Orrick Chairman Admits Strong Leadership Style
Ralph Baxter Jr., who has led San Francisco-based Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe for 19 years, has a reputation as a visionary and strong leader who has led the firm’s international expansion and emphasized core values in recruitment.
That top-down leadership style may be the reason Baxter was able to attract 83 laterals last year, but it also may have led some potential recruits to reject the law firm, the Daily Journal reports (sub. req.).
Law firm consultant Peter Zeughauser told the publication that many observers don’t perceive leadership at the firm to be distributed among managers the way it is at firms such as DLA Piper and Latham & Watkins.
“Although he’s attracted many, many star laterals, I think there are some that would rather go into a more distributed leadership model where they see more of a role for themselves, and he’s missed out on some for that reason,” Zeughauser said.
Baxter isn’t disputing his strong role, the story says. “Here’s how I see it,” Baxter told the Daily Journal. “We’re a large organization, and someone needs to direct what we’re doing, to lead and manage our people, pursue our strategy, and all the things that a business of our size needs to do.”
Tower Snow, a former Orrick lawyer who joined the firm at about the same time as Baxter, told the Daily Journal that Baxter foresaw how law firms would evolve. He knew that firms would grow, create specialized practice areas and become more like businesses, Snow said.
Baxter led an international expansion in which the firm opened nine new offices in Europe and Asia over the last seven years. Last year under his leadership, Orrick merged with a 55-lawyer firm in Germany. About a third of Orrick’s lawyers are now located outside the United States.
Baxter has also pushed to institute core values and require lateral hires to match the firm’s culture, the story says. He has expanded the firm’s pro bono program. And he will preside over the creation of several new management positions to create more opportunities for diverse faces in leadership roles.
Baxter’s goals for the firm continue to be expansive. “Our overarching objective is to continue to be one of the truly leading law firms, truly greatest law firms in the world, as the world, the practice of law, the industry, the profession of law advances through time,” he told the Daily Journal.
