Culvahouse Emerges From O'Melveny Fray

O'Melveny & Myers' policy committee has selected to lead the firm for another four-year term, according to a Thursday morning e-mail to the partnership.

"The policy committee selected A.B. Culvahouse as the chair of the firm, subject to a partner vote in accordance with the partnership agreement," reads the first line of the e-mail, as relayed by a current partner. with about a third of the partnership supporting him. Votes will be cast in an e-mail ballot, which has not yet been sent out.

Current and former partners expect the selection to be ratified, despite Culvahouse not winning a majority of support in the informal survey.

When he was first elected chairman in 2000, Culvahouse faced a similarly swamped field, but was re-elected without opposition in 2004.

Voice messages and e-mails left for each of the five candidates, including Culvahouse, were not returned. The firm did not make a spokesperson available before deadline.

Culvahouse led the search for John McCain's vice presidential nominee, which ended last Friday when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was announced in the role. The O'Melveny chairman has faced some scrutiny in the last week over that choice . Culvahouse also served as White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan for two years in the late 1980s.

The fact that five candidates were running for the O'Melveny chairmanship may have represented a response to perceived changes in the cultural, financial and geographic focus of the firm under Culvahouse, former partners said, noting also that those changes were likely inevitable. One ex-partner noted that the crowded field may have been the result of ambitious partners taking advantage of the tumultuous economy.

"The iron was hot to strike at this point," the former partner said, noting that it would have been difficult to fight Culvahouse four years ago during a time of general prosperity.

The other candidates were Darin Snyder, the former San Francisco managing partner and chairman of the firm's intellectual property and technology practice; Los Angeles partner Robert Siegel, the chairman of the adversarial department; Newport Beach, Calif., partner Gary Singer, a co-chairman of the firm's transactions department; and Washington, D.C., partner John Beisner, chairman of the class actions, mass torts and aggregated litigation practice.

Another former partner said that while Culvahouse had emphasized the importance of profits, he was simply responding to economic imperatives.

"The world changed and the firm had changed as well," the former partner said. "And Culvahouse was the guy that recognized that."

His detractors complained that Culvahouse's pursuit of profit altered the firm's character, but the former partner said the firm had to stay competitive: "I don't think anybody could have done that without serious changes."

Despite that focus, O'Melveny has not kept up with its Los Angeles counterparts in recent years.

Between 2005 and 2007, O'Melveny's profit per equity partner increased from $1.5 million to $1.6 million. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's PPP rose from $1.6 million to $1.9 million. Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker's profits jumped from $1.2 million to $1.9 million, while Latham's soared from $1.4 million to $2.3 million.

Another cause of grumbling, some ex-partners said, was a perception that growth in recent years, centered on the East Coast, has de-emphasized the importance of its L.A. roots.

Alan Miles, of the legal search firm Alan Miles & Associates in Los Angeles, agreed that the firm has put a lot of energy into eastern expansion.

"It appears [Culvahouse's] strategy was to focus more on building up the East Coast and other locations, with less focus on the West Coast, because we haven't seen a lot of growth in California," he said.

One former West Coast partner said the shifted focus upset some older, more entrenched L.A. partners, but it was necessary for the growth of the firm.