Stanley Brand has made a career of getting involved in the government's business: He was 28 years old when he pitched Speaker Tip O'Neill to make him the first general counsel for the House of Representatives, and in the decades since has represented individuals in high-profile federal investigations.

Brand recently departed Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld to start his own practice, five years after the international firm absorbed his private practice. Soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic forced firms across the globe to physically shut their doors—but Brand said the low overhead costs have helped his practice, Brand Woodward Law, get off the ground. On top of that work, Brand is vice president for Minor League Baseball, which is the middle of negotiations for a new league structure. Those talks have been waylaid by the pandemic.

Brand spoke with the National Law Journal about why he went back to running his own firm, how the pandemic could shape the future of Big Law, and whether we'll get to see live baseball in the U.S. this year. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: In the past, you've chosen to keep your law practice relatively small, going back to you and Abbe Lowell splitting up a couple decades ago over that preference. Akin Gump later absorbed your past practice—what drew you to working with them in the first place?

A: It was really more of a personal decision than a business one, in the sense that these are people I've known for 30 years. Joel Jankowsky, John Dowd—Steve Ross was my deputy in the House. These are all people who had sent me business when I was in my small firm, and so I had that relationship. So when I looked around, I needed a place that I felt was compatible with my own practice and my own past experience, and that was the obvious place for me.

Q: A few months ago you decided to leave the firm, after spending five years there. What was behind that decision? 

A: It was mostly conflicts, because the kind of high-profile political work or the political type of clients that I got sometimes just couldn't fit into the Akin roster, and that was increasingly a problem. From the beginning of time, my clients have been misunderstood people fighting with the government at various levels, whether it's Congress or a grand jury or the administrative agency or an inspector general. A lot of that just didn't fit with a large institutional client base that Akin had.

Q: What has it been like getting this practice off the ground? Obviously you didn't know that a pandemic would be down the road when you made that call.

A: It's been pretty good because I took a few things—some clients agreed to stay with me, who have been my clients for years, and then I've gotten some other work. Then I get the usual bevy of people who were subpoenaed. or under inquiry from Congress, or a grand jury or an agency. And, again, because of freedom from having to navigate the conflicts, those have been the key ones to do.

The associate who I've joined up with, Stanley Woodward, who was a 10-year associate at Akin, he has some work as well. He's done product liability, he's done foreign corrupt practices and some small and medium sized commercial litigation, so he had a small book as well. Let me put it to you this way—if you're two people, and sometimes three by contract, you don't have a lot of overhead, especially in the pandemic where nobody is allowed to go to an office and clients don't seem to care. 

That's the other remarkable thing about what's happened. The office was already not the focus for a lot of what went on in law because clients didn't care anymore whether you were sitting at a desk. You could communicate with them by email and by Zoom and videoconferencing.

Q: Do you think that was an existing trend before social distancing?

A: Yes. In fact, the very commodious and nicer offices that Akin Gump moved into were actually designed partially for people not to be there—to come in as they needed to plug in, but not have to be there five days a week, eight hours a day. So I think we're moving in that direction already, and it's just been accelerated.

Q: Do you have any concerns about people continuing to work from home after this and whether it could cause some burnout in the legal profession, where it's already an issue?

A: I'm not sure, because I think in some sense the working out of an office may actually relieve some of that because you can take a break. I get emails at 2:30 in the morning, and I always worry about that. I'm not responding to them, coming in at all hours at night, but I'm worrying about people not being able to disconnect. I think the stress level may be less. First of all there's no commuting, which is a tremendous burden on efficiency. If you don't have to go to an office, and you wake up at 8:30, you can go to your home office and start to work without the stress of traveling. And you're at home the minute you stop working. That's, to me, an advantage.

Q: At the end of the day, what draws you toward a smaller practice?

A: I still like the work. I still like, if you will, being in a fight. To me, that's interesting. I still like mentoring. I teach at Penn State Dickinson Law, the Washington semester program. So what I've enjoyed is the mentoring. To some extent the mentoring is more direct at a small firm than a large firm.

The part of getting a client is also part of the fun. It's not just doing the work, it's being the person that is on the list who gets called. I haven't lost the thrill of that, when somebody validates you by saying, "I want to hire you."

The other part that has been good for me is I'm able to write. I'm able to publish. I'm able to do radio. I don't have to worry about conflicts, whereas I did before in deference to the firm. I had to make sure that was okay and didn't roil client sensibilities which are important. 

Q: We're seeing big firms having to cut pay or lay off staff as a result of the economic fallout from the pandemic. What do you think the lasting impact of the pandemic could be for these bigger firms?

A: Being home, I've had some time to think about this and read, and what I've learned is economic busts are incubators for new business, for a couple of reasons. One is necessity and one is competition. And I think the future of Big Law is in doubt for medium and lower tier businesses. I don't think they will be able to allocate the kind of money to big firm rates that they may have before the bust. And that opens the space for people like me, who maybe can't represent a Fortune 500 company except in a very narrow specialized area, but where other businesses and clients will be available to us, because the rate structure will be better and yet the experience level is equal. I think it's actually a good time to be going back to a smaller footprint.

Q: As vice president of Minor League Baseball, you're also in the middle of negotiations right now for a new potential structure for the league. How are those being handled in the time of social distancing? I can imagine that you aren't getting people in a room to talk this out.

A: It's all been telephonically and by email. And of course it's been complicated by the total shutdown of the sport at the major league level. We've had discussions, but they've been intermittent because of the crisis everybody is in, and they can't happen in person.

Q: From your perspective what are the chances we could see a game of baseball this year, major or minor league?

A: Well, it's very difficult at the minor league level, because if we were to be able to open our season that would be dependent on Major League Baseball making that decision for us in a sense because they control the players. Selling tickets at the gate is the largest portion of what we generate as revenue, so playing without fans for us would be economically extremely difficult, to say the least.