Page 30 - Delaware Lawyer - Winter 2022

FEATURE
the M&A Bar
Nee Carpenter and Allen Terrell, two prominent corporate litigators at Richards, Layton &
Finger. Both were Presidents of the Delaware State Bar Association. This restored photo was taken in 1989.
A. Gilchrist Sparks III
40 Years in
On the evolution of Delaware corporate litigation practice
I began my legal career at Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell in the fall of 1973 as the 17th person on the letterhead (in those days, everyone, including associates, was actually on the letterhead) and retired in 2013. I began for the first few years as a pure corporate lawyer under the tutelage of Sam Arsht, after which my practice morphed into corporate litigation as well as advisory work — something much easier to do then compared to now, given the smaller size of Delaware law firms at that time.
28 DELAWARE LAWYER WINTER 2022
Over the course of those 40 years, there were dramatic changes not only in firm size (Morris Nichols,
for example, now has 90+ attorneys) but also in the way corporate litigation is conducted and the effects, both posi- tive and negative, that has had on the quality of life of those who practice it. Those changes are primarily the result of two factors: alterations in the law that affected the pace of litigation, and technological developments (or the lack thereof) during that period. Based on personal experience, this article will recount how those changes impacted me and my colleagues at Morris Nich- ols and elsewhere across the Delaware Bar, especially those heavily involved in expedited merger and acquisition litigation.
First, an observation about the composition and role of the Delaware M&A litigation bar in the late 1970s and 1980s. Whereas, in earlier years, the role of our bar in major corporate litigation was often that of local counsel or second chair, in the M&A arena dur- ing this period Delaware lawyers from the five or so larger Delaware firms were very much first chair in almost every case, making the principal arguments before both the Court of Chancery and the Delaware Supreme Court. More- over, within those firms the bulk of these arguments were presented by two or at most three lawyers who, by reason of their intense exposure to the rapidly developing jurisprudence of the time,
Continued on page 26