McDermott Will & Schulte: Coming of Age

The last time Leaders League met with Grégoire Andrieux, the managing partner of McDermott Will & Schulte in Paris, it was the past summer to discuss McDermott Will & Emery’s merger with Schulte Roth & Zabel, a firm steeped in the New York legal tradition prized by Wall Street’s suspenders and power tie set. Since the latter had no presence in the French capital, Andrieux was not expecting anything much from the merger in the way of benefits for McDermott’s Paris office. He was pleasantly surprised: his teams picked up several prestigious mandates, including one involving Cerberus, the fund that acquired HSBC in 2024 and which was retained by Schulte across the pond.

In the Big Apple, the newly-minted McDermott Will & Schulte ‒ with its 800 lawyers ‒ has been propelled into “another dimension.” For McDermott, it was not hard to see what turned its head about SRZ:

“Schulte is kind of the Darrois of the East Coast,” states Andrieux. And to underline his point, in just one year, McDermott Will & Schulte had gained significant clout and established a reputation that is widely recognized and valued by financial and corporate institutions alike.

Grégoire Andrieux joined McDermott in 2015, making a name for himself as part of the fifteen-strong private equity team that came with him, before taking the helm as Paris office managing-partner in 2019. When McDermott established itself in the French capital in 2011, the firm adopted a strongly international outlook, focusing on lawyers licensed to practice in both the US and France.

Like many of its American brethren arriving in Paris in the 2000s and 2010s, McDermott initially grew through lateral hires before seeking to build its own internal culture. Ultimately, the firm became more Parisian than the Parisian firms themselves: “Ninety percent of what we do is generated by clients of the Paris partners.” And both partners and associates have been pouring into this firm, which had only 65 members as recently as 2019. Today, there are 180 people, including 98 lawyers.

Will & Greats
When it comes to organic growth, McDermott Will & Schulte is right up there with the best of them, standing shoulder to shoulder with Morgan Lewis, which has been present in Paris since 2004; Goodwin, celebrating a decade in the City of Light this year; Reed Smith and Paul Hastings, which opened in 2005 and 2004 respectively; and Dechert, which has operated in France since 1995.

For McDermott Will & Schulte, size isn’t everything. The firm places a strong emphasis on profitability: this is what determines its growth initiatives, and expansion tends to focus on sectors offering the strongest opportunities from a profit point of view. That said, according to Andrieux, the Paris office can reasonably be expected to reach 150 lawyers within the next five years.

While McDermott Will & Schulte has stayed away from certain expansion opportunities so far, such as real estate law, it excels in healthcare ‒ a longstanding practice area for the firm in the United States ‒ which now comprises around 20 professionals in Paris. Private equity leads the firm’s practice groups, with the largest team and no fewer than nine partners.

The state of the world over the past year has not brought transactions for the firm’s private equity fund clients to a halt, and companies continue to adapt. In fact, tax uncertainty has proven to be a greater obstacle to dealmaking than geopolitical conflict.

Transaction activity could accelerate ahead of the 2027 French presidential election, and especially before the start of the new year, as market participants remain mindful of the possibility of tax measures being applied retroactively from January 1st.

Today, we’re 15 years old. We’re no longer a firm of start-up lawyers

With its new scale post-merger, McDermott Will & Schulte has gained a leg up in navigating the challenges of the modern age, not least artificial intelligence. Now a giant among giants, the firm amasses reams of data ‒ the lifeblood of artificial intelligence. It works closely with Harvey to capitalize on this goldmine. AI is a subject Grégoire Andrieux follows with interest. Every two weeks, he sits down with his team to review what’s working and what isn’t, as regards the firm's use of it. “A significant collective learning experience,” essential for adapting. “Today, we must assume that everyone has the same level of knowledge, the same level of access to information and data. What teams need to work on ‒ especially the younger ones ‒ is judgment, strategy and interpersonal skills.”

While adapting is a challenge, there’s no question of the legal profession slipping completely into an algorithmic thumb-war. According to the managing partner, since AI is rather fallible, we can envision a world with more litigation, transactions and complex issues. The legal industry must nevertheless, Andrieux maintains, move with the times: some clients are now cross-examining lawyers’ advice by consulting ChatGPT or Harvey in real time during calls.

And on the subject of clientele, McDermott Paris’ list of clients is most impressive: Pierre Fabre, Owkin, Innate Pharma, Corsica Ferries, Campari Group and EssilorLuxottica, among others, and the majority of the investment funds active in France. These relationships now need to be institutionalized, stresses Andrieux. “Today, we’re 15 years old. We’re no longer a firm of start-up lawyers.” And he embraces the firm’s ambitions: “We want to become an institution in the legal firm landscape.”

Seine and Sensibility
The other challenge? Maintaining the positive working environment that prevails in the Paris offices, which are at full capacity on a daily basis. Of note: each month, the firm holds a staff “get together” event ‒ not just at Christmas and for the summer party. There is also the annual kick-off after the summer break, during which every department in the firm is invited to present the highlights of the year: HR, technical support, back office, and so on. The goal is to make the firm a great place to work and ensure high levels of retention among its lawyers.

The Paris office of the Chicago-headquartered firm also wants to move beyond the “patchwork” character of its early years ‒ a collection of teams and cultures thrown together from other firms. It now places slightly less emphasis on pure lateral partner hiring, focusing more on internal promotion. The objective is to build a genuinely “homegrown” culture, developed from within, and to become “a firm that can be passed on [to a second generation of partners], rather than one built to sustain the glory of a select few,” says Andrieux. The managing partner also emphasizes his determination to involve junior lawyers in business development. Who else brings a delegation of 22 to IPEM, one of the largest global events dedicated to the private capital and private equity industry?

Another strategic priority: retaining female lawyers. “The problem isn’t promoting them. [A woman was just promoted to partner while on maternity leave]. It’s keeping them.” To achieve this, he’s putting a raft of measures in place: a committee dedicated to this issue, adjusting bonuses to account for the periods before and after maternity leave, and even exploring the possibility of setting up an on-site daycare center at its office on the left bank. The latter project was ultimately abandoned, as many female lawyers feared that, with baby in tow, they would be the only ones managing the family logistics. So, the firm is taking note of the views of the women who may contribute to tomorrow’s growth ‒ women whose numbers are steadily increasing in law schools.

Still an American teen living the Parisian dream, the next fifteen years will tell whether the Paris office succeeds in transforming its rapid growth into a sustainable institution.

Anne-Laure Blouin