The equity partners are Frederic Levy (left), who will be the group’s co-chair, Michael Scheininger, Ray Biagini, Jason “Jay” Carey and Daniel Johnson. Others who’ve left McKenna Long for Covington are special counsel Hunter Bennett; of counsels Kurt Hamrock, Dan Russell and Jason Workmaster; senior lawyers Bob Matthews, Sanderson Hoe and Herb Fenster; and seven associates.
Four government contracts partners will stay at McKenna Long in Washington, according to Levy. A few government contracts partners on the West Coast remain on McKenna Long’s website, including some attorneys in Denver who handled the niche government contracts work called cross-accounting.
McKenna Long’s website lists more than 60 attorneys working in government contracts law, including 14 partners in Washington, though that list extends to lawyers who work primarily with other practice departments, such as litigation.
“The newly structured McKenna government contracts team maintains the legacy strengths of the practice that clients trust, while adding an international dimension that responds to clients’ needs in today’s marketplace,“ according to a statement from McKenna Long that announced an internal promotion before the partners formally left the firm Friday.
Musical chairs among top government contracts groups is nothing new. McKenna Long’s practice had thrived through several iterations and name partners. Even Crowell & Moring, one of Washington’s largest law firms, was founded when a group of partners in the field split from Jones Day.
“With very, very few exceptions, all of the major players in our field have merged or changed firms in the course of their careers,” said Steven Schooner, a George Washington University Law School professor who focuses on government procurement. “This is the nature of the business.”
McKenna Long’s planned merger with Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, was at the heart of this shakeup.
Timothy Hester (left), Covington’s chairman, said the McKenna lawyers approached him a few weeks ago once they decided they wouldn’t join a merged firm.
Dentons and McKenna Long had tried to make a merger happen in 2013, but partners at McKenna Long, including this government contracts team, had opposed it.
“Back in 2013, this group, among a lot of others, had a number of questions about combining with Dentons. We as partners all had the opportunity to vote again this time,” Levy said. He wouldn’t say if he and his colleagues took part in this year’s vote.
“It’s going to become a different firm. We thought if we’re going to become a different firm, we would take a look around and become a firm of our choosing,” he added.
Dentons is the largest firm in the world by lawyers, following a tie-up with the Chinese firm Dacheng earlier this year. Dentons’ total revenue before the combination was $1.275 billion in 2014. McKenna Long faced declining profits and headcount last year, with $825,000 as the profits per equity partner in 2014 and total revenue at $305 million.
COVINGTON’S APPROACH
Levy said his billing rate won’t change with the move, despite Covington’s reputation as a white shoe D.C. firm and McKenna Long’s roots as a regional firm that grew out of Atlanta.
Hester said the group would complement Covington’s established practices by allowing the firm to expand the legal work it does for clients including Textron Inc., Honeywell International Inc. and Northrop Grumman Corp.
For years, Covington has tried to ramp up its government contracts department with lateral hires, for a total of five partners before this week, and plotted ways to gain business in the aerospace and defense industries.
“We have gotten our team to a scale where we had much more relevance in the defense and aerospace industry already,” Hester said. “But here we had an opportunity to take a quantum leap.”
Covington, generally, has been attempting to grow both in and outside of Washington under Hester’s leadership.
The firm moved to a marquee building in D.C. last fall and has expanded its West Coast presence and offices in Asia. Along the way, it’s picked up a handful of lawyers leaving the U.S. Department of Justice. It earned $709 million in gross revenue in 2014 and reported profits per partner of $1.335 million.
Levy, in particular, has a close tie to an important Covington & Burling alum. He and Eric Holder Jr., the recently unemployed attorney general who has not yet announced whether he will return to private practice, attended both college (Holder ‘73, Levy ‘ 75) and law school (Holder ‘76, Levy ‘78) at Columbia University together.
“I’d love for Eric to come back [to the firm],” Levy said.
REMAINING QUESTIONS
Government contracts law itself has changed over the past several years from an area focused on defense contracting related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to one that is more consumed with cybersecurity and technological advancement. And from a practice with few women lawyers to one where female lawyers have become the leaders.
The McKenna Long group that will move to Covington is entrenched in the field’s history. Levy, a 61-year-old rainmaker, had been at McKenna Long for 37 years, starting there when the firm was called Sellers Conner & Cuneo.
The group isn’t sure yet if it will take along McKenna Long’s government contracts library, Levy said, a collection of books and documents that include war contract appeals board rulings on carbon paper from the 1940s and that hold sentimental value for many lawyers in the practice area. In some cases, no digitized versions of the documents exist.
The group moving to Covington is less diverse than other large teams of lawyers that move laterally. Among the 12 partners, counsel and senior lawyers who will move from McKenna Long, none are women. Two female associates are among the seven going to Covington.
“I think it’s sort of hard not to notice,” said Jennifer Plitsch, a co-chair of the government contracts practice at Covington, about the lateral group’s gender disparity. “I think initially, there was the hope that the group would include a larger number of women. A couple of folks we were considering for a variety of reasons decided to stay where they were.”
McKenna Long had counted several female partners in its government contracts group, including Jessica Abrahams, who became the group chair because of Levy’s departure. Abrahams did not respond to a call for comment this week.
Hester confirmed that Covington had tried unsuccessfully to recruit more women attorneys from McKenna Long and emphasized the firm’s existing diversity in the department and other practice groups. The firm has several minority lawyers on the partner track too, Hester said. Last year, three out of nine lawyers promoted to the partnership at Covington were women.
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