As regular readers know, I subscribe to the "people make the times"
theory of history rather than the "times make the people" theory.

Today’s lesson features Greg Jordan of Reed Smith, who recently
engineered the merger of his firm with Richards Butler of London,
and who, according to The Lawyer, is the "one man who can
pull it off."

Start with these numbers, showing percentage
change over the last five years (and this year’s PEP):

All of these are top AmLaw firms, and I will also tell you that
all three have made serious strides on the international front in
the past five years.

Any guesses as to the identities?

• A = Jones Day
• B = Mayer Brown
• C = Reed Smith

As The Lawyer puts it (emphasis supplied), admittedly Reed
Smith is growing off a smaller base:  "Its PEP has only just
overtaken Jones Day and lags behind MBR&M. But Reed Smith is
closing the gap – and it has momentum."

Part of Reed Smith’s secret weapon is simply Greg Jordan, the managing
partner.  Did you make the Wheeling, West Virginia connection
before reading it here?  (I confess that while I knew it as
a fact, I never connected the dots.)

"One of the things that Reed Smith has going for it is
Jordan himself. If you ask senior Richards Butler partners why they
think the combination is a good one, it always comes back to Jordan.

"Jordan grew up in the small town of Wheeling, West Virginia,
as did Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe’s charismatic chairman Ralph
Baxter, and both share that evangelical zeal for their firms that
has been essential as they globalise. Indeed, Jordan acknowledges: “Ralph
is a great leader and role model for me.

Compare Jones Day and MBR&M: Quick—name the US heads of either
firm.   Sorry, they’re not in my Rolodex either.
  Now, anonymity isn’t the worst thing:  But making serious strides
across the world stage requires rallying the troops and making every one
understand what the game is and why they should feel (and behave) as if
they’re on a winning team. As Jordan puts it:

“You can’t underestimate this. The enthusiasm and excitement of this change does cause people to be fully re-energised and we expect to see that in both firms.

“Secondly, there is already, even before the vote, an influx of new business.
The new business that the combined firm attracts as a result of the combination
tends to be at a higher value level.”"

His infectious enthusiasm comes through even off the printed page.

Michael Pollack, Reed Smith’s chief strategy officer (who is relocating
his family to London to oversee the integration), observes wisely—but
how many others actually walk this talk?—that "neither firm
is necessarily better than the other.   Sometimes we use
the Reed Smith way of doing things and sometimes we use the other
firm’s way of doing things.  We never come at it with a dogmatic
approach."

Few remarks augur better for the merger.

Finally, note they’ve already bitten some of the hardest financial
bullets:

• all equity partners in either firm automatically join the merged
  firm as equity partners
• all non-equity partners in either firm automatically join the
  merged firm as income partners
• profit pools will be merged in full as soon as the merger is
  effective.

Lastly, the line that got my attention more than anything in the
entire piece is buried nearly at the end, when Richards Butler Chairman
Paul Johnston says:  "The executive [committee] is on the back
seat.  It’s a check and balance to the management team, which
makes the decisions.  It just ratifies those decisions."

Imagine that model!  But with Jordan and Pollack the core from
the Reed Smith side, the omens are good.  I’ll give Michael
the last word:

“Greg is clearly the cheerleader, but one of the great
things about our management team is that ideas are flying around
among us all the time."

Does this sound like your management team?  If not, why not?

As I say, people make the times.  Don’t let the times make
you.