Debevoise & Plimpton’s Trusts and Estates Group Finds a New Home

Last December, the trusts and estates lawyers at Debevoise & Plimpton received shocking news. The law firm’s leadership said it had decided to eliminate its trusts and estates practice, and instructed the lawyers in the group to look for a new home.

It did not take too long for them to find one. On Monday, Loeb & Loeb, a law firm with one of the country’s leading trusts and estates practices, announced that it had hired the seven-lawyer group, which is led by a Debevoise partner, Jonathan J. Rikoon.

Mr. Rikoon’s forced departure from Debevoise highlights a growing trend at a number of the nation’s largest law firms. As big corporate law firms have become increasingly focused on bottom-line profits, they have built up lucrative areas like commercial litigation and mergers-and-acquisitions and jettisoned less profitable groups. At many firms, trusts and estates work â€" once thought to be core to a full-service law firm â€" has become a drag on profitability. Individual clients also bristle at paying the skyrocketing billable rates that now exceed more than $1,000 an hour.

Debevoise was the latest large firm to discontinue its trusts and estates practice. Others that have gotten out of the business of drafting wills and trusts are Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Paul Hastings and WilmerHale.

“I’m very grateful to Debevoise and it has been a great place to work,” said Mr. Rikoon, 57, who joined the firm in 1995. “But large firms have been de-emphasizing trusts and estates for many years, and Debevoise had evolved to the point where it didn’t make sense for them to support the practice anymore.”

In Loeb & Loeb, Mr. Rikoon and his team have landed at a firm that views trusts and estates a core practice. There are other corporate law firms that have also embraced the work, including Schulte Roth & Zabel; Katten Muchin Rosenman; and McDermott Will & Emery. These firms view the advising of wealthy families as a business opportunity that has synergies with other areas, like advising on the sale of family-owned businesses or handling estate-related litigation.

Joining Mr. Rikoon as a Loeb & Loeb partner is Cristine M. Sapers, of counsel at Debevoise. They will be bringing their entire team to Loeb & Loeb, which includes a senior counsel and four junior lawyers. (Two retired Debevoise trusts and estates partners, Theodore A. Kurz and Barbara Paul Robinson, will remain at Debevoise. Though they will not bring in new matters, they will continue to serve in a fiduciary role for their legacy clients.)

Mr. Rikoon said he expects many of his clients to follow him to Loeb & Loeb, which he will join on April 15 â€" already a rather important day in the life of a trusts and estate lawyer.

“We could have started on the Ides of March but that was too soon and it could have been April 1st but everyone would have thought that was a joke,” said Mr. Rikoon. “It also could have been May 1st, but that’s international workers’ solidarity day and that didn’t seem appropriate. So we settled on tax day, which was easy to remember.”

In the meantime, Mr. Rikoon continues his work on behalf of Debevoise clients. On Monday, he said he was preparing a memo for a client on estate planning for carried interest, or the profits made by private equity and hedge fund managers. He was also drafting a prenuptial agreement for a client.

Mr. Rikoon will also know his way around 345 Park Avenue, the building that houses Loeb & Loeb’s New York office. Before joining Debevoise, Mr. Rikoon worked as a young lawyer at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, which at the time was located at 345 Park. After Paul Weiss, he worked briefly at Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon, but left for Debevoise only 10 months later when Mudge Rose dissolved.

“I have no hard feelings toward Debevoise, which handled this situation as well as can be expected,” Mr. Rikoon said. “But it has certainly been disruptive, and will hopefully be the last career change I’ll ever have.”