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Bartholomew says Weil, given a strong New York securities litigation team headed by partners Joseph Allerhand and Jonathan Polkes, offers him greater access to potential financial institutions clients. And hes confident his insider SEC knowledge will give him an edge at time when competition among firms for the biggest such clients is heating up.
Bartholomew spoke with The Am Law Daily recently about his move.
What can you tell me about your reasons for the move?
Its fair to say that for a long time the, kind of blue-chip New York firms didnt have a per se focus on enforcement work…So, to the extent that they were doing securities enforcement work, it was frequently arising from existing relationships on the corporate side or the litigation side, and not necessarily because they had a pointed marketing attack on the enforcement side. And thats changed dramatically over the last three or four years. There are now just a lot more people competing for the financial institutions work and a lot more big New York firms doing that [work]?. So…the move to Weil made an awful lot of sense for me. Its very difficult to get good penetration in the New York market without having a New York power-base and obviously Weil has that and has it in spades.
How did the move play out? When did you first talk to Weil?
I have a close friend whos here–a guy named Steve Tyrell [the co-chair of Weils white collar and investigations group]. He was the head of the fraud division in the criminal division at the Department of Justice, but [he was] an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami when I was an SEC prosecutor in Miami and we did a case together. Back when a $60 billion Ponzi scheme was a pretty big deal, and not a rounding error, we did one together and we stayed in touch over the years. And we had lunch and Steve was talking about [Weil]…Particularly in the financial institutions, a lot of the people in the in-house positions are SEC enforcement alumni. And there are secret handshakes, so to speak, that I think are useful in terms of having had the same kinds of experiences at the SEC and understanding the internal politics and processes and so forth. And, so one thing led to another and…here we are.
How have your clients reacted to the move?
Extremely positive. [Ill] tell you that I was at Morgan Lewis for 11 years. Its a great place. I have a lot of close friends there, and it was not easy to leave, despite the fact that probably for me in my position now, coming to Weil, objectively, is probably a no-brainer. And thats certainly been the reaction from more than a few people in my bar who have reached out to congratulate me and thats been the reaction.
The plan is to split your time between Weils D.C., and Miami offices–how will you do that?
My plan is to spend a couple of days a [month in Miami]. It would probably average out to once every three weeks. If I have a large matter down there, obviously Im down there more. Im going to spend a day a week in New York for the foreseeable future, as well, and Im going to spend some time out in California. But the practice really is very national and there arent that many people who are headquartered in Washington, so going up and down the Eastern Seaboard is just par for the course.
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