Jon Ballis, 49, will succeed Hammes in early 2020, according to a memo sent to all Kirkland employees Dec. 7. Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates The latest hire, Lee, graduated Harvard Law School in 2006. Contact Us| (Bloomberg) Kirkland & Ellis chairman Jon Ballis holds a trump card in the legal industrys desperate battle for talent: he can pay more than just about anybody else. Collegiality and everything, talk is cheap, the former partner said. Jon Ballis is on Facebook. You see what type of lawyer he is and you want to be that.. Were Goldman Sachs or McKinsey of the law firm world. Like many large firms, though, it declined to provide diversity statistics of its recent partnership classes. North America Innovative Lawyers Awards 2022, Kirkland & Ellis Leads Pro Bono Effort to Help Ukrainian Refugees Apply for Temporary Protected Status, Kirkland Holds Pro Bono Clinic For Afghan Refugees, Kirkland & Ellis Donates $12.5M to 7 HBCUs, Nonprofits Using Statutory Fees From Maryland-HBCU Settlement. But early in the pandemic, lockdowns and closed courtrooms threatened to make that kind of growth an impossibility. Its a major challenge for a firm that only expects its workload to grow. Jon Ballis . Theres no sign Kirkland or other Big Law firms will be asking their lawyers to work less. on LinkedIn, Share profile for Jon A. Ballis P.C. The demands of billing 2,500 to 3,000 hours a year, though, has come at a cost. Crain's Chicago Business named Kirkland & Ellis partners Jon Ballis, Mark Filip, Asheesh Goel, Andrew Kassof and Linda Myers to its list of "Notable Gen X Leaders in Law." The list honors attorneys between the ages of 40 and 55 serving in a senior leadership role at their respective firms. Some partners at the. Kirkland & Ellis' new chairman Jon Ballis has wasted little time making his mark, poaching a rising star dealmaker away from one of Big Law's most untouchable firms this week, despite a global pandemic slowing the economy and scaring rivals away from making big-dollar hires. This looks very much like Kirkland being Kirklandcoronavirus or no coronavirustheyre staying true to form, said Janet Stanton, a partner at law firm management consultancy Adam Smith Esq. Please refresh the page and try again later. (Podcast). The firms hiring strategy acknowledges the bargaining power junior lawyers now hold. Listen to Roy Strom read his story. But now, Ballis finds that dangling eight-figure paychecks and the allure of doing billions of dollars worth of deals for private equity heavyweights like Bain Capital doesnt always cut it. Learn more about a Bloomberg Law subscription. Our Team Account subscription service is for legal teams of four or more attorneys. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many users needs. For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [emailprotected], Perkins Coie Lays Off 58 Business Professionals, Cravath Set for English Law Debut with Shearman Double Partner Hire, AI Has Gone Mainstream. . Live from New York, is focused on bringing you the most important global business and breaking markets news and information as it happens. How Kirkland Partners in Name Only Live in Limbo, Kirkland & Ellis hard-charging culture dubbed wolves in wolves clothing, Chairman wants to soften that image as firms battle for talent. 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License our industry-leading legal content to extend your thought leadership and build your brand. New private equity funds formed to take advantage of distressed opportunities. cookies See Jon A Ballis's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. That makes Ballis task all the more difficult. Law.com Editors and Analysts Offer Top Trends to Watch for 2023. References to the firm as a pack of wolves in wolves clothing have circulated for decades. Global Practice Guides. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Vision for Tomorrow Foundation, an organization he co-founded in 2006 to focus on visual impairment in children. Thats the definition of success here, said Sophia Hudson, who joined Kirkland from Davis Polk, a long-time lockstep firm, in 2018. He led the opening of the firm's Boston office in 2017 and is recognized as a leading private equity attorney in the U.S. Jon is also the Co-Founder of the Vision for Tomorrow Foundation, an organization that supports children with visual impairments, and serves on the board of the Anti-Defamation League, which fights antisemitism and bigotry. Commitment to these priorities has helped Kirkland deepen its practice area expertise, extend its worldwide reach and earn industry recognition for workplace culture, including placements on the prestigious Notable Diverse Leaders in Law, Notable Leaders in Sustainability, and Best Law Firms for Women lists. Kirkland in particular has never cared to explain itself as it offered pro athlete-sized pay packages to lure lawyers from partnerships that used to last a lifetime. Kirkland opened offices in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah, just to access people in places where they were already living. I know this sounds insecure, but I hear often that you are a tough place to work, and its not worth it, Ballis said in a series of interviews in recent months. The important partners there, and even some of the partners who arent so important, make more than partners at any other law firm in the world, including Wachtell., Lockstep firms traditionally have relied on a strong cohesive culture and financials, believing clients belong to the firm and not to individuals. Kirklands restructuring practice exploded. Sam Mays's great-grandparents, Lottie and John Ballis Kirkland revenue in 2018, up nearly 20% on 2017. He credits the growth in part to hiring partners with no billing responsibilities who manage client relationships and hand off work to the most logical teams of lawyers. Chicago, IL 60601 Up-and-coming Cravath partner Sarkis Jebejian, whose client list includes Accenture, Bain Capital and Northrop Grumman, joined Kirkland in 2012, followed by Jonathan Davis in 2016 and Eric Schiele in 2018. LexisNexis and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. He has long been recognized as one of the leading private equity attorneys in the United States, with Chambers USA recognizing him in every edition since 2004 and The Best Lawyers in America listing him in every edition since 2006. But he wants them to believe that at Kirkland theyll be doing it with a group of people who play well together. