“For Clifford Chance, this move is strategically brilliant.” An unsurprising sentiment perhaps from the firm’s new California managing partner, Tower Snow, when commenting on the firm’s move onto the US West Coast, but heartfelt nonetheless. That Snow’s former partners at Brobeck Phleger & Harrison would be quite so glowing in their appraisal of the situation is correspondingly unlikely.
Of all the fallout in the California legal market following the tech crash, it is the bitter split at Brobecks that has created the strongest shockwaves. The firm was formed as a broad-based and determinedly blue-chip operation and had over its 70 year history expanded from its San Francisco base across the US’ largest legal centres, including New York, Washington DC and Los Angeles. On the way it built up an enviable hi-tech and mainstream client base which included the Wells Fargo Bank, Goldman Sachs and BankAmerica Corp. And when the tech boom exploded in its California home in the mid-1990s, Brobecks was not about to miss the opportunity to capitalise on the most lucrative West Coast phenomenon since the gold rush.
