‘Be a Lawyer First, Foremost and Always,’ Says Matthew McLaughlin of Venable

Practice area: Litigation

Law school and year of graduation: Fordham University School of Law, 1994

The following has been edited for style.

How long have you been at the firm?

I have been at the firm for 19 years.

What year were you promoted/elected to your current role?

Were you a partner at another firm before joining your present firm? If so, which one, how long were you there and when did you leave?

It’s a meandering story, a river that did not follow a straight path. I started in 1994 in Big Law in New York City. After three years, I was so terribly bored that I thought I had made a mistake becoming a lawyer. A wise person told me that I might be happier trying cases, so I went to a smaller firm and served as a trial lawyer for four years. Somewhat out of the blue, several of the lawyers with whom I had worked at the first firm broke off and started a boutique known as Heard & O’Toole. That firm invited me to join as a partner. We were a gaggle of big firm lawyers suddenly running a boutique in our own unique way. We were successful, we did excellent work for clients, and then we wanted to expand our services beyond litigation. After five years of slow growth, we decided the best way to expand while keeping our culture would be to become the New York office of a national firm. So, in 2005, our lawyers joined Venable and became its New York office, with Ed O’Toole serving as the partner-in-charge for its first 10 years. I took over from O’Toole and will retire from Venable some distant day.

How would you describe your career trajectory (was it organic or an active pursuit)?

It was an admixture of lucky positioning and having the gut sense to head down a path that suddenly appeared. You never know if a judgment call is right in the moment. Its wisdom only shows when looking back. We find our way through the world like sailing ships, by a series of tacks that make straight-line sense only when viewed from a removed distance.

What do you think was the deciding point for the firm in electing/promoting you to your current role? Was it your performance on a specific case? A personality trait? Making connections with the right people?

I had been the hiring partner in the boutique before Venable. I was there when we opened the New York office of Venable, and I served alongside its first partner-in-charge, Ed O’Toole. I watched and learned his adept skills at building an office from 10 people to about 60 people while preserving that “small firm” feel of enjoying practicing law together. I like to believe that the people around me saw that I would be the proper person to receive the relay baton and run with it for a few years before passing it to the next partner-in-charge. It’s a matter of hanging onto a vision of who we want to be.

What unique challenges do you face as it relates to your role?

We opened the office with 10 people in 2005 and have grown to about 185 lawyers. Before long we will have 200 lawyers. We have two main challenges. First, we must make the office attractive enough and enjoyable enough that lawyers and staff want to be in the office most days of the week. The pandemic created a titanic mind shift, and too many lawyers wish to work from home. The office loses its vibrancy when too many offices are vacant. Drawing folks back into the office willingly is a key goal over the next several years. Second, with 200 lawyers in the office, it will be difficult to keep the small firm feel that we so cherished when we opened the office. We try to be the “smallest big firm” in the world, or perhaps we should call it the “biggest small firm” in the world. Hanging onto that positive energy of knowing well your colleagues who work down the hall is vital to keeping the office an exciting and productive place.

What’s the best piece of advice you give to someone who wants to rise up the ranks to lead an office?

Be a lawyer first, foremost, and always. Even if you are something of a general practitioner, find some area of expertise. You will not be able to lead as a manager if your colleagues do not respect your legal abilities. Keep your focus on practice development and skills development. The managerial side of the brain will develop to fit the needs as you take on increasing amounts of firm management responsibilities. Do not let those responsibilities take over your ability to serve as a practicing lawyer.

Who had the greatest influence in your career that helped propel you to your current role?

Ed O’Toole, whom I have mentioned already, was a founding partner of the boutique that joined Venable in 2005 and became its New York office. It was O’Toole who had invited me to join Heard & O’Toole as a partner. I worked beside him as we turned the boutique into a local powerhouse that became attractive to Venable, a nationwide firm that had been seeking to open a New York office. O’Toole was masterful at preserving the fun of the small firm while energetically growing that small firm into a larger operation. At all times, he ensured that the office was an enjoyable place, but one that emphasized excellence of practice. Ed O’Toole originally recruited me and was crucially important to my professional development as I watched and learned how to build an office and how to run it. O’Toole has moved on to other horizons and is now the general counsel of Railinc Corp., a leading technology organization serving the freight rail industry.

How do you utilize technology to benefit the firm/practice and/or business development?

When I started practicing in 1994, there was no Internet and no email, and only highfalutin people had cell phones. It wasn’t that long ago, but it was an entirely different world. Now, technology and law practice cannot really be separated. No one practices law any longer except through some medium involving technology. We strive to stay at the forefront of technological development and have moved to a position where a lawyer can practice virtually anywhere he or she wants to practice. The accessibility of technology has created such incredible flexibility in how we practice. The flexibility is wonderful, but it’s created profound changes in the meaning of a “law office.”

Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self and/or what would you do differently?

Lawyers are worrywarts. We are fueled in part by our anxieties. Yes, it’s wise to plan for tomorrow, but worrying about the things that might go wrong tomorrow saps today of its energy and joy. Remember to pause and feel gratitude for the things going well today.

Do you have a prediction on how the legal industry will evolve over the next several years?

I get the sense that the trend toward building jumbo firms will fall out of fashion. I suspect that clients do not feel terrifically well served by the enormous firms with 40 offices worldwide and 2000 lawyers, but with no real sense of managerial cohesiveness. Quality control becomes difficult in firms of that size and sprawl. Clients want to deal with sharp partners with excellent judgment and great teams around them. Clients hire lawyers, not the jumbo name. Clients know that bigger is not better. So, I believe that there will be less pressure on firms to attain that unwieldy “mega” status.

Please share with us any firm or industry initiatives that you are working on as well as the impact you hope to achieve.

We are asking our lawyers to be in the office three days a week. Thirty years ago, it would be preposterous to think that lawyers might in the office less than five days per week. But technology has changed the backdrop profoundly. Under the new model that emerged from the pandemic, lawyers use technology to work from all sorts of different places that are not the law office. We are working hard to find the proper balance between encouraging people to be in the office and telling them that if they’re not going to use their office, they should not expect to keep it. This initiative of shifting office availability around according to attendance data is a fascinating initiative, and it will be interesting to see it play out. I think that these efforts will create a positive environment in the office with colleagues who want to be there and want to see others working, and, further, who want to be seen working. On the other hand, there will be equally happy cadre of colleagues working from home who are in the office only occasionally. Finding the right balance both on the individual level and at the office level is an interesting struggle but one that likely ends with happier, more productive lawyers. What managing partner would not be proud to boast that he or she has created an environment filled with happy and productive lawyers?