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world. He wants people like him who relish the hard work. The firm resets partners allocation of shares every other year, and the key questions reward behavior that leaders view as putting the firm first. Since joining Kirkland in 2005, Ballis practice has focused on leveraged buyouts of public and private companies as well as strategic mergers and acquisitions. He now faces the challenge of driving success while competition for top legal talent is fierce. Thats roughly four times the number the firm hired in 2020, even as two-thirds of the associates it lost last year departed to rival firms, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of LinkedIn profiles. While Ballis admits Kirkland demands much of its people, his argument that the firm is misunderstood boils down to this: He says its been working to ferret out selfish, greedy behavior for more than a decade. 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That will ultimately help the firm achieve its goal of promoting more diverse partner classes internally, she said. Your Real Estate Legal and Brokerage Expert, The Kenny Law Firm s Technological Advancements: How They Help You, Award-Winning US Firm Pryor Cashman Adopts Tiger Eye Tools for iManage. Jon Ballis is chairman-elect of Kirkland & Ellis' global management executive committee and will become chairman in 2020. Clients are incentivized to spread their work around, Jungers said, so if partners think they can take work with them and firms like Kirkland are willing to pay them millions more, theres a real question of whether culture will keep them from moving. He led the opening of Kirklands Boston office in 2017 and has helped recruit key partners. The potential hire demurred, telling Ballis she wasnt planning to leave her firm. Rival firm leaders had questioned whether he would continue Kirklands aggressive hiring strategy. Jon A. Ballis P.C. They took home more than $5m on average last year $2tn Private. If youre a private equity guy with a couple of big clients, Im sure everyone is very collegial at that level.. Jon joined Kirkland in 2005 and served in a variety of leadership roles at the Firm before being named Chairman in 2020. Kirklands reputation has been around so long, its hard to determine where it even began. Im not surprised at all he ended up being very successful, Gray said of Ballis. Brian F Richards Paul Hastings LLP16 Years Ranked. Ballis declined to provide 2021 financial figures, citing the firms fiscal year ending in March. We have encountered an error and are unable to process your comment at this time. E-mail oureditor 2023 Leadership Council on Legal Diversity. Copyright 2023 ALM Global, LLC. I will tell you with full candor, I see tremendous opportunity and upside.. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. It works with more than 450 private equity firms 430 Kirkland's equity partners. Kirkland is a very successful firm, said the source close to Kirkland. Staying current is easy with Crain's news delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge. Were like college sports: The players pick us, he said. The potential hire wouldve filled a hole in the firms antitrust practice, convincing regulators that transformational corporate deals wont harm consumers. Jon Ballis is Chairman of Kirklands Executive Committee. The American Lawyer has also named Kirkland to its A-List for 10 years running. Law.com Compass includes access to our exclusive industry reports, combining the unmatched expertise of our analyst team with ALMs deep bench of proprietary information to provide insights that cant be found anywhere else. Jebejian and Schiele were 43 when they joined Kirkland, while Davis was 34. We can destroy everybody else, and lets actually go destroy other people.. They were followed by Sean Rodgers from Simpson Thacher in 2013. Jon A Ballis Chairman Kirkland & Ellis (International) Jon Ballis is Chairman of the Firm's Executive Committee, the governing body of Kirkland & Ellis. By September, the firms M&A engine pushed to a new level that continued through last year. In making your comments, please do not refer to a pending legal matter. It fostered internal competition, Kirkland partners said, creating fiefdoms managed by individual partners wary of losing money by sharing clients. Clients pay them as much as $2,000 an hour to never be wrong. 130 E. Randolph St. To contact the reporter on this story: Meghan Tribe in New York at mtribe@bloomberglaw.com; Roy Strom in Chicago at rstrom@bloomberglaw.com, To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebekah Mintzer at rmintzer@bloomberglaw.com; Tom P. Taylor at ttaylor@bloomberglaw.com. New private equity funds formed to take advantage of distressed opportunities. Jon A. Ballis took charge at Kirkland & Ellis 68 days before the pandemic was declared. 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