While the country remained fixated on President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nomination, another transition took place in Washington, D.C. at the top of one of the city’s large law firms.
Stuart P. Ingis, who co-leads the privacy practice at Venable LLP, quietly became chair of his firm, which has nearly 700 lawyers in nine offices throughout the United States.
Ingis was named chair-elect last August, and, over the past five months, has been sitting in management committee meetings and visiting the firm’s lawyers to solicit their views about the direction of the firm.
In a Wednesday morning phone call, Ingis chatted with Big Law Business about his first official day on the job, Feb. 1, and his vision for Venable, which services a range of small and large companies in practices such as intellectual property, privacy and cybersecurity, entertainment, product liability and more.
Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Big Law Business: There’s a lot going on in the country right now, including Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch and his controversial immigration order. A number of big law firm chairs have remained silent. Should firm leadership speak out about this, given that it’s a matter of public concern that touches on firm values such as diversity?
Ingis: The firm itself doesn’t have political positions, so we are going to represent clients in their positions wherever they may range. That is one side of the thing. I think separate from that, and it is separate from that, is we have what our firm values are. I don’t equate what happens with Trump with what our firm values are. The firm itself doesn’t file comments or positions. The clients have positions and those positions are as diverse as there are the number of clients in the world. There are all sorts of different points of view in the administration and that was true with Obama and this administration and any administration. In terms of what our firm values are, we value diversity within our workplace and how we practice law and the composition of our law firm. But I think those are really distinct things. And our partners, we have people who voted for President Trump, we had people who voted for Secretary Clinton. In our personal lives, we have people who do all sorts of things on these issues, but that’s different from what we do as a firm.
Big Law Business: How did you come into your role as chair?
Ingis: I joined the firm about 12 years ago. I had come from another law firm and came here because of its strength in government affairs and regulatory practices in Washington, while also being a growing national law firm. I joined as co-head of the E-commerce and privacy, Internet law practice, which has obviously grown quite a bit as a practice area. I came here with one other partner, Emilio Cividanes. We had worked at our old firm for a guy named Ron Plesser, but he passed away. He was the original privacy guy in the United States. We built that practice here from one to 25 lawyers. In addition to that role, six or seven years ago, I joined the Venable board, and, five years ago, I became partner-in-charge of the Washington office and we’ve continued to grow in Washington and in our other primary offices in Baltimore, L.A., N.Y. and S.F.
Big Law Business: So what was the process by which you became chair?
Ingis: The firm had a process as the current chair Jim Shea was planning on stepping down. He’s been in a management leadership role for 20 years. There was a process to re-assess the governance and management as he was going to step down. Through that process, they approached me and asked me if it were a role that I would be willing to do, and told me that they thought, given the success we’ve had as a firm and the areas we practice in, they thought I had something to offer in those areas. And, of course, when your partners put their confidence in you to do something like that, you want to step forward and do the best job you can for them.
Big Law Business: How have you been spending the past five months since you were elected chair?
Ingis: Well, first of all, I’m continuing my practice. One of the mantras we have here is that all management members continue to practice. We think that’s important. On the firm stuff, I’ve been traveling through offices throughout the firm and sitting down and listening to partners and their views of where we are as a firm and where we should be going forward and things we can be doing. I’ve been attending management committee meetings and related things to sit in, so that as today came, it would be a smooth transition of continuity. So I’ve really been doing that since the summer.
Big Law Business: You weren’t on the management committee before?
Ingis: I was on the board of the firm and I was the head of this [Washington, D.C.] office. The management committee is composed of the heads of the divisions, the chair and managing partner. I didn’t head a division. The government division I have been in, was led by Jeff Knowles [an equity partner since 1984 who heads the firm’s marketing, advertising and new media practice group].
Big Law Business: So now you’ve been given an insight into how the firm is run. What have you learned?
Ingis: It kind of confirms what I already knew to be true, that is the fairness with which the firm operates. There is kind of a credo here that I think is somewhat unique among firms. There is really a mantra to make all the decisions about the firm’s direction in the best interest of existing partners and the firm clients. Some firms want to build the best business… and they want to make decisions on what would an organizationally corporate structure do. As a true profession, and law firms have historically been professions, as firms have gotten bigger, at some point they jumped over the bridge in being more corporate in their structure and making decisions that way. We still are — and make pains to be — a true profession and partnership. That has in large part created a culture where our partners want to be here and clients like to stay with us.
Big Law Business: Can you point to any specific examples?
Ingis: When we make decisions — whether it’s on compensation or lateral hires or on [law school] recruiting and areas we want to invest in, and types of clients we want to invest in… those decisions are made by really arriving at a consensus of the partners. Talking to the partners and getting everybody’s input and getting decisions that pull from the collective partnership and where they want to go. There are larger firms that don’t want to do it, or are unable to do it because of their size, so they will just make decisions as top-down corporations make.
