Why Are Lawyers Being Asked to Lead Some of the Nation's Largest Corporations?
David Dillon. Photo by Pam Francis
David Dillon loved law school, especially the criminal justice clinic. His law professors say he was a natural in the courtroom and a zealous defender of the underprivileged. There was never any doubt that he would be an extraordinary advocate.
“F. Lee Bailey wrote a book that said you have to do your homework, that you have to understand the case better than the prosecutor,” says Dillon, a 1976 graduate of Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law. “I learned that I couldn’t successfully tackle an issue or problem until I understood it from every possible direction.”
Employing this principle for the past 25 years, Dillon has experienced extraordinary achievement and has become the unequivocal leader of his profession. His career has thrived. His firm’s revenues dwarf even those of the largest law practices in the world.
But Dillon has never tried a lawsuit or even practiced law. Instead, he is chief executive officer of the Kroger Co., the largest grocery store chain in the country, according to Fortune, with revenues of $76 billion.
“I love selling groceries,” he says. “I went to law school not to be a lawyer but to study how society operates and to learn why we don’t kill each other. The rule of law has a lot to do with that.”
Dillon is an example of a new trend among the nation’s largest corporations to select lawyers to lead their conglomerates. Nine of the Fortune 50 companies now have a lawyer as chief executive, up from three just a decade ago. In December, Bank of America and Continental Airlines became the two most recent publicly traded corporations to do so. Also in 2009, Citigroup named Richard Parsons, another lawyer, as its chairman, which is separate from the CEO.
Click here to continue reading “CEO Esq.” online in the May issue of the ABA Journal.
