New law firms bank on 'boutique' edge
As the biggest U.S. law firms keep up their battle for talent and market share and navigate new pressures in the Trump era, smaller, so-called boutique firms have been showing fresh signs of momentum.
At least two new boutiques announced their launch this week, founded by former partners from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and A&O Shearman. Others formed in recent years are at the center of high-stakes, high-profile cases. And some lawyers exiting government service are creating their own new firms.
One of the new entrants, Dunn Isaacson Rhee, officially debuted Wednesday with 26 lawyers, mainly from 1,000-lawyer, New York-based Paul Weiss.
Co-founder Karen Dunn, an influential Democrat and litigator in Washington, made headlines in May when she left Paul Weiss, which has been in the spotlight since striking a deal with President Donald Trump in March to avoid an executive order targeting the firm over its past hires and its diversity policies. Eight other major firms followed Paul Weiss' lead, pledging nearly $1 billion in free legal work to causes Trump supports.
Dunn Isaacson Rhee, whose founders did not cite Paul Weiss' dealings with Trump when leaving the firm, declined interview requests. The firm in Wednesday's announcement said its clients already include Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery, Qualcomm, Google, Ultimate Fighting Championship and Meta.
Also on Wednesday, former A&O Shearman partners David Esseks and Eugene Ingoglia announced the launch of Esseks Ingoglia, a New York-based litigation firm focused on investigations and white-collar defense work. Ingoglia in an email said both founders had worked at small firms and shared "an affinity for fighting for clients as part of a small tight-knit band of (merry) warriors."
Legal industry observers and small firm founders said boutiques are thriving thanks to the attributes that set them apart from their large counterparts: fewer potential conflicts of interest between clients, greater freedom in case selection, and more flexible billing models -- departing from the billable hour model still dominant at big firms.
Improvements in technology have also made it easier for fewer lawyers to handle more work, said Arlo Devlin-Brown, who left 1,500-lawyer Covington & Burling to start a new firm last month with a partner who departed Sidley Austin.
"There's a lot of things a small firm can do now that would have been impossible even five years ago," said Devlin-Brown, an ex-prosecutor whose new firm, Treanor Devlin Brown, focuses on white-collar and cryptocurrency-related matters.
Beth Wilkinson, who left Paul Weiss nearly a decade ago to co-found Wilkinson Stekloff, now with 45 lawyers, said corporate legal departments are increasingly comfortable turning to boutiques. Her firm eschews billable hours entirely, negotiating fees upfront to avoid billing disputes. Its clientele includes Pfizer, Microsoft, the National Football League, Exxon, 3M and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Billing flexibility combined with a winning record have also fueled the success of Bartlit Beck, a Chicago litigation boutique spun off from Kirkland & Ellis over 30 years ago, managing partner Jason Peltz said.
Still, large firms remain dominant in big-ticket litigation. Many corporations prefer to rely on a small roster of full-service firms with deep benches, said Kristin Stark of consultancy Fairfax Associates. Many of the largest U.S. law firms continue to post record profits and revenues year after year, and have continued to grow larger.
Stark said there may be a current surge in spin-offs from big firms, but added, "I do not believe that large corporate law departments are increasing their openness to using boutiques."
Leaving a large firm can make it easier to take on politically sensitive matters. Prominent litigators Paul Clement and Erin Murphy left Kirkland & Ellis in 2022, shortly after Kirkland said it would no longer represent clients in pro-Second Amendment rights matters.
Since then, their firm Clement & Murphy has taken on a range of consequential cases for major clients including Chevron. Despite Clement's conservative bona fides, it has signed on to cases opposing actions by the Republican Trump administration. Its founders did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ellen Zucker, a Boston lawyer who founded her own firm after her old one Burns & Levinson closed last year, said it was "liberating" not to need to struggle for buy-in from management to commit to a case or cause.
When Zucker decided to sign a brief supporting other law firms suing the Trump administration over his law firm executive orders, "I had one conversation with my partners, and we signed on," Zucker said.
Beyond the spinoff trend, some former government lawyers have formed their own private firms since Trump took office and set out to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
Three attorneys who left the U.S. Federal Trade Commission this year joined with a former U.S. attorney last month to launch a new plaintiffs law firm, Simonsen Sussman, focused on antitrust work.
"We saw a real market opportunity," said co-founder Kate Brubacher, who served as Kansas' U.S. Attorney during the Biden administration. "Even at large firms, people who want to do this work are hindered by conflicts," she said.
In May, two former Justice Department lawyers launched the Civil Service Legal Center, a law firm founded to "fight against the Trump administration's attempts to dismantle the civil service."
The firm aims to grow, but "right now it's just the two of us," co-founder Clayton Bailey said.
-- When Taylor Wettach launched a campaign to represent Iowans in the U.S. Congress earlier this month, he made his decision to resign from New York-founded Simpson Thacher a centerpiece of his announcement.
Wettach, a Democrat running to unseat incumbent Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the 1st District of Iowa, released a campaign video of himself holding a banker's box in an office elevator, touting what he said was his decision to quit over Simpson Thacher's agreement with Trump to avoid his administration's crackdown on law firms.
Wettach, an Iowa native, told Reuters he viewed the targeting of law firms and the deals that some firms made with the White House as an attack on the rule of law.
He said his campaign is rooted in the same motivations that made him become a lawyer. "I knew that I wanted to be able to fight for fairness and the dignity of all people and make sure that everybody can get a fair shake," he said.
Wettach said he worked on national security and trade issues at Simpson Thacher, as well as pro bono work involving refugees. Simpson Thacher spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Miller-Meeks referred Reuters to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
"East Coast Elitist Taylor Wettach just gave up his posh city life to join the clown car Democrat primary in Iowa's First Congressional District," NRCC spokesperson Emily Tuttle said in a statement.
-- Burford Capital has completed a $500 million debt offering that its CEO Christopher Bogart said is the largest-ever for the litigation funder.
"The fact that we are continuing to grow our capital reserves just speaks to our commitment to the market, and that we are very much open for business around the world," Bogart told Reuters.
The 42 active U.S. commercial litigation funders had a total $16.1 billion assets under management last year, according to an annual report from litigation finance advisory firm Westfleet Advisors that was released in March.
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