Dechert LLP

FRE-dom

From a base of 11 US offices, Dechert cements its international reach with two branches in Asia (Hong Kong and Beijing) and six in Europe (Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg, Munich, Moscow and London). The activities of the London office reflect the aims behind a well-planned merger back in 2000. This is when Dechert formally hitched itself to one of our capital’s well-known mid-sizers – Titmuss Sainer. Though still very British in many repects, the American influence is tangible in the officeas “quite a few American associates are seconded over here, and American partners too.” For the most part trainees felt London did maintain a certain amount of independence; “we’ve got our own clients – it’s not like we’re dictated to from over the pond.” Long-standing English partners also help to “retain that small-firm English feel” and trainees assured us that “with only around 150 fee earners in the office you know everybody by name.”

If you’re considering Dechert, it is crucial to be aware of where its focus lies. The London office has a clear emphasis on financial services (FS) and corporate. “FS and corporate are the bigger departments, and the work they do in FS is similar to the top firms,” confirmed a source. Dechert London has consistently moved towards more finance-oriented practice since 2000, and the clearest evidence of this was the subsuming of Titmuss Sainer’s highly regarded property department into a new combined finance and real estate group (FRE). A secondyear explained: “There’s a clear message from the chairman [Burt Winokur] in the States that FRE, corporate and FS are the three core areas he’s pushing for and wants to be bigger.” But how could you possibly know if financial services law is for you? As our interviewees rightly pointed out, “you won’t learn anything about it at university.”

Mississippi vs Loch Ness

One trainee was particularly candid. “Coming into financial services, I didn’t know anything about it, and so I guess I only felt one thing – terror!” You’d be forgiven for feeling the same as it’s a complicated area. In essence, “financial services clients are investment managers of [things like] large hedge funds, and so the firm deals first and foremost with [fund] launches and then ongoing issues, which at the moment seem to be to do with liquidity and restructurings.” On the regulatory side, Dechert continues to provide advice for asset managers and investment funds regulated by the Financial Services Authority here in the UK and the Securities and Exchange Commission in the USA. If you’re already feeling a little lost, don’t worry, you’re not alone. The consensus among our interviewees when asked if they’d been clued up when they started was “absolutely not. No one knows what it is when they first join.” The firm is obviously aware of this and makes provision accordingly, with excellent and thorough training. “You get pre-reading before you start, lotsof breakfast training meetings and more interactive tasks for the first two to three weeks.” Trainees say the significant thing to learn is the vocabulary as financial services has “a completely different language.” We turned to Dechert’s London director of training Bernard George for a few tips on how a student might recognise their inner financial services lawyer. Showing Confucian wisdom he told us: “Here it is necessary to make a distinction between Mississippi lawyers and Loch Ness lawyers.” Huh? “The Mississippi is wide but shallow: a litigator is the best example as you cover a wide range of interests but as such cannot become a technical expert in any. Loch Ness is narrow but extremely deep: in FS and in tax you can mark out your area of expertise and become extraordinarily technically proficient. It depends on which of these distinctions appeals to you more.”

Day-to-day working in the FS department is largely dictated to by the economic climate. In a buoyant economy the group’s work is dominated by hedge fund launches, which for the trainee means “a lot of drafting, creation of prospectuses and proof-reading.” It is document-heavy and the hours are long. Said one source: “It was more consistently hours-intensive than any other department, with a few weeks of finishing between 1 and 2am every night.” In a down economy the department “hasn’t slowed down, but has had a change of focus.” A recent occupant of a seat here said: “It was definitely a very different type of work I was doing.” This trainee was dealing with “a lot of work connected to hedge fund restructuring and liquidation of assets.” The trainees all appreciated just how busy this department can get, with one even suggesting that “it’s the only department I could say has always been running at full capacity.” With 150 lawyers dedicated to it across the Dechert network, FS is certainly its largest and most profitable department so preparing yourself for its considerable challenge comes recommended.

