Coates, taking Cogan chair, looks at market forces in corporate law
Professor John C. Coates
February 6, 2008
Professor John C. Coates, one of the nation’s foremost experts in corporate law, was formally presented with the John F. Cogan Jr. Professorship of Law and Economics on February 4, in a ceremony attended by HLS faculty, students, members of the Coates family, and Cogan himself.
“I can’t imagine anyone who is better equipped to address questions of corporate law and economics than John Coates,” said Dean Elena Kagan ’86 in her opening remarks to the assembly in Langdell Hall. In particular, she noted, Coates exemplifies her goal of bridging the gap between academia and the world of practice.
“John Coates’ work is proof of just how valuable this bridge-building can be,” Kagan added. “He approaches his subject with the keen sense of what really matters and the work that will really make a difference.”
Coates joined the faculty in 1997 after private practice at the New York law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he was a partner specializing in mergers and acquisitions, corporate and securities law, and the regulation of financial institutions. He received tenure at HLS in 2001. He earned his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1989, and his B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1986.
Accepting the Cogan chair, Coates offered a lecture (“On Being a Corporate Lawyer”) surveying recent trends in corporate law practice—the field, he said, which continues to draw the majority of graduates of top schools. He noted that the leading corporate law firms have remained relatively stable and free from the kind of volatility seen in the investment banking sector over the past several decades, citing major banks that have vanished or been displaced. But, he said, some important changes are nevertheless on the way. Among them:
- market forces will drive up the price for top-end corporate legal work;
- law firms will increasingly develop new ways to structure their compensation for corporate deals, and they will rely less on the billable hour method, which does not accurately reflect the value that lawyers bring to major transactions;
- law firm demand for top-quality entry-level corporate lawyers will intensify; one of the effects will be a corresponding spike in competition among law schools for corporate law professors, especially through lateral hiring.
John F. Cogan Jr., '52
Coates’ current research includes empirical studies of the causes and consequences of the completion or failure of M&A transactions, including management buyouts, and of the effects of CEO tenure and option compensation on M&A in the 1990s. He is also involved in HLS’s Program on the Legal Profession as a principal researcher on the program’s Corporate Purchasing Project, a quantitative and qualitative examination of how corporations purchase legal services.
As Kagan noted, Coates is also a frequent panelist and speaker on M&A, and a consultant to the SEC, law firms, mutual funds, hedge funds, and other participants in the M&A and capital markets. He also is a member of the Legal Advisory Committee of the New York Stock Exchange and is a director of the American Law and Economics Association.
Cogan, a 1952 graduate of HLS, spent most of his career at Hale and Dorr—now WilmerHale—where was managing director and then chairman of the firm, and is presently Of Counsel. He has also served as president and director of Pioneer Investment Management, one of Boston’s oldest mutual fund groups.
Said Kagan: “The gift that established this chair is one of a long line from Jack Cogan, who has been extraordinarily generous with his time and wisdom, as well as with his money.” Noting that Cogan has been integrally involved in supporting the law school in a number of ways, including as a member of the executive committee of the Dean’s Advisory Board, Kagan added: “I have personally benefited from his insights and experience more than I can say.”
Click here for a webcast of this event.