Media Coverage

Why the GC of Molson Coors Is Moving Major Work From Prestigious New York Firms

July 24, 2018

Lee Reichert, the Chief Legal and Government Affairs Officer at Molson Coors, authored an article for The American Lawyer about his experience working with Ballard Spahr. His commentary included:

"In our recent arbitration, we ended up choosing lawyers from the Denver office of a historically Philadelphia-based firm. Given the brand-name firm representing our opponent, and the unwritten rule that we needed diplomatic parity with their law firm, the easy decision would have been to hire an especially credentialed firm based in a city like New York. And by doing so, we might be slightly more insulated from criticism should things go poorly in a case that our board was closely watching.

Unfortunately, this is what keeps the profession from improving—choosing lawyers based on the historical reputation of the law firm and its geographic location, even in the face of a better option. But we didn’t do that, and we needed our lawyers to be excellent on this major matter.

And they were. In my view, our Denver counsel out-lawyered the blue-chip New York law firm's larger team, and we were very happy with the result. (By the way, the AdvanceLaw-vetted firm we retained for this was Ballard Spahr, a 600-lawyer firm with offices across the country. Part of the magic here is that 'smaller city' doesn’t have to equate to 'smaller firm.')"

Read the full article here. (Subscription may be required.)

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