Longtime K&L Gates chair Peter Kalis to step down in 2017
Longtime K&L Gates chair Peter Kalis will step down once his current term ends in early 2017.
In a Tuesday press release, the firm announced that Kalis would not seek a sixth term as chair of the firm he has led since 1997. According to the press release, Kalis had informed the management committee in July that he would not seek another term. The firm has not announced who will replace Kalis, who holds the titles of chairman and global managing partner, but the outgoing chair had previously told American Lawyer that he would be actively involved in the search for his successor.
“It has been an honor to serve the only law firm I have called home, and I look forward not only to concluding a strong 2016 but also to seeing my successors take the firm to greater heights in the years to come,” said Kalis in the press release. K&L Gates’ management committee, meanwhile, called Kalis a “giant both in the firm’s history and in the modern legal industry” and said that “K&L Gates is extremely fortunate to have benefited from Peter Kalis’ leadership over the past 20 years and continuing through February 2017.”
K&L Gates has grown exponentially since Kalis’ first day in charge. According to the firm, it has grown from 400 lawyers in six offices (all located in the eastern time zone of the United States) to nearly 2,000 lawyers in 46 offices stretched over five continents. The firm also says that, during Kalis’ tenure, annual revenue has skyrocketed, going from $140 million to over $1 billion. In February, the firm landed a mammoth $210 million contingency fee for a $750 million patent-dispute settlement on behalf of client Carnegie Mellon University.
More recently, however, the firm has been hit declining revenues (the CMU fee notwithstanding) and a string of partner defections. According to the American Lawyer, 57 partners have departed so far in 2016, compared to 35 new arrivals. The American Lawyer also found that, since 2008, the firm’s revenue per lawyer metric has slid from $620,000 to $575,000 in 2015, ranking the firm 92nd compared to the other Am Law 100 firms.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Why are so many K&L Gates partners leaving? It’s partly due to management autocracy, some say”
ABAJournal.com: “K&L Gates chairman says partner departures are consistent with the firm’s ‘performance culture’ “
