Actual word came Friday for what was already known to some: that McDermott partners Wilson Chu and Joanna Lin are leaving to head a new Dallas office for Dechert.
Chu and Lin are both veteran corporate and M&A lawyers who led a McDermott team that guided Tesla on its recently announced $1 trillion dollar employment contract with Elon Musk.
It’s big news; but Dechert was being discreet. The hiring of Chu and Lin was tucked in the lower level of the firm’s public announcement that 20 partners (all of them from an unnamed McDermott) are heading for soon-to-be-opened Dechert offices in Chicago and Dallas — as well as existing offices in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
The firm’s news release focused on the hiring of Mike Poulos for its Chicago office as firm vice chair and global head of strategy, positions much like those he held at McDermott.
In the fifth paragraph came a two-sentence acknowledgment of the recent Dallas hirings:
Corporate and securities partner Joanna Lin and senior counsel Wilson Chu joined the firm in early January to launch Dechert’s corporate and M&A practice in Dallas. With the new laterals, Dechert will have five partners in Dallas specializing in complex litigation, corporate governance and M&A.
Both Chu and Lin had been partners at McDermott for more than 10 years. Chu, who graduated in 1984 from SMU Dedman School of Law, also taught there for nine years as an adjunct professor. After obtaining her law degree from Boston College in 2008, Lin spent time at Cooley and K&L Gates before arriving at McDermott in 2015.
The hirings announced by Dechert, all of them, are part of a quiet drama that has been unfolding at McDermott — now known as McDermott Will & Schulte — following its merger last August with Schulte Roth & Zabel.
Kent Zimmermann, a Chicago partner in the Zeughauser Group, said he is unsurprised by the discomfort suggested in the large number of departures from McDermott. The speed and terms of the McDermott-Schulte merger, along with a few large personalities involved, were bound to create unrest.
“I think a lot of friction has developed,” said Zimmermann. “There will also be some departures from the Schulte group.”
“Often when you bring in new groups or firms and you bend over backwards to make it work or give them a lot of money, the people who were there before are like: ‘What are we, chopped liver?’ ” Zimmermann said.
The two PE-focused firms created a larger focus on private equity investment and finance — McDermott dominant in healthcare and Schulte in fintech — at a time when Texas corporate environment and governance is leaning in on competition for corporate presence with states like New York, California and Delaware.
Moreover, McDermott chair Ira Coleman has said as recently as November that the firm is willing to consider allowing private equity to take a stake in the firm. And Chu and Lin — whose personal practices have tilted toward corporate law and governance — may have seen Dechert as a tighter fit for their practice.
Amid the ongoing debate about exodus from Delaware and New York’s continued regulatory expansion, Texas is also solidifying its position as a major financial hub. “Between the opportunities of DExit and New York’s warm embrace of collectivism, we’re super excited about Y’all Street’s continuing emergence,” Chu told The Texas Lawbook Friday evening. “With an enviable array of heavyweight titles in financial services, Dechert’s a great fit for us to be at the forefront of high stakes boardroom calls and high end deal making.”
In a separate announcement on Friday morning, Dechert expanded its litigation team by adding veteran trial attorney Jim Wetwiska to launch its Houston office.
A partner at Akin, Wetwiska, whose primary areas of expertise include energy, product liability and software litigation, said in a news release that his new firm’s “strong litigation platform and resources make it the ideal home for my energy and technology practice.”