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MANAGING PARTNER Canadian takes helm of global law firm C BY GAIL J . COHEN anadian Hugh Verrier was elected chairman of White & Case LLP, the 10th largest law firm in the world, last year. Trained at the law schools of McGill and Harvard universities, Verrier has been with White & Case for 24 years, most recently as the manager of the firm's Moscow office. He has also run the firm's Ankara, Turkey office and worked in Indonesia. Verrier is widely Q What kind of management structure does White & Case have? We have a unified management structure that reflects the unified nature of the worldwide partnership. It Q consists of a directly elected chairman who appoints three partners to form an executive committee with wide-ranging executive authority. There's also an elected partnership com- mittee that consists of four partners with specific approval roles in relation to compensation and making partners, in- ternally and externally. These are all across the firm. Then, we are organized into practice groups, as well as offices, and each of those units has one or more heads. And then there are various other specific roles like general counsel and some other firm-specific committees. So broadly speaking that's how we're organized. With so many offices around the world, how do you balance the needs of each one? First of all, it's not as though offices compete for resourc- es, management time, or the things that management decides, so balance is not in that sense a matter of weighing competing opposites and finding some middle ground. In the main, all of our partners are part of a worldwide partnership and share a common set of understandings and values; there- fore, the balance is built in to some extent. Looking at it from another point of view, really we're here to serve our clients, and our clients are an important driver in how our firm develops. So I think management is looking heavily as well to where our client needs are and how to address those needs. Q Is each office full-service or do you have lawyers that move around to serve clients as needed? We do move around quite a bit. It is a global firm and it is unified, which means that our resources are there to serve our clients wherever our needs may be. Of course, not all of us can get on a plane and fly anywhere for all purposes, so there are some practical limits to it. But we've aimed to be strong locally, so that is part of our idea of what makes us strong as a global firm. We are not thinly staffed at the penumbra with www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com M ARCH 2008 13 considered as one of the world's leading international project finance lawyers. His four-year term as chairman sees him leading a firm of 2,300 lawyers in 36 offices across 24 countries. The firm's 2006 revenues, the latest available, were $1.85 billion. Verrier talks to Canadian Lawyer about leadership, the economy, and his experi- ences so far. a deep centre. Rather, we are a leading law firm in most of the markets and countries in which we operate, and that requires a depth of resources in each of those markets, so that your abil- ity to serve clients is not dependent on, say, that person from [Miami] flying out. But that person from [Miami] is there as needed if we feel we don't have what we need. Q What are your thoughts on how the current international economic situation will affect law firms in the next year or so? Probably it's too early to tell. I think clearly that the credit markets are the most directly affected and therefore the financing transactions are, at least at the moment, few, and that