Big Law Business: How large is Venable? How many lawyers and partners?
Ingis: We are approaching 700, not quite there. In the high 600s. And, of that, somewhere between a third and a half are partners.
Big Law Business: Venable is a national law firm. Is there any appetite to expand overseas like others have done?
Ingis: We are constantly reassessing that and thinking about that. I think our current view is we want to remain very focused on the markets we are in, both in industries and practice areas and geographically. We don’t have plans to open in other cities. We will evaluate them and, if it makes sense… [we may, depending on] what our partners want to do and if it’s helpful for clients, current and future. If you think about how there has been growth of firms in different geographies — sub Sahara and Africa — and they have outposts all over the world, it’s funny because at the same time firms were doing that, technology leaped over that with advances in communications. We service companies and clients all over the world. We work with local firms there. We are truly doing global work in a way that 20 years ago, a firm wouldn’t be able to do in the geographies we are in. We’ll assess that as the marketplace changes, but we are happy in the place we are in.
Big Law Business: Can you speak about Venable’s client base?
Ingis: We have a broad range of clients in areas that we are very strong in. We are strong in commercial litigation across many industries. We are very strong in our mid-market corporate practice. We’re very strong in IP and technology, which is an increasingly strong area. We have a strong trademark portfolio across firms. We have grown IP practice significantly in recent years. We have a deep expertise in regulatory affairs and the government.
We are strong in the geographies we are in. In San Francisco, as it relates to my area of practice, Internet policy and cyber, we represent all sizes, the large and small players, very deep on innovation and technology. David Strickland joined us a few years ago and he leads a coalition of companies in self-driving cars.
[Strickland’s coalition, called “Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets,” is comprised of companies such as Ford, Lyft, Uber, Volvo Cars and Waymo that work with lawmakers, regulators and the public to “realize the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles” according to its website.]
We also do a lot of work in advertising-related issues. We are leading a global coalition of companies aimed at improving the consumer advertising experience online. We have a guy named Ari Schwartz who joined us [in 2015]. He was Obama’s chief adviser on cybersecurity, and has built a cyber practice. We have a second to none hospitality practice. And then in L.A., we are very deep in entertainment law and everything that comes out of that. We have a couple rock star lawyers out there, Alan Epstein and Michele Mulrooney. We have a products liability practice led by Paul Strain and others. And we have a great REIT practice led by Jim Hanks. I could go on.
Big Law Business: What did you hear from all these lawyers who you’ve met since you became chair-elect?
Ingis: I think they want to continue for us to stick to our knitting. Keep building our offices and practices one client at a time, by doing great legal work, and one lawyer at a time, by bringing people on who fit our culture.
Big Law Business: It’s interesting that your practice focuses on cyber. That’s such a huge area right now.
Ingis: We were and are the oldest privacy and cyber practice in the United States and that was because of our roots with Ron Plesser, and that’s non-disputable. We are the largest privacy practice per number as well. I know my competition well; it’s undisputable. A lot of great firms will say they have more lawyers, but they spend a few hours on a project. We have 25 lawyers and that’s all they are doing. I’ve gotten calls from headhunters and they say, ‘You name the firm, we want a privacy practice.’ I say to the headhunter, ‘I don’t know if they know what a privacy practice is.’ It’s a sexy area, and it’s ever evolving.
Big Law Business: How do you see the practice evolving?
Ingis: One area we have done for years for companies, but it’s now pervasive in dealing with consumers, is the design of products. There are questions around how you build the inter-connectedness and data and appropriate legal and responsible practices throughout those designs of products that meets societal expectations. Where our practice has been successful has been because we have been at the tip of the sphere in domestic and regulatory debates in representing companies and trade associations. Even though there aren’t laws, we know where the societal expectations set by policy makers are. Then there is a need to assess compliance with those practices that are set up and designed. There is so much novelty in the newness of this, there is so much litigation by states and regulatory agencies and the plaintiffs bar. Laws are being shaped not just by congress but in these different forms. I expect that continue to grow. Going back 10 or 15 years ago only a few companies had [privacy expertise] in their DNA and now it has to be in every single company.
Big Law Business: How do you see in-house law departments changing how they engage with outside firms?
Ingis: One thing I learned in my years is that there is always good demand for legal work, internally or externally. That has proven true. Even if there are changes in the marketplace and spend goes inside, if you are a good lawyer, and you put the client’s interest first, there is work to be done. It’s possible they are more demanding in those spirits, but I think that same premise is true. And if we can continue to provide that quality of legal work, we are going to continue to work on the best matters.