How Heller’s Merger Talks Pushed the LA Managing Partner out the Door
The Los Angeles managing partner at Heller Ehrman began looking for jobs at other law firms this summer because of merger talks that would have ended her career at the law firm.
The Daily Journal (sub. req.) questions whether the talks contributed to the law firm’s demise. “The initiation of merger talks with Baker & McKenzie in the summer seems to have exacerbated the instability that had been plaguing Heller Ehrman for more than a year,” the story says.
The sentence leads into a section of the story about the firm’s Los Angeles managing partner leaping to Proskauer Rose. The lawyer, Nancy Sher Cohen, has handled disputes involving insurance coverage and defended suits involving toxic torts and consumer class actions.
Cohen told the publication she began exploring new law firms this summer because a proposed Heller merger with an unnamed law firm would have shut her out. The publication says the firm apparently was Baker & McKenzie. The merger talks ended in August, reportedly because of client conflicts.
“The sudden dissolution of the firm was a huge surprise,” Cohen told the Daily Journal. “But I had more time to adjust to it because it appeared [during the summer] that we were moving to a merger that would’ve precluded me. The real shock came earlier when I realized I couldn’t practice with these folks.”
Another story questions whether Heller’s problems were worsened by term limits that required the firm’s “wildly successful” former chairman, Barry Levin, to give up his leadership post. Levin, now the firm’s San Francisco managing partner, is joining Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, according to the Daily Journal.
Credit also became a problem for the firm when 14 intellectual property lawyers left in September. The departure left Heller with fewer partners than allowed in its agreement with its bank, giving the lender the right to demand immediate repayment.
