Spencer Klein
It’s not at all uncommon for clients to follow lawyers from firm to firm – indeed, many clients brag that they “hire lawyers not firms.”
Sure, some firms manage to keep clients when the principal partner moves on – it’s less common, but certainly not unheard of.
What’s really rare is for a firm to follow a lawyer then ditch him for his old firm. The details after the jump.
That’s apparently what happened to O’Melveny’s Spencer Klein.
Klein joined O’Melveny in 2005 from McDermott Will & Emery, where he had a short run as head of M&A, starting in 2002 when he lateralled in from Shearman & Sterling. When Klein started at O’Melveny, the firm said he would “co-head the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity practice and will lead the firm’s Global Mergers & Acquisitions practice.” In a management shuffle last year, which the firm vociferously denied had anything to do with the looming downturn in the economy*, Klein ended up as head of East Coast M&A, reporting to Greg Gilbert, head of the global practice.
Private equity was folded into the group – in no small part because rainmaker John Suydam, who came over in the OGK acquisition, left for primo client Apollo. The Lawyer notes a few other departures from the PE practice:
In summer 2006 Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld raided the firm for a five-partner group of funds lawyers that included well-known partner Adam Weinstein. Other exits included Louis Kimmelman, the former co-chair of O’Melveny’s international arbitration practice, who joined Allen & Overy; Latin America specialist Jose Fernandez, who left for Latham & Watkins; and a brace of partners comprising corporate partner Mark Thierfelder and tax specialist Daniel Dunn, who both joined Dechert in 2006.
Is M&A starting to see cracks, too? As The Deal reported, one of Klein’s big clients has turned to his former firm.
HLTH Corp. switched law firms in reviving its agreement to acquire WebMD Health Corp., of which it already owns 83%. The companies, which announced their resurrected deal on June 18, had signed a merger agreement back in February 2008, but they terminated that deal in October.
This time HLTH is using Creighton Condon and Robert Katz at Shearman & Sterling LLP. On the last go-round, the company tapped Spencer Klein of O’Melveny & Myers LLP in New York. Klein got to know WebMD when he was at Shearman, which represented WebMD on its 2005 initial public offering.
While it’s extremely rare for a client to drop a lawyer for his old firm, it’s almost unheard-of to do it basically in the middle of a deal. (Yes, we know they terminated the merger agreement and signed up a new one, but it’s still the same deal).
WebMD is sticking with Bill Hartnett of Cahill Gordon, although Steve Greene has moved on to greener pastures (or is too busy or something) – he was on last year’s merger agreement but not this year’s.
Anyone know what happened? We treat all tips confidentially.
* We’re going to have to go back and look into this. It escaped our notice a year and a half ago, but it’s interesting as potentially the first public stealth layoffs resulting from the current recession.
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