Female law-firm head: ‘Not a big deal’

When colleagues at the Pepper Hamilton law firm named Nina Gussack chairwoman in February, there was a swift outpouring of support from women lawyers around the country.

As head of the 500-lawyer Pepper Hamilton L.L.P., Gussack joined a handful of women who have made it to the top of the nation's biggest firms. It happens rarely, and when it does, it usually makes news: Christine Lagarde was chairwoman of the 3,000-lawyer Baker & McKenzie firm of Chicago for several years before leaving to become finance minister under French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Yet because women have long held key positions at Pepper, Gussack says the reaction caught her off guard. Her elevation, partly linked to her status as the firm's biggest rainmaker, seemed to Gussack and her colleagues simply the consequence of her decades' long career track at Pepper.

"In our environment, it was not a big deal," Gussack, 52, said. Yet, she added, "I got telephone calls from across the country from women who were incredibly supportive. The e-mails and the telephone calls were from people who were so excited to see that it" could happen.

In the Philadelphia region, no other large firm is headed by a woman, although some women have leadership positions. They include Diana Donaldson, managing partner of Schnader Harrison; Claudia Springer, the managing partner in the Philadelphia office of Reed Smith; and Ellen Rosen Rogoff, a member of the board of directors of Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young.

Gussack's appointment as chairwoman capped a 28-year ascension at Pepper, which she joined as an associate straight out of Villanova University Law School.

From the start, she focused on defending pharmaceutical companies and medical-device-makers. She did it balancing the demands of her clients against the needs of her family - husband Allan R. Stein, a professor of civil procedure at Rutgers Law School in Camden, and two sons.

"You know, as any woman working full time with children will tell you, it is hard, and you really have to be committed to it, and it really helps to have a spouse who is committed to it at those most urgent moments," Gussack said.

She added with smile, "And there is nothing like being in a meeting with a senior client representative and having your kid call you and ask, 'Do I really have to take these clarinet lessons? I have to have an answer to this now, Mom.' "

The pharmaceutical-defense practice was much smaller in the early 1980s. Lawsuits against pharmaceutical-makers were relatively few in number. Lawyers defended against them one at a time.

Edward Madeira Jr., an early advocate of Gussack's within the firm who said Gussack quickly evinced the writing and organizational skills of a top litigator, joked that, at the time, complex litigation "was a three-car pileup on the highway."

Since then, litigation against the big drug companies and medical-device-makers has exploded, and Gussack's practice has ballooned.

She routinely defends drug companies in thousands of cases in multiple districts, including handling GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C.'s defense in lawsuits involving its diabetes drug Avandia and representing Eli Lilly & Co. in litigation over the antidepressant Prozac and the schizophrenia drug Zyprexa.

The practice group that handles these cases, which Gussack continues to chair, comprises 80 lawyers, about 16 percent of the lawyers at the firm.

Tom Kline, a top plaintiff's lawyer based in Center City who has often opposed Gussack in court in lawsuits against pharmaceutical firms, says she has sharp courtroom skills. But he said she also can size up the vulnerabilities of her clients' cases, advising settlement when that is the most rational course of action.

"I live in this world, and I have an understanding of the people who are respected, and Nina has garnered enormous respect on both sides of the bar," Kline said. "She is known as a person who understands the complexity of pharmaceutical litigation and the broader context of it."

As chairwoman of Pepper, Gussack leaves day-to-day management to executive partner Robert Heideck while setting overall policy for the firm. The two have known each other since they were fellow students at Villanova law school. Heideck said that, when it came time to choose the head of the firm, there was no contest.

"She was the best possible candidate. There was no question," Heideck said. "We had to persuade her to do it."

As a manager and the lawyer with the firm's biggest book of business, Gussack faces challenges on multiple fronts. She says she still takes depositions and appears in court on the pharmaceutical-industry cases that she represents.

And she, along with Heideck and others at the firm, is deeply involved in recruiting. In the last year, she said, the firm has hired 30 new partners and other senior lawyers. It is also on the lookout for merger opportunities, and is considering opening a foreign office. London and Dubai are among the possibilities.

Gussack says she also is focused on making the firm a welcoming place for lawyers in two-career couples.

Work schedules are flexible, she says, so parents can attend to children's needs. The firm also is encouraging when lawyers need to jump off the full-time career track and work part time.

Of the firm's 208 partners, 35 are women, about 17.2 percent, a percentage that roughly tracks with national statistics on women partners compiled by the American Bar Association.

That women chair important practice groups at Pepper at different stages in their careers is a helpful sign to younger lawyers that no one approach is the prescribed route to success, Gussack said.

“You [a young lawyer] look up, and you say, ‘I think I could be like them [leaders of the firm],’ but there is a variation of what ‘them’ looks like,” Gussack said. "We have women who span the spectrum. Partners with young children. Partners with grandchildren. What you really want to say to people coming out of the starting gate is, ‘Look around you, and see what excites and motivates you.’ "