Donna L. Wilson 

Manatt began converting itself from a large law firm into a "multidisciplinary, integrated national professional services firm" in the late 2000s by integrating management consulting into its services. Since Donna Wilson became the firm's chief executive officer and managing partner in 2019, that transformation has "been on steroids," she said.

"We feel ourselves to be a category of one," Wilson said. "We zig when other people zag."

While some other large law firms also offer consulting and other services, they may do so as a separate enterprise.

But Manatt has "a highly integrated model where about a third of our professionals are management consultants," Wilson said. "We are one firm. ... It enables us to deliver service offerings to our clients that quite frankly the clients want and need."

The culture of the firm is "very entrepreneurial," she said, so she tries to hire "lawyers who think like business advisers and business advisers who think a bit like lawyers."

One example is Paul H. Luehr, a recent addition to Manatt's privacy and data security practice, which Wilson co-leads. He has been a cybersecurity consultant and forensic investigator, as well as a federal prosecutor and lawyer with the FTC. "He really brings value to our clients. He's a perfect example of someone who we brought on with an eye toward a hybrid model."

But she is equally proud of other lawyers she's hired. For instance, there are litigators Martin F. Murphy, who represented Felicity Huffman in the Varsity Blues college admissions case, and Joan Lukey, who Wilson described as one of the top female trial lawyers in the country. "These are good examples of the standards ... of our trial bench," she said.

Other new hires she highlighted include hospitality transactions attorney Lynn K. Cadwalader in San Francisco, Los Angeles government affairs expert Wendy J. Greuel and land use specialist Fernando Villa.

"We're adding across the country, being very methodical and disciplined, because we're not looking at topline revenues, we're looking at the bottom line," she said.

As part of its entrepreneurial approach, Manatt is "a set of boutiques under one umbrella," Wilson said, but it focuses on the five core sectors of financial services, media and entertainment, digital technology, healthcare and real estate, which includes energy and environment practices.

"These industries are key to the new economy," she said. They also are "the most disrupted and ... the most convergent."

Wilson's own practice focuses on digital technology, including especially advising companies about the California Consumer Privacy Act. She also recently was involved in settling a novel HIPAA case in November that contended a health care organization's privacy notice and privacy policy amounted to contracts between patients and the business. Doe v. Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, 2020CH04123, (Cook Cnty. Circ. Ct., filed May 8, 2020).

-- Don DeBenedictis