Boies Successors Will Grapple With Giant Legacy and Leaner Firm

Two lawyers have emerged as frontrunners to replace David Boies as the next leader of Boies Schiller Flexner, the law firm he built into a national litigation powerhouse.

Matthew Schwartz and Sigrid McCawley are likely to be the top candidates for chair-in-waiting when the firm’s partners vote next month, according to three sources familiar with the situation. The pair could be selected to share the role as co-chairs, paving the way for them to take the reins formally when Boies steps down from his leadership position at the end of next year.

Boies is planning to cede control after some false starts in the transition and an overhaul of the firm’s business model. His successor faces the daunting task of trying to steer a firm whose namesake founder is a titan of the legal industry and plans to continue taking cases.

“Any firm with a name partner that retires, they need to have a really strong succession plan with the clients knowing and trusting the lieutenant,” said Sharon Garb, a New York legal recruiter. “The proof is in the pudding. If he’s still staying on, it could lessen the burden on the new lawyers.”

Schwartz, 46, and McCawley, 51, have helped the firm try to turn the corner on a tumultuous stretch in which Boies Schiller saw a mass exodus of lawyers and faced criticism over its work for disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and controversial Theranos chief Elizabeth Holmes.

The firm that has emerged is a much leaner entity—with gross revenue and headcount nearly halved over the last four years. Its lawyers have focused their attention on big-ticket class action and other plaintiffs’ cases after several major corporate clients followed Boies Schiller alum to their new firms.

McCawley and Schwartz are known as strong lawyers, but neither has the pedigree of the firm’s founder. Along with partner Alan Vickery, they serve as the firm’s co-managing partners, whose responsibilities include daily management of operations.

A spokeswoman for Boies declined to comment on the upcoming succession vote. Schwartz and McCawley did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Maverick’ Moves On

Boies is best known for sparring with Microsoft’s Bill Gates, representing Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, and leading a legal charge to give LGBT couples the right to marry. He also built the modern model of a high-end litigation boutique, focused on corporate defense and plaintiffs-side lawsuits.

Boies “built a firm in the early 2000s that was groundbreaking in terms of its business model and the type of work it did,” said Lee Wolosky, a Jenner & Block partner who previously worked at the firm. “He was a maverick in the industry.”

Now 82, he’s said he will continue to practice law after giving up leadership responsibilities. He continues to be in high demand, charging upwards of $2,100 per hour for his services. He’s leading a team that last month filed a massive suit on behalf of the cannabis industry, challenging federal banking restrictions on business in states that have legalized the drug.

Schwartz, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor who joined the firm in 2015, has emerged as the firm’s public face. As a prosecutor, he worked on the case targeting <-bsp-person state="{"_id":"0000018b-de31-de26-a7ef-fe357b420002","_type":"00000160-6f41-dae1-adf0-6ff519590003"}" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(42, 44, 48); font-family: OpenSans, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Bernie Madoff’s $64 billion Ponzi scheme.

McCawley, who is based in Florida and has worked at the firm since 2001, is known for her work alongside Boies representing New York financer Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking victims.

The next leader will take over a firm that looks a lot different than it did just a few years ago.

Boies Schiller’s revenue dropped by nearly 50% over the last four years, down to $220 million last year. Its headcount shrank at a similar rate, down to 150 lawyers last year from 320 attorneys in 2018.

Many of the departures came as Boies faced heat for reported hardball tactics for high-profile pariahs like Weinstein and Holmes, the Theranos founder convicted of fraud last year.

The New York Times in 2017cut its ties with Boies after revelations that he also worked with private investigators in an effort to dissuade its journalists from publishing sexual assault allegations against Weinstein.

The wave of exits the firm experienced included multiple senior partners, as well as blue-chip clients such as Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., HSBC, and Goldman Sachs.

The firm’s plaintiffs’ practice has taken on a more prominent role, with Boies Schiller lawyers scoring some big victories in the last two years.

In the Epstein cases, Boies, McCawley and others have helped secured more than $300 million in settlements against JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank over the companies’ alleged failures to screen red flags.

The firm is expecting a large payout from a $2.7 billion settlement its lawyer helped craft in a long-running antitrust class action against Blue Cross Blue Shield. Its lawyers also helped Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac investors win a $612 million damages verdict in August over the US government’s move following the 2008 financial crisis to redirect the companies’ profits to the Treasury.

Succession, Take Three

Boies Schiller’s executive committee is set to make its new leadership decisions at its annual retreat next month. The firm may elect two “co-chairs” if two-thirds of the executive committee agrees on it, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The vote will mark at least the third time that Boies Schiller has attempted to cement a succession plan.

Previous successors in waiting have been frustrated by the founders’ resistance to fully give up the reins or to involve them in strategic decision-making, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

The firm in 2018 tapped four lawyers—Damien Marshall, Karen Dunn, Nicholas Gravante and Phil Korologos—for a management committee meant to move some of the day-to-day decision-making away from Boies and co-founder Jonathan Schiller. Only Korologos remains at the firm.

Gravante and London litigator Natasha Harrison were named the firm’s co-managing partners in December 2019. The firm said at the time that the move was a significant step toward developing a new model of leadership, internally positioning the pair as likely eventual successors to Boies.

Gravante bolted the following year for Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft after butting heads with firm leaders over his push to close offices and reduce headcount, as well as a pitch to merge Boies Schiller with Cadwalader.

That left Harrison as heir apparent. She left Boies Schiller in late 2021 to launch a boutique litigation shop, Pallas Partners, taking much of the London office with her.

Boies has described the task of transitioning a law firm to its next generation as an “adaptive challenge,” in which there is no technical “right” answer.

Schwartz said in an interview in April that the firm’s future has to be “less about the specific personalities and more about the institution. After “some starts and stops, we’ve landed on a structure and people that work,” he said.