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Leader of Embattled Firm Steps Down


New York Lawyer
January 21, 2004

By the Staff of Texas Lawyer

William Durbin, recently re-elected to a third one-year term as chairman and chief executive officer of Jenkens & Gilchrist, says he has resigned the job and will return to his practice full time.

Shareholder Thomas Cantrill, who was chairman for three-and-a-half years in the late 1980s, will become chairman of the 475-lawyer firm pending a vote of shareholders later this month.

At the time of the election in November 2003, Durbin says he had considered not running for the job, but was persuaded otherwise by some shareholders in the firm. But he has since reconsidered, saying, "I just think it was a good time for change." Durbin says nothing in particular changed his mind about the job —- other than a realization that someone else at the firm needed to implement some of the organizational changes he put into effect during his tenure.

During Durbin's tenure, the firm has been embroiled in a big dispute with the Internal Revenue Service. In August 2003, the government sued the Dallas-based firm to force it to disclose the names of clients who received tax advice from the firm's Chicago office. According to the suit, filed in federal court in Illinois, the IRS is investigating the firm's role in organizing and selling some "potentially abusive tax shelters," an allegation the firm denies.

Cantrill says some of the firm's shareholders were "discontent" with some of the organizational changes, and Durbin agrees that it would be better for someone else to oversee the firm. Durbin says the changes include a revamp of the structure of the firm and the structure of management.

Meanwhile, Cantrill says Roger Hayse, the firm's executive director, will leave Jenkens & Gilchristm and become a 30-hour-a-week consultant for the firm to give him time to work on a book on law firm mergers. Hayse did not, before presstime on Jan. 15, return two messages left at his office.