SPOTLIGHT
Peter Kalis talks about what this global law firm has
done to align itself with clients in all
industries who are competing in global markets.
K&L Gates
GlobalAlignment
I
n the last decade, K&L Gates has experienced a push toward consolidation and
globalization, an area where many enterprises outside the law profession were already
familiar. That issue, according to Peter Kalis,
chairman and global managing partner of K&L
Gates, has been squarely presented for law firms
such as his.
“We’re going to be on the right side of history
and not be pigeon-holed into a slice of the
market that involves less complex, less lucrative,
and less challenging types of work,” Kalis said of
the New York City-based global law firm. “It has
been a strategic matter for firms like my own to
align themselves with the business of major or
potential clients in all industries because all of
those clients are competing in global markets.”
Perfect match
K&L Gates was formed on January 1 of this
year, after the NY-based law firm Kirkpatrick
& Lockhart Nicholson Graham merged with
Seattle-based Preston Gates & Ellis. Kirkpatrick
& Lockhart formerly covered a large portion
of the East Coast and was building toward
Europe; Preston Gates had a large presence in
the west and was building out toward Asia.
When the firms combined, it was like fitting two
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, said Kalis. K&L Gates
now has 1,400 lawyers and offices from Berlin
to Beijing, with 17 offices in the US, two in
Europe, and three in China. “That’s how our
clients do business, and now we’re aligned with
those clients and enjoying the synergies that
you would expect to spring out of that sort of
platform. Our move was client driven.”
In the first six months of the merger, the firm
opened more than 800 new-client matters
involving cross-staffing of lawyers from the
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two legacy firms. K&L partners in the US and
Europe can more aggressively operate on the
West Coast, and for the first time can cross-sell
into China. The firm’s Preston Gates legacy
partners are cross-selling on the East Coast in
places such as New York, Boston, and Europe.
“For our clients, it’s an extraordinary efficiency
gain to operate as a single law firm across the
US, from Boston, New York, and Washington,
DC to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and throughout Europe and China. Through one portal,
they are able to deal with a world full of legal
challenges,” Kalis said.
Blending cultures
As with most scaleable enterprises, technology
is crucial, as is sensible leadership and clear,
unambiguous guidelines. Kalis and his team use
all of those qualities to the firm’s advantage.
The chairman runs an extremely flat organization as far as global enterprises go, and he makes
a concerted effort to minimize the number of
layers through which stakeholders have to navigate before getting a decision.
These qualities have enabled Kalis and his team
to efficiently blend the cultures of the two prestigious law firms. “I don’t think there are two
organizations, with serious individual histories,
that have identical cultures. When folks say that
the companies they merged had exactly the
same culture, they are not being entirely accurate,” he said.
According to Kalis, the cultures of K&L and
Preston Gates were characterized by a heavy
emphasis toward collaboration. Therefore, the
firm had a head start on developing a culture
common to both of the legacy firms.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the firms didn’t have differences. The merger wasn’t a first
for the traditional K&L, and one thing Kalis
learned over the years is the best way to start
developing a truly common culture is to get
lawyers working with lawyers. The firm is already
sharing 800 collaborative client matters between
the two legacy firms. “That’s when people start
thinking of us as a single law firm,” he said.
The firm has co-practice coordinators in all
practice areas, one from each of the two firms,
so they can develop collaborative ways of positioning the practice. In addition, K&L Gates has
company-wide monthly videoconference meetings, quarterly videoconference town meetings
for associates, as well as office visits and practice
group meetings.
International dimension
There are many thousands of law firms in the
US. When you look at all those firms, there are
only a few sub-groups that are truly international, according to Kalis. “You have to ask yourself
which of those US-based international firms
have a top-10 presence among such firms in
both London and the China market?” The
answer: under five, according to Kalis, and K&L
Gates is one of them.
“When clients enter a portal into our law firm
platform, they are entering a world that is
shared with very few other law firms. We have
the ability to address their most complex issues
globally, nationally, and regionally. And as we
developed this international dimension, we
have not sold short our regional roots,” Kalis
concluded. E
—Michelle Rivera
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