How Sullivan & Cromwell’s Sharon Levin built a book of business after three decades at DOJ 3/5/21 Jenna Greene’s Legal Action (Reuters) - For all the back-and-forth moves between government and Big Law, there’s a path that’s especially tough to tread: from career prosecutor to successful partner. How does a longtime government lawyer who has never worked in private practice - not even as a summer associate - make the jump to a world where time is billed in six-minute increments and business generation is a must? “I was really nervous about it,” said Sullivan & Cromwell partner Sharon Cohen Levin, who spent 29 years at the Justice Department before making the leap to Big Law. Now, with more than five years of private practice under her belt, the anti-money laundering and asset forfeiture ace shared some of what she’s learned along the way. One top takeaway: “You’ve got to embrace the process. Get out there and let people know who you are.” Our interview itself falls under this category. DOJ keeps a tight lid on its 10,000 or so lawyers, with media access severely curtailed. Unauthorized contact with a reporter is grounds for being fired. After nearly three decades of “no comment,” Levin said the first few times she spoke to journalists after leaving government, she was “scared to say anything.” But now, she’s open and candid, sharing details of her life and career in a wide-ranging conversation. Given her childhood, she seems almost foreordained to have become a successful lawyer. Her father is Herb Cohen, who was once dubbed “the world’s best negotiator” by Playboy magazine. A strategy consultant who has advised on everything from hostile takeovers to hostage negotiations, his books include the 1982 bestseller “You Can Negotiate Anything.” (Sample quote: “’No’ is a reaction, not a position. The people who react negatively to your proposal simply need time to evaluate it and adjust their thinking. With the passage of sufficient time and repeated efforts on your part, almost every ‘no’ can be transformed into a ‘maybe’ and eventually a ‘yes’.”) Laughing, Levin said, “He always says the hardest people to negotiate with were his children.” After graduating from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1985, she was hired as an honors attorney in the Civil Division torts branch. Six years later, she moved to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where from 1996 to 2015 she led the Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture Unit. Copyright (c) 2021 Thomson Reuters. Reprinted with permission. Over the years, she reclaimed assets including “racehorses and airplanes, private islands and ugly jewelry, even a dinosaur skeleton,” she said. “It’s fascinating what people do with money.” Under her leadership, the SDNY was responsible for nearly 60% of all forfeitures in the United States. One of her highest-profile cases involved a 1912 painting, “Portrait of ally,”W by Egon Schiele, which was stolen by Nazis from Jewish art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray in Vienna. When the painting was loaned to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1997 by the Leopold Museum as part of an exhibition, the U.S. government brought a civil forfeiture action, with Levin as lead prosecutor. In 2010, the Leopold Museum agreed to pay $19 million to Bondi Jaray’s heirs to settle the case. Levin said she never planned to stay so long in government. “I kept saying ‘I’ll leave when this case ends,’ but then I kept having another case, and another,” she said. Many of the lawyers she admired, including SDNY U.S. Attorneys, combined private practice experience with government service. Levin said she, too, was eager to “get a deeper understanding of the whole process” by working on the other side. She initially joined WilmerHale as a partner in 2015 before moving to Sullivan & Cromwell in 2019. The firm is an equity-only partnership, with average 2019 profits per partner of $4.65 million. Levin admits that before she left government, the prospect of landing clients and building a book of business left her feeling “super-scared.” But to her surprise, she said, “I found I really enjoy it, getting out and talking about what I can offer and what the firm can offer.” “After a long career in government, I have long-standing relationships, both personal and professional, that make for an active and productive business network,” she continued. “I regularly speak at conferences and write articles on topics that interest me - and hopefully my clients, too.” Soon enough, the pieces fell into place. “Not long after I moved to private practice, I got a call from an in-house counsel I’d litigated against while in the government,” Levin said. “The case involved a high-profile investigation of a national company, exactly fit to my subject matter expertise. I was thrilled to bring a new client to the firm, and I was personally very thankful to have the respect of a former adversary.” Indeed, one reason she said she was drawn to join Sullivan & Cromwell was that she frequently litigated against them at the SDNY. She was impressed with the “vast subject matter expertise” of the firm’s lawyers, she said, but also that they “were always a pleasure to deal with.” Let that be a lesson: If you can’t be pleasant because you’re a good person, then do it because it’s good for business. When it comes to private practice success, Levin added, “In my experience, what truly matters is direct interaction with a client who has a problem. They are looking for innovative and sound solutions. I try to fulfill that need.” Copyright (c) 2021 Thomson Reuters. Reprinted with permission..