McGuireWoods New York office managing partner Noreen Kelly and executive director Bob Couture were interviewed for Law360’s series on how law firms succeeded after the 2008 financial crisis.
In the first story of the series, published Sept. 10, Kelly described her reaction to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and how she built her practice during the fallout from the mortgage-backed securities crisis. In an audio interview posted with the story, she described the stark scene of an investment bank’s empty trading floor as “really jarring and stunning.”
Couture said McGuireWoods weathered the crisis by taking a conservative approach to budgeting. McGuireWoods also stuck to its plan to take on a large class of associates in 2009, a decision that helped define the culture of the firm moving forward.
“I remember it very well, it was a serious discussion,” Couture told Law360 for the second part of the series. “We’d made a commitment to these people, we gave them that job offer. We didn’t necessarily have work for all of them, but we said, ‘We’ll figure it out. . . .’ ”