As if being the first female managing partner of Wall Street law firm Carter Ledyard & Milburn wasn”™t enough, Judith Lockhart has gone global.
The Eastchester resident and newly installed chairman of international law alliance Meritas succeeded Jean-Paul Bignon of Bignon Lebray & Associés in Paris, France and will lead 7,000 lawyers and some 175 member firms worldwide.
In several ways, the global Meritas network resembles the mega-firm model in practice.
“We regularly review and monitor our firms and do regular quality checks on all of the work,” Lockhart said. “If something comes up during a quality review, you get local lawyers who know the judges, the market and legalities of doing business in that location.”
The field of law has been markedly impacted by the Internet and myriad technological advancement; the very fabric of a firm ebbs and flows according to the economy.
When the Pace University School of Law alumna started practicing in 1985, mega firms ranged in size from 400 to 600 attorneys.
Today, that number can total 1,000.
“The downturn in the economy hurt them some, just because of their size and their cost,” Lockhart said. “I think it had less of an impact on midsized and smaller firms.”
During the late ”™90s, Lockhart witnessed “merger mania,” a legal space race of sorts to grow one”™s firm.
“We would get daily requests to become the ”˜New York office”™ of somebody”™s outside firm,” she said, an inquiry that still arises at her downtown Manhattan office.
At Carter Ledyard, Lockhart”™s major focus is litigation and employment law.
As a general rule of thumb, bankruptcy law sees strong activity during an economic downturn.
“I don”™t think real estate has come back, but ours depends a lot on the leasing activity of Trinity Church and other (large clients), so it”™s different,” she said. “Corporate litigation is getting busy again. We do some work for big, private clients, but it”™s taken a little longer to bounce back. The economic data is still weak.”
Lockhart decidedly answers “no” when asked if her present-day profession was an early year ambition.
Her first gig was as administrative assistant in the realty department of Texaco in Manhattan and Purchase.
“We were doing some fairly sophisticated real estate transactions and at the time, I was getting my undergrad degree from Pace at night in their part-time program,” she recalled. “I would be telling the lawyers what to do and I thought, ”˜I should go to law school.”™”
Lockhart marched across campus to her advisor”™s office to evaluate her legal options.
After passing her Law School Admission Test (LSAT), applying and gaining acceptance, Lockhart was dealt a blow that she did not have enough undergraduate degree credits.
“We worked out an arrangement that I would not receive my undergraduate degree until I earned my JD (Juris Doctorate),” she said. “I worked for 10 years at a big law firm and then came to Carter”¦ the school was great, I was very, very happy.”
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