JD Not Required
| Author | Danielle Braff |
| Pages | 33-34 |
Business of Law
MARCH 2019 ABA JOURNAL || 33
federal level, Tinnen doe sn’t foresee a
rush of states pa ssing similar bills as
Vermont and Wyoming.
Blockchain companies t hemselves
have mixed review s.
“I don’t see how the running of my
company needs a specia l corporate
structure t hat current structures don’t
allow me to do what I’m try ing to do,”
says Casey Kuhl man, CEO of Monax, a
smart contrac ts platform based in New
York and Scotland. Kuhlma n says he
didn’t pick locations because of loc al
regulations. “W ith new tech, you really
need to go where the talent is,” he says.
In Vermont, Trace, a marijuana sup-
ply chain platform, wa s quick to switch
from an LLC to a BBLLC .
Beyond a pending tax brea k, Trace
co-founder and CIO Paul Lintil hac
isn’t certain what bene fits the new
structure w ill bring. However, he
believes favorable blockchain law s can
create “a positive feedbac k loop” that
brings more tech ta lent to Vermont,
which will help grow t he local market
and improve future reg ulations.
“We thought it was something that
couldn’t do harm,” Lintil hac says.
“And, in the future, could cer tainly do
goo d.” Q
Clyde Tinnen
Casey Kuhlman
PHOTO COURTESY OF CLYDE TINNEN; SAM SINHA, MONAX; ORGANIC HEADSHOTS
JD Not Required
A move by some law firms to hire CEOs without law degrees
reignites a debate about turning over the reins to business
professionals By Danielle Bra
According to A ngela Hickey, as CEO of Levenfeld Pearlstein,
she works long hours, does the heavy l ifting and is responsible for
charting long-term st rategies for the Chicago-ba sed firm.
One thing she cannot do is pra ctice law.
Hickey was named CEO i n 2018, after working for four years as
the firm’s executive direc tor and previously as its direc tor of finance since 1999.
According to Hickey, the law yers at her firm stick to legal work while the nonlaw-
yers handle the nonlegal s tu, and everyone works together har moniously.
“Lawyers are t rained to be lawyers and not to be busi nesspeople,” says Hickey,
who doesn’t like the term nonlawyer. “It was and remains
a sound business model to engage busine ss professionals
to run the firm—the pac e and change and the breadth of
knowledge required t o stay relevant and competitive in the
legal industry dem ands full energy and focus of bu siness
professionals.”
This trend took o in 2009, when Paul Eberle led t he
Whyte Hirsc hboeck Dudek firm as one of the first nonlaw-
yers to take on such a subst antial role. He became CEO
of Husch Blackwell in 2018 aft er the two firms merged.
Another firm that went t o a nonlawyer as leader was
Pepper Hamilton, which hir ed Harvard Business School
graduate and cer tified public accountant Scott Gr een as CEO in 2012. Meanwhile,
in 2017, Twitch co-founder Justin K an, who does not have a JD, founded the law
firm Atrium and c urrently serves as CEO.
However, having nonlawyers in cha rge of law firms arrives w ith much con-
troversy. In 2014, the Texas bar’s ethics committ ee stated that Texas law firms
couldn’t use titles like CE O for nonlawyers because the word ocer w ithin chief
executive ocer means t hat the nonlawyers have control over the lawyers. T he
opinion led to objections from more th an 50 of the state’s largest law firms, w ith
many noting that it was c ommonplace for big law firms to have chief marketing
ocers or chief technolog y ocers who were nonlawyers. The committ ee then
issued a revised opin ion in September 2015 stating that firms ca n issue such titles
as long as they make clea r they do not have control over the firm’s legal practice.
“Some lawyers w ill argue they don’t want to be manage d by someone who
doesn’t understand what being a law yer entails; they only want to work for some-
one who has experience bui lding a book of legal business, which they belie ve will
translate into helping the fir m as a whole grow,” says James Goodnow, a Phoenix-
based attorney, legal a nalyst, and president and manag ing partner of Fennemore
Craig.
The other natural cap on nonl awyer management of law firms is the eth ical bar
on ownership of a firm by nonlaw yers, Goodnow says. CEOs tend to ex pect equity
to be part of their c ompensation package, but law firms in the United St ates can’t
generally oer that equit y, which limits the pool of potential nonlaw yer managers.
“The U.K. and other countr ies have begun experimenting w ith nonlawyer equity
ownership and investment , and so far, their legal markets haven’t collapsed i nto an
unethical mora ss, but opposition to that kind of deregulation rema ins pretty sti
in the U.S.,” Goodnow says.
Law Firms
Angela Hickey
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