Lee Wolosky and Dawn Smalls, two high-profile partners at Boies Schiller Flexner in New York who are serving as independent monitors of Deutsche Bank, are moving to Jenner & Block as partners, Law.com has learned.

Smalls and Wolosky are overseeing Deutsche's compliance with a settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services. Both also worked in the Obama administration, with Wolosky tasked with the administration's efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and Smalls having filled senior posts at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Wolosky and Smalls are among the latest attorney exits at Boies Schiller. Kathleen Hartnett, a former Justice Department attorney who was co-leader of the firm's San Francisco office, has moved to Cooley, Law.com reported Monday. And last month, two other groups of Boies Schiller partners announced they had struck off to launch their own firms in Florida and New York.

Lee Wolosky. Courtesy photo. 

Smalls and Wolosky confirmed their moves in a weekend interview, saying Jenner was one of a few firms that can handle large commercial, regulatory and political representations while prioritizing diversity and public service.

"You look at my practice and then you match it up to Jenner's expertise and capabilities, and it's basically a perfect fit," Wolosky said. Added Smalls: "Lee and I are co-monitors of a tier-one global bank, and we need a team that is experienced in monitorships."

Katya Jestin, co-managing partner of Jenner, said that she'd known Wolosky for years because she represents a high-value Guantanamo detainee and had met with him to discuss her pro bono client. Wolosky said it took "months" for him to arrive at the decision to move.

Law.com reported in October that Wolosky and Smalls were responsible for monitoring compliance by Deutsche Bank after it was accused in recent years of doing business on behalf of countries sanctioned by the United States and allowing billions of dollars to move out of Russia. The monitorship is expected to last for at least two years.

Smalls and Wolosky wouldn't confirm the job's duration or discuss the nature of the work, but Jestin said monitorships have historically been leveraged, "all-hands-on-deck" work that requires the work of many lawyers to conduct interviews and review documents.

In a statement, Jenner lauded Smalls and Wolosky as "experienced litigators and crisis managers." Besides the Deutsche monitorship, the two have represented banks, investment funds and major industrial companies, as well as longtime Boies clients like C.V. Starr & Co., according to their biographies on Boies Schiller's website.

Smalls is also known for having run for New York City public advocate in 2019—she came in sixth in a crowded field—and for having "political director" roles on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She's also been a commissioner of the New York Joint Commission on Public Ethics, called JCOPE, and was an assistant to President Bill Clinton's chief of staff John Podesta.

Asked whether she'd run for office again, Smalls didn't rule it out but said her focus right now was the monitorship.

"If there were a job where I thought my skills, experience and background would be particularly of service, that I'd do a particularly good job of it and there was a path for me to be successful, that's something that I'd seriously consider, but that's not top of mind as I make the move to Jenner," she said, adding: "There are many ways to serve, and people lose sight of the fact that elected office is only one of them."

Recently, Wolosky has been representing Fiona Hill, the White House adviser who testified in the impeachment of President Donald Trump before the House of Representatives. Before taking the Guantanamo role, Wolosky had worked on the National Security Council under the Clinton and Bush administrations as director of transnational threats.

Wolosky said he'd been an equity partner at Boies, and Small said she'd been a nonequity partner. Their last day at Boies was Friday, they said, and they begin at Jenner on Monday. Asked whether others at Boies would move with them, Smalls said, "not at this time."

Jenner said the two new partners would work out of New York and Washington, D.C., as members of the firm's complex commercial litigation practice, led by Ross Bricker in Chicago, and its government controversies and public policy litigation practice, whose chair is Thomas Perelli in Washington. They are also expected to "work closely with" Jenner's monitorship practice, the firm said.

The new partners said they were also drawn to Jenner's focus on diversity. Smalls noted that she was one of relatively few black women partners—just 0.75% of law firm partners are black women, according to a recent report from the National Association for Law Placement—and said the firm valued paths to partnership like her own, which included stops at the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.

Nick Gravante, a managing partner at Boies Schiller, said in a statement that he wished the departing partners well. In recent interviews, Gravante and Natasha Harrison, who were elected last December as managing partners of the firm alongside its founding partners David Boies and Jonathan Schiller, said that while the beginning of the year had seen more departures than usual, Boies Schiller's business would not be impacted in a "material" way.

"I believe very strongly it has nothing to do with leadership," Harrison said, adding: "We're not anticipating any more exits at this time."

Their departures coincide with Hartnett's exit for Cooley and come on the heels of two partner groups' decisions to spin off new firms on the East Coast. On Jan. 8, Law.com reported that Mark Heise, Luis Suarez, and Patricia Melville were starting their own firm in Coral Gables, Heise Suarez Melville. A week later, Roche Cyrulnik Freedman launched with 11 Boies attorneys, mostly counsel and associates.

Correction: A previous version of this story erroneously stated that most of the Boies lawyers who moved to Roche Cyrulnik Freedman had been partners. Most had been counsel and associates.

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