Legal News

In the End, Bankruptcy Star Sprayregen Chooses Law over Banking

By Nathan Koppel

The debate is over: the practice of law beats investment banking.

How else to explain James Sprayregen. The Kirkland partner, easily among the dozen most prominent bankruptcy lawyers in the country, left two years ago for Goldman Sachs.

Well, the prodigal son has returned. Sprayregen has rejoined Kirkland and will become a partner effective Dec. 12. Here’s a Times piece on the Sprayregen move. “I missed the law,” the 48 year-old attorney told the Law Blog. “I think I can add the most value as a lawyer. The ability to be deeply involved from a legal end in the major restructurings coming down the pipe was too attractive to pass up.”

No doubt Sprayregen wanted to ride some of the big waves crashing at the shores of law firms these days. Kirkland, the Times reports, has already handled 10 major bankruptcy filings this year, including Tropicana Entertainment and Tousa Inc., the Florida home builder.

Sprayregen handled some major cases in his stint at Kirkland, including the United Airlines bankruptcy, in which his firm billed nearly $100 million in fees.

“I’m thrilled Jamie’s coming back,” Rick Cieri, head of Kirkland’s restructuring team told the Law Blog. “This helps us in deailng with some tough competition out there” to land big Chapter 11 assignments.

If this wasn’t proof enough of the law’s superiority, readers will surely recall that bankruptcy eminence grise Harvey Miller pulled the same move last year, returning to Weil Gotshal after a five-year stint at investment bank Greenhill & Co. And what does Miller have to show for this move? The lead counsel assignment in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the biggest of all time.

Meanwhile, Paul Aronzon, a longtime Milbank bankruptcy lawyer left a few years back for Imperial Capital, an Ibank, before returning in September to the law firm, where he is now co-head of restructuring.

In fairness, though, investment banking has long paid better than law, and many legal converts have not seen the error of their ways. Here’s a Law Blog post on James Millstein, who spent nearly 20 years at Cleary Gottlieb before switching to investment banking at Lazard in 2000. And finally, here’s a 2006 Blog post that leans towards the view that banking beats the law.

Photo: Reuters

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 01, 2008 (boomark / email).