Ronald Shechtman has served as Pryor Cashman’s Managing Partner since 2007. During his tenure, the firm has experienced significant growth, but - as he recently told Law360 - has no ambitions to become a BigLaw firm. Shechtman discussed the business of law, the state of the legal industry and how Pryor Cashman is adapting in Law360’s latest “Law Firm Leaders” feature.

(Excerpts from this Q&A were originally published in Law360)

Law360:  How is the business of law changing and how is your law firm adapting?

Ronald Shechtman:  I think that our position in the market as a midsize firm has created, for us, a great opportunity. The conventional wisdom a decade ago, before the 2008 crash, was midsize firms were dinosaurs, that they could not compete and there was no place for them. What we're finding is a market where there's enormous opportunity for midmarket, midsize firms and the challenge for us has been meeting that opportunity and the growth it has entailed.

L360:  What is that niche for midsize law firms? Where lies the opportunity?

RS:  I think what's happening is that work that could not be peeled away from the one, two or three institutional firms that represented major companies is now coming into play as it never did before.

I tell this anecdote where we hired a lawyer in 2006 from a large firm. He was confident that he could bring the business of a large bank and it was business involving SEC investigatory work. He had a very strong relationship with the deputy general counsel of the bank and was very confident in that relationship. We both learned a lesson at the time: Don't underestimate the loyalty of a general counsel to their main firms and the difficulty of peeling work like that away.

Let’s fast forward to a few years ago where we hire someone to do exactly the same type of work, but we were looking to hire someone in the service capacity. He was also at a big law firm and doing the same type of work at a different bank. When he told the bank that he was leaving to come to Pryor Cashman, the bank sat down with him and said, "What kind of arrangement can we work out, what kind of rates, what kind of deal can we make?" He brought with him what neither of us anticipated, which was a substantial body of work.

We're finding that a midsize firm with a lean, unleveraged economic structure has a lot to offer right now, and there are opportunities I don't think existed 10 years ago.

L360:  What are some of the challenges midsize law firms are facing?

RS:  The most important challenge is attracting the top talent out there and making sure you can train them and give them the tools that are most effective and necessary. We seem to be well-positioned in terms of the millennial phenomenon. I know there are many employers who bemoan the difficulties of employing millennials. We, on the other hand, are finding we are attracting the best talent we ever have and finding people who are sacrificing significant pay differences to work in an atmosphere where they have greater responsibility, greater interface with both the supervising partner and the client, and I think feel they are being offered a more satisfying work experience.

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