In 2018, he and Schiller set up a “management committee,” consisting of Gravante, Dunn, Isaacson, and Phil Korologos, “with the hope that they would sort of be the future of leadership in the firm,” Boies says. But that structure didn’t really work, especially since both Boies and Schiller were still the comanaging partners of the firm. There were too many chiefs. “That didn’t work out satisfactorily,” Boies says. At the end of 2019, the firm decided to add Gravante and Harrison as comanaging partners, along with Boies and Schiller, “with the idea,” he says, “that we would add probably a third in a year, and then over time, one of them would become the chairman, or would succeed me as chairman. And then as Jonathan and I retired, you would have replicated the management structure with somebody as chairman and three, conceivably four because of the growth of the firm, managing partners, each with their designated responsibilities. That’s where we started out at the beginning of this year.”
That didn’t work out either, obviously. He says Gravante—“a good friend of mine”—left Boies Schiller because “for years” he believed that the “best future” for the firm and “certainly for his practice, was to be part of a larger, broader-based firm with a substantial corporate practice” that might lead to additional business opportunities beyond what existed at a smaller, litigation-focused firm like Boies Schiller. He says the other three lawyers who left with Gravante likely shared this view or had worked so closely with Gravante over the years that they just followed him out the door.
But, he says, “the predominant” view of the “next generation” of leaders at Boies Schiller is “that the advantages of being a world-class, litigation-focused firm outweighs the advantages of combining, or growing internally, your own broad-based practice. I think we are freer of conflicts. I think it’s a more collegial atmosphere. I think it allows us to stay smaller. It allows us to really focus on doing sort of the primary thing that we do very well.” He says the selection of law firms these days is increasingly focused on finding the best law firm to do a particular task as opposed to just picking a law firm that a client thinks can do everything. “We are increasingly doing a lot of litigation work for clients whose corporate work is done by other firms with very large litigation departments,” he says. “But they come to us because they are making those legal-services-procurement decisions based on not a single supplier but multiple suppliers, each being picked for a particular function.”
The recent spate of high-level departures is not a “harbinger” of trouble at Boies Schiller—“the firm is very strong,” he asserts—but “on the other hand, it’s not part of the plan either.” He didn’t want Gravante, or Dunn, or Isaacson to leave. Some of the other partners, though, who left weren’t really cutting it, he seemed to suggest. “This is a very demanding practice,” he says. “When you are a litigation-focused firm, and you are doing so at the level that we do it at, you have to offer clients something special.” Especially at $2,000 an hour. “Exactly, exactly,” he continues. “If all you’re doing is what other people do, they might as well stay with the law firm that’s doing their corporate work.”
He says he doesn’t have any special apologies, mea culpas, or explanations to make at the upcoming annual firm meeting. Harrison is the heir apparent. (“That’s obviously true,” he says.) He says he’s never been more productive while also spending more quality time with his family. And the firm is doing well. He cites recent wins for some of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and for plaintiffs who sued insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield. Boies Schiller is one of three law firms to share in a $667.5 million legal fee in the Blue Cross case. In 2018, Boies Schiller reportedly had revenues of $420 million; in 2019, its fees were a reported $405 million. “There was a lot of new business, and a lot of successful litigation,” he says about 2020. “I think that will continue. We have, on a lawyer-by-lawyer basis, the best litigation group in the world in terms of dispute resolution, whether it’s jury trials, appellate work, international arbitration. We have an enormously deep bench, and we have the [succession] transition if not finished, at least we are at the beginning of the end.” He says everyone at the annual firm meeting will get a bottle of Hawk and Horse cabernet and the Hawk and Horse red dessert wine. There will be a virtual wine tasting.
So, in the immortal words of Mark Twain, are the reports of the demise of Boies Schiller greatly exaggerated? Boies laughed. “I think that’s true!” he said. “I think that’s fair! That’s right.”
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