Barton J. Winokur, chairman and CEO of Philadelphia based Dechert L.L.P., one of the nation’s largest and most profitable law firms, will step down in 2011. Andrew J. Levander, a top white-collar defense lawyer based in New York, will replace him.
Mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer G. Daniel O’Donnell is slated to manage Dechert’s 19 offices in the U.S. and abroad when Winokur steps down in mid-2011.
Winokur took over as chairman in 1996. Since that time, per-partner profit increased from $345,000 to around $2 million, making Dechert one of the most financially successful firms in the country.
A former assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Levander joined the firm in 2005. He has one of the nation’s most robust white-collar defense practices. He defended the board of directors of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. after the collapse of the firm, as well as J. Ezra Merkin, the head of one of the purported feeder funds that channeled investor money to Bernard L. Madoff, who pleaded guilty to running a massive Ponzi scheme that cost investors billions.
Winokur plans to return to the practice of law full time.