Dechert’s other prime department, corporate, has felt the chill in the air. In busy times though it is just as hoursintensive as FS. “During the peak of one deal I went to 100 hours in a week,” revealed one source. After the completion, trainees, paralegals and “everyone who had worked on it” were “invited to Amsterdam for a post-completion dinner.” Pro bono work has bubbled up during the recent quieter period and supervisors also took the initiative to “run a mock share purchase exercise whereby the partners act as your clients,” enabling trainees to “get a better understanding of higher-level work than you normally would.” In M&A, Dechert’s international capacity is evident in its instruction by investor Campos Verdes on its acquisition of Argentine agricultural business El Tejar SAACEI, valued at $613.2m, across multiple Latin American jurisdictions. Closer to home, the firm also acted for Deloitte, as administrators of Woolworths, on the disposal of more than 100 stores.

Great salary = great responsibility

In the corporate and financial services departments, newly qualified solicitors get £5,000 more tacked onto their starting salary. This encourages trainees to qualify into these priority departments and makes up for what can be hellish working hours at times. On the whole Dechert fares extremely well in terms of remuneration – its £38,000 trainee starting salary is in line with the major City firms and on qualification Decherteers are paid more than their counterparts in the magic circle. On the subject of NQs, retention was pretty low in 2009, with just three out of ten staying on. Firm-wide quite a few Dechert support staff and lawyers were laid off in the past year, though not a vast number came from the London office. Three of the 2009 trainee intake deferred their start dates for a year in exchange for the princely sum of £10,000. Chairman Burt Winokur is bullish about the future nonetheless. He suggested in an interview with The Lawyer that structural changes in the legal market bring significant opportunities as well as risks. “They favour the nimble, the brave, the people who have courage and who embrace change,” he declared with a Churchillian flourish. Despite redundancies, many in the profession believe that Dechert will come through the recession strongly.

What you do in the FRE group depends very much on your supervisor’s work speciality. On the real estate side there is scope for trainees to take on their own smaller lease files and gain plenty of direct client contact. That said, there is a definite sense among trainees that a major function of the real estate group is to provide support to the larger FS and corporate departments. “A lot of what we deal with is property aspects of corporate deals.” On the finance side of the FRE group some trainees found themselves working on a large “mezzanine finance facility being put in place across various jurisdictions.” This “document-intensive” deal provided a great opportunity to liaise with foreign lawyers. More generally, the department is described as older and “more family-oriented” compared to the buzzy, sociable atmosphere in FS and corporate.

Looking at the non-contentious elements of the training contract, we see that the litigation department has been involved in some interesting international arbitration in Latin America, particularly in the representation of the Republic of Ecuador. In 2008 Dechert helped the country defend claims commenced by Perenco Ecuador Limited, Burlington Resources and Occidental. Closer to home, litigators represented Argos in two sets of proceedings brought by Currys for malicious falsehood and trade mark infringement arising out of Currys’ 2008 comparative advertising campaign. Trainees described activity in this seat as “the usual litigation-type tasks of drafting letters and taking witness statements plus a lot of involvement in disclosure.” Again, interviewees pointed to the fact that much work comes via FS or corporate. Other trainee-friendly departments include IP, tax and employment. There are also client secondments and a seat in Brussels (largely revolving around competition law and EU reporting assignments for US clients).

Dechert the halls

So what makes a Dechert lawyer? Trainees were hard pushed to answer this one, so here’s what we found – a proliferation of law (as opposed to non-law) degrees and scarcity of those who had taken gap years. “Everybody has a 2:1 from a decent university,” though we found no discernible Oxbridge bias. Personality-wise, Dechert trainees come across as more low-key than at some of the brasher US firms in London (or the big City giants). They told us: “Being overbearing or overconfident doesn’t come off well here,” and they also claimed to be “working too hard” for mid-week socialising. “Put it this way,” one trainee volunteered, “I don’t think wearing pink socks or garish ties would be a good idea.”

There is a decent little sporting scene at the firm. Teams convene for hockey, cricket and football, and there’s a newly formed mixed netball team. Socially, Dechert “always has something in the calendar to look forward to,” which trainees say “makes it okay when you do have to work the long hours.” A ‘pub of the month’ event sees management put money behind the bar, and there’s generally a spot of Friday night drinking somewhere in the Blackfriars area. The Christmas party stands out in particular. The formal black-tie affair has been held at Lincoln’s Inn and the Tate Modern in past years.

And finally...

Dechert provides an excellent training for those with their eye on financial services clients and a temperament that’s more down-to-earth than it is head-in-the-clouds. Pronunciation tip: think deck-urt, not de-shirt.