Donna L. Wilson

As Manatt’s CEO and managing partner, Wilson navigated Covid and by mid-2021 was on a hiring crusade to add firepower to a firm that has gone beyond its roots in banking, entertainment and government to embrace a hybridized legal and consulting approach with additional expertise in health care, financial services, media, technology , retail and consumer products, real estate and energy.

“I’m spending time on the East Coast recruiting,” she said in late July. One key new hire arrived from closer to Manatt’s Century City home: litigator Naeun Rim came on in June from Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks, Lincenberg & Rhow PC as a litigation partner in Manatt’s investigations, compliance and white collar defense practice.

Rim, a Harvard Law School graduate and former trial deputy in the Federal Public Defender’s Los Angeles office, got her bar card in 2009. As a young Asian American woman, she exemplifies the new hires Wilson seeks. “She’s a trial lawyer and we’re a litigation powerhouse,” Wilson said. “Trial lawyers as a group tend to skew older and male, but I’m putting together with intent a very female and diverse team.”

Wilson said Manatt’s interdisciplinary model—offering both consulting and legal services—proved invaluable during the coronavirus crisis. “People ask how the pandemic affected our strategy, and I say that it confirmed the rightness of our pre-pandemic hybrid digital consultancy approach.” She’s enlarging that sector with additions like Linda Elam, a former Medicaid health plan executive, who joined in May as managing director of Manatt Health in Washington, D.C., and health care partner Blair M. Cantfil, who joined the D.C. shop in April from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.

In New York, Wilson brought on dealmaker Ted Hunter as a commercial real estate partner. He is the former chair of Lowenstein Sandler LLP’s real estate practice group. She added Jonathan Joshua, an expert on student loans, as special counsel in consumer financial services.

“We’re growing at an exponential rate, especially in our digital and technology group,” Wilson said. She hired entrepreneur and strategist Kalon Gutierrez in San Francisco as managing director of the group.

“Our view of the pandemic is that we not just survived but thrived,” Wilson said. “We believe we were about three years ahead of our competition in building this model. We don’t just grow for growth’s sake. We take our time—and it does take time to curate these great people.”

- John Roemer