see a woman elevated to a leadership position in an AmLaw 200 firm, it’s a good day,” Froling said. “Her elevation is one more to inspire those coming behind her.”

She said statistics overall, however, continue to be “horrible.”

“You have women who have been graduating from law school for decades in equal numbers with men, yet only eight out of 100 — 8 percent — are in leadership positions on AmLaw100,” she said. “You’ve got 50 percent of women as law school graduates, and yet only 16 percent are equity partners in the AmLaw 200.”

Pritchard came to Bryan Cave in 1999, continuing a career that included a long stint in the public sector, most notably at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where in the 1980s she helped send Wall Street crooks to prison, including Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, and helped extract huge fines from both. For instance, Boesky agreed to disgorge $50 million in illegal trading profits and pay a $50 million civil penalty. Pritchard’s tenure at the SEC, in which she had a management role, also marked the demise of high-yield junk-bond firm Drexel Burnham Lambert as it spiraled into bankruptcy and finally death.

Stints at other high-profile agencies include, from 1991 to 1994, the Department of Treasury’s Office of Thrift Supervision as director of the Washington Enforcement Office during the height of the savings and loan crisis. And then, in 1994, she made a stop at the Resolution Trust Corp., where she oversaw the suing of directors and officers of savings and loan associations and thrifts for breaching fiduciary duties and mismanagement.

Pritchard then did a four-year of-counsel stint at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in Washington to see if she took to private practice.

“I was nervous about whether I would like being on the dark side,” Pritchard told Securities Law 360 in a 2007 interview. “It turns out I didn’t have much trouble switching sides at all.”

By then, she had been at Bryan Cave for eight years.

‘Combinations’

Looking ahead, Pritchard said she’ll focus on several growth avenues, including organic growth by strengthening and deepening relationships with existing clients as well as through what she terms “combinations.”

“We don’t really call them acquisitions or mergers,” Pritchard said. “We look at them as opportunities to combine with groups of like-minded lawyers.”

In the past 11 years, a large part of Bryan Cave’s growth strategy has been combining with 150- to 250-attorney firms in large or high-growth markets: New York-based Robinson Silverman Pearce Aronsohn & Berman in 2002; Atlanta-based Powell Goldstein in 2009; and Holme Roberts & Owen of Denver last year.

As for her day-to-day activities, Pritchard acknowledged the new position will pull her away from much of her client interaction.

“I’ve always traveled a fair amount, as we have 30 offices around the world, and I want to get a lot of input from our partners around the globe, which will mean a shift in the amount of time I can devote to client matters,” Pritchard said. “But I hope to still be available for strategic decisions and important meetings with the government.”

For those wondering, yes, Pritchard has a family — a husband with his own career who, she says, has always been supportive of her career and whom she sometimes refers to as her angel, and two daughters in their 20s. One has her own tutoring business in Washington, and the other is in medical school.

“Certainly it wasn’t easy raising a family, particularly in the time when we did it, but often I drew lines,” Pritchard said. “I would say ‘Six o’clock to nine o’clock is not mine to give’ but otherwise, I’m generally available.”

In the Securities Law 360 profile, Pritchard explained how some flexibility helped along the way, including a period of four-day work weeks after her first daughter was born and leaving early some afternoons after the birth of her second daughter.

Lents

In Lents, Pritchard has a pro-growth leader to follow.

During Lents’ tenure, Bryan Cave added 11 offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia and more than 300 lawyers over the past decade. Gross billings grew by close to 63 percent from $384 million to the $624 million listed for Bryan Cave in the 2013 Missouri Lawyers Weekly MOney 20 rankings.

Lents says once the transition is complete next fall, he looks forward to spending more time practicing law.

“I enjoy working with clients and particularly one area, in corporate governance, representing boards and the like,” Lents said, “and that is something that I would expect I would continue to do.”

He added he is proud of a number of accomplishments during his tenure, including a commitment to diversity.

One particular highlight, Lents said, was Bryan Cave’s pro bono representation of the Family Equality Council in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor, challenging the Defense of Marriage Act.

“The thrust of the brief,” Lents said, “was to focus on the voice of the children as it related to marriage,” including in LGBT relationships, a point picked up and carried forth by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy asked proponents of Proposition 8 why the approximately 40,000 children of unmarried same-sex couples should be stigmatized. DOMA was overturned.

“I think that was emblematic of the ways that we try to have an impact on the community,” Lents said. “We’ve received a 100 percent score for seven consecutive years from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, and I’m very proud of that.”

In the 2007 Securities Law 360 interview, Pritchard was asked about barriers she’d faced thus far in her career.

“I don’t think it’s tough for women to get in the door,” she answered. “There are a great deal coming from law schools and joining firms. I still think it’s tough for women to achieve senior positions in law firms.”

Now Pritchard is walking through that door.