James Woolery is on the move again. We’ve never met, but I’m beginning to feel as if I know the guy.

Woolery first appeared in my June 3, 2010 post about a policy change at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. The Wall Street Journal featured the then-41-year-old Cravath partner in an article about the firm’s plan to allow lawyers in their 30s and 40s to “make a name for themselves” by taking the lead on client deals. Historically, the WSJ reported, Cravath had reserved that role for partners in their 50s.

Six months later, I wrote about Woolery’s departure from Cravath to become co-head of JP Morgan Chase’s North American mergers and acquisitions group. He told the New York Times that he’d developed a business development focus and the Chase opportunity allowed him to build on those skills. So much for practicing law.

Now, two years after joining Chase, Woolery has become the first firmwide deputy chair of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft — a new position apparently created specially for its prominent lateral hire. The Wall Street Journal suggested that the move “is a big personal bet for Mr. Woolery. He is jumping back to the legal industry when it is still struggling with a shortage of work, and he is leaving J.P.Morgan just as mergers are showing new signs of life.”

Regardless of the particular reasons for Woolery’s various moves, the contrast between where he started (Cravath) and where he has now ended (Cadwalader) is remarkable.

Cravath

Whatever else people may think of Cravath, it has an unrivaled reputation for attracting first-rate attorneys. It is also a partnership in the truest sense of that concept: A single tier with a lock-step compensation system that resists an undue emphasis on short-term thinking. The Cravath model promotes longer run values, such as institutional stability.

For example, a lateral hiring frenzy pervades big law, but it’s a relatively rare event at Cravath. The firm focuses on developing talent internally. Its attorneys work hard, run a challenging gauntlet to equity partnership, and reap rich rewards for success.

In May 2007, an American Lawyer interviewer asked Cravath’s then-presiding partner Evan R. Chesler whether partners would stick around if the firm made less money. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “I think there is more glue than just money.”

Cadwalader

Cravath’s ethos wouldn’t appeal to attorneys drawn to Cadwalader’s culture. In the mid-1990s, Cadwalader began moving aggressively toward what its new chairman Robert O. Link Jr. called a meritocracy. Others call it “eat-what-you-kill.”

In a February 2007 interview with the American Lawyer, Link expressed an attitude about firm culture that differed dramatically from Chesler’s. “Everyone should wake up in the morning and feel a little vulnerable,” he said.

Link meant it. In 1995, the 268-lawyer Cadwalader firm’s two-tier partnership had 76 equity partners, giving it a leverage ratio of three-and-a-half. By 2005, the firm had nearly doubled in size, but it had only 75 equity partners. Its leverage ratio of seven far exceeded that of all other Am Law 100 firms.

Cadwalader’s asset-backed structured finance practice fueled much of its growth. By 2007, it had 645 lawyers and a stunning leverage ratio of eight-and-a-half. But when the residential housing market cratered and took asset-back structured finance legal work with it, the firm’s fortunes slid badly.

By the end of 2012, Cadwalader had 435 lawyers — down more than 200 from five years earlier. Only 55 of them were equity partners — down 20 from 2007. The good news for the survivors was that by 2012, average equity partner profits had recovered almost completely to their 2007 all-time high of $2.7 million.

Differences that transcend metrics

As Cadwalader became smaller, Cravath maintained average partner profits ranging from $2.5 to $3.2 million, a leverage ratio of approximately four, and moderate growth from 412 to 476 attorneys. Even more to the point, it’s hard to imagine any circumstance short of dissolution that would cause Cravath to shed almost a third of its equity partners, as Cadwalader did from 2007 to 2012.

Back in May 2010, Woolery told the Wall Street Journal, “This is not your grandfather’s Cravath.” It’s not clear what that characterization of his former firm means or if it is correct, but offspring sometimes underestimate the value of a grandfather’s gifts. And offspring sometimes grow up to be grandparents themselves.