Alison S. Ressler

Ressler accomplished two firsts at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Before her, every attorney who made partner at the firm had first started in the flagship New York office. She is also the first woman to join Sullivan & Cromwell's management committee.

When she started as a junior associate at the Los Angeles office in 1984, there was no roadmap to follow for achieving the success she has since enjoyed as a powerhouse M&A, corporate governance and capital markets attorney.

"My mentors were all men," Ressler remembered. "As I was coming up the ranks, unfortunately, it was an era where there weren't that many women to mentor you. You were very much on your own."

She regularly works on broadly diverse deals, many of which have high dollar values. Many matters present complex issues, but Ressler uses her legal acumen to handle them.

"Sometimes the smaller deals can be incredibly complicated," Ressler said. "One of the skill sets that I bring to matters is just a good natural sense of figuring out what's important, what are the problems, what are the four or five different ways we can solve any problem that arises."

One aforementioned "problem" arose last year, when Ressler was coaching her client, the board of directors of Rent-A-Center, in a potential merger transaction with Vintage Capital. The deal was announced in June of 2018, but Ressler had helped to carefully negotiate a proviso that stipulated her client had a right to exit the deal if there was no trust approval at the six-month mark in December. When that exit date was approaching, Ressler advised her client to exercise their right to terminate the agreement, which eventually led to a lawsuit in the Chancery Court of Delaware. Vintage Rodeo Parent LLC et al. v. Rent-A-Center Inc., 2018-0927-SG (Del. Chance. Ct., filed March 11, 2019).

Ressler's client won the case in March, since the judge agreed with the assessment that the client was simply exercising its contractual rights--even if it meant calling off the entire deal somewhat unexpectedly.

"This is a very unique experience; very few deals that get signed up terminate," Ressler said of the case. "It shows the value of closely negotiating provisions, having counsel that has really rolled up their sleeves and is familiar with every provision of the agreement and having a board of directors understanding what its rights are and doing what it thinks it needs to for its shareholders. It's a fascinating story."

Now that she is one of the top attorneys at her firm, she is doing what she can to mentor others.

"I think it has become part of the firm culture to really ensure that we do everything we can to make it the kind of environment where women can be as successful as men."

--Dan Heching