Macrae Names Leah Guggenheimer Chief Operating Officer
Executive Brings Two Decades of Operations Leadership Experience to Elite Transatlantic Legal Search Firm
Leah Guggenheimer
Chief Operating Officer
Macrae, a premier transatlantic legal search firm that places partners and groups at the world’s leading law firms, is pleased to announce that Leah Guggenheimer has been appointed Chief Operating Officer. She will be based in New York.
Guggenheimer brings to Macrae over 20 years of leadership experience driving operational efficiency and process improvement at leading companies in the legal and financial services space. She was previously Managing Director, Core Services and Chief Innovation Officer at Burford Capital, the world’s largest provider of commercial legal finance. Her multifaceted responsibilities at Burford, where she worked for nearly a decade, included overseeing technology, data integrity, information security, project management, software development, research services, operational risk, facilities management, and office administration. Guggenheimer’s prior roles included serving as Chief of Staff at Bridgewater Associates, Director of Business Process Redesign at Dechert and Director of Change Management at Jackson Lewis, among others.
“Leah’s proven leadership and extensive experience directing and enhancing a wide spectrum of business operations at some of the world’s most successful organizations, including a major international law firm, make her a perfect fit for Macrae,” said Joe Macrae, Founder and Chairman. “She joins the firm at an important juncture. Since launching our strategic expansion plan in 2017, Macrae has grown to 20 recruiters across five offices and our performance has consistently outpaced even our high expectations. In recent months we have significantly advanced our technology and data management infrastructure, and Leah is ideally suited to ensuring we maximize our capabilities in this regard and many others. We are thrilled by how far we have come and, with Leah on board, we look forward to reaching even greater heights.”
Guggenheimer rounds out an executive team comprised of Chairman Joe Macrae, CEO Carter Brown and Chief Administrative Officer Karina Robles. She will also serve on the firm’s Board of Directors. As part of her wide-ranging responsibilities, Guggenheimer will oversee Macrae’s 20 recruiters operating from London, New York, Washington D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the firm’s significantly expanded marketing efforts led by Director of Marketing Gabby Kitney, who joined in April.
“I was drawn to Macrae by the firm’s niche business model of focusing on the placement of first-rate partners into the world’s best law firms – of being the Cartier of the legal marketplace,” said Guggenheimer. “The strategy Macrae’s leadership has taken to achieve this, including bringing together the top recruiters across the world’s largest legal markets under one roof and investing heavily in data and knowledge management, is both bold and exciting. I also appreciate the firm’s stress on collegiality in its culture and hiring. A lot of companies talk a big game about the importance of culture and it’s just that. It is very clear to me that Macrae walks the talk.”
Guggenheimer practiced law for seven years before turning her attention to business operations. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. from Brown University, as well as a certification in Business Process Management from Boston University.
About Macrae
Macrae is a transatlantic legal search firm with offices in London, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Palo Alto. Macrae works with the most successful and innovative law firms in the United States and the United Kingdom to bring on top lateral partners and partner groups and open new offices. The firm’s expertise also includes representing high-performing partners seeking to make strategic moves and senior government attorneys transitioning to private practice. Its commitment to furthering inclusion and diversity in the legal industry is reflected in the candidates it represents as well as within the firm. Macrae is a majority women-owned business, and 75% of team members identify as belonging to demographic groups that are underrepresented within the legal industry.