© 2018 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(July 11) – Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis made it official Wednesday. It is opening an office in Dallas. And firm leaders are promising to grow the new Dallas office as aggressively as they have expanded in Houston if the client demand is there.
To staff its North Texas operation, Kirkland has hired nine corporate transactional lawyers from four elite law firms – Jones Day, Vinson & Elkins, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and Winston & Strawn – and one accounting firm, KPMG.
Legal industry analysts say that the entrance of Kirkland, which is one of the largest and richest law firms in the world, could cause major disruptions in the Dallas corporate legal market, much the way it has done so in Houston.
Kirkland is offering significant signing bonuses – some as high as $500,000 – to attract lawyers with several years of experience representing private equity firms in mergers and acquisitions, according to lawyers with knowledge of the compensation offers. Kirkland officials privately say the bonus rumors are exaggerated, but the firm does not publicly discuss its compensation system.
Legal industry insiders say that Kirkland is targeting senior level corporate transactional associates and counsel who would have been up for partner at their old firms in the next year or two and offering them an immediate promotion to non-equity partnerships that come with big raises.
“We’ve been looking at Dallas for several months now,” Kirkland partner Andrew Calder told The Texas Lawbook in an exclusive interview. “We’ve been growing aggressively in Texas and Dallas was the obvious next step.
“We already represent a lot of clients in Dallas and we see having an actual presence there as a way to grow that business,” says Calder, who is a member of the Kirkland’s Global Management Executive Committee. “Dallas is a robust market and has an incredible pool of talented lawyers – many of them would never leave Dallas for Houston.”
Kirkland opened its Houston office in April 2014 by luring Calder to leave the Houston office of Simpson Thacher. Calder was the lead M&A lawyer for Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings in its $18 billion divestment of Oncor and its $20 billion spin-off of Vistra Energy.
Calder and Kirkland have aggressively expanded the firm’s Houston office to about 140 lawyers.
Since 2015, Kirkland lawyers based in Texas have handled 113 corporate mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures with a combined value of $164.8 billion.
“We have no fixed growth plans for either Houston or Dallas, but we will grow to meet client demand,” Calder says. “If client demand is there in Dallas as it has been in Houston, then we will grow the Dallas office aggressively.”
Law firm consultant Kent Zimmermann, in an exclusive interview with The Texas Lawbook, says Wednesday’s announcement follows Kirkland’s playbook of hiring “high quality next generation” corporate lawyers from other firms.
“Kirkland is using its deep financial resources and its compensation system to its advantage, which materially increases the compensation of those being hired,” Zimmermann says. “Kirkland’s move changes the legal landscape in Dallas. This affects not only the firms who are seeing their lawyers leave for Kirkland, but those firms will seek to replenish their ranks by recruiting from other firms.”
Calder says that each of the new partners and associates that has joined the new office “has been carefully selected to fit the Kirkland Texas approach as an entrepreneurial, best-in-class team.”
The lawyers joining Kirkland are:
Kevin Crews, who was counsel at Weil, focuses on M&A and private equity transactions, with a particular emphasis on the energy sector;
Lanchi Huynh, a counsel at V&E, who handles capital markets transactions in the energy space. Her work covers securities offerings, including initial public offerings, by upstream, midstream, oil-field services and related companies;
Dilen Kumar, a senior associate at Winston – and before that Weil – also served as senior counsel in the Obama White House, and now concentrates his practice on representing private equity firms and public and private companies in connection with M&A, divestitures and investment transactions;
Alex Rose, a senior associate at Jones Day and former associate at Kirkland in New York, represents public and private companies, as well as private equity firms and their portfolio companies, in complex domestic and cross-border M&A, corporate governance and other general corporate matters across a variety of industries.
The Texas Lawbook reported in June that tax law expert David Wheat, who was formerly with KPMG, and corporate partner Ryan Gorsche, who was previously with Weil, joined Kirkland earlier this year. They also will be working in the Dallas office.
Calder says that several associates are also in the process of joining Kirkland’s Dallas office.
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