Firm Replaces Rotating Leader Plan With a Strong Managing Partner

Managing partners often have to balance running their firms with practicing law, but Drew Eckl & Farnham has shifted the balance heavily toward running the firm.

Joe Chancey, who took over as managing partner at the beginning of the year, said that for the past 15 years the firm had an ”intensely democratic” method of rotating its chairman's position among members of the board of directors every two or four years. But the chairs had to fit their administrative business around working for clients.

“It bred an inefficiency” for a firm the size of Drew Eckl, which grew from about 70 lawyers to more than 100 now. The firm also moved from offices in Midtown to downtown.