Fred Nance says his new role as Global Managing Partner of the U.S. will enable him to connect Cleveland and Clevelanders to resources and business opportunities throughout the world.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Fred Nance, already one of Cleveland's most high-profile and civically active attorneys, is about to expand his sphere of influence to include all of North America - or at least the parts where Squire Patton Boggs has offices and clients.
Nance has just been announced as the law firm's Global Managing Partner of the U.S. That means that starting Jan. 1, 2017, Nance will oversee 688 attorneys in 18 offices in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic, from San Francisco to New York to Santo Domingo.
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Fred Nance, who has spent his career at the law firm now known as Squire Patton Boggs, will become its Global Managing Partner of the U.S. starting Jan. 1, 2017. He will become the first African-American partner on the firm's five-member executive committee and 12-member global board, which oversees 1,600 lawyers in 21 countries.
Nance says his new role will enable him to connect Cleveland and Clevelanders to resources and business opportunities throughout the world. Despite the criticism of how much economies have globalized, "it's not going to stop," he said. "Our global compliance and regulatory practice is exploding."
Squire Patton Boggs, as a global law firm with longtime relationships in Washington, D.C., an extensive international network, and "17 of the top 25 private companies in Northeast Ohio" as clients, can help navigate the intersection between business, government and civic leadership, Nance said. "Our merger with Patton Boggs, one of the top public policy firms in America, was a game-changer."
"We had a role in virtually every economic development that you can see outside of this window," he said, from the Convention Center and Global Center for Health Innovation to the Republican National Convention. "If you get all of those oars rowing in the same direction, you can get things done."
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Square Patton Boggs' Chairman and Global CEO Mark Ruehlmann. "Fred comes to this leadership position with a deep background of commitment to the firm and is someone who embodies the values of collaboration and service that we hold up as important," said Squire Patton Boggs Chairman and Global CEO Mark Ruehlmann, via email. "Throughout his career, Fred has earned the respect of his partners and those in the business community, and his leadership will help continue to take our firm to new heights."
Squire Patton Boggs is the 16th largest U.S. law firm by lawyer count and the 9th most global in terms of the number of international offices, according to American Lawyer. Its 2015 revenues were $929 million.
Nance's greatest hits
Asking Nance about the newspaper stories, photographs, and sports souvenirs that adorn his office is like pushing "play" on a soundtrack of his greatest hits.
There's the 1999 issue of Sports Illustrated about the Browns' historic return to Cleveland, a deal Nance helped negotiate between the city and the NFL, which led to his becoming a finalist for NFL Commissioner in 2006.
There's a 2005 Plain Dealer story on how Nance and other city advocates helped save more than 1,000 Defense Finance and Accounting Service jobs, and won 600 more, by challenging the Pentagon's arguments that DFAS was too costly to keep in Cleveland.
And finally, there's a photo of a teenaged LeBron James and his mother, Gloria, chilling out in Nance's living room, shortly after he met and agreed to legally represent the then-17-year-old in 2002.
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Attorney Fred Nance defends his client LeBron James against a 2005 civil lawsuit. "I quickly realized the potential he had to be very, very special off the court as well," Nance said. "How many 30-year-olds would have the vision to realize he could affect the future of an entire region? When he came back, he said, 'Im going to light up Cleveland like Las Vegas,' and he has."
Nance is aware of his visibility both in Cleveland and in the legal profession as one of a select group of African American managing partners in an industry often criticized for how poorly it attracts and retains people of color.
The eldest son of six children born to an autoworker father and a homemaker mother, Nance grew up in the blue-collar Kinsman neighborhood on Cleveland's East Side. At 13, he watched trucks filled with armed National Guardsmen rolling toward the Hough riots, and told himself: "There's got to be a better way to promote social justice."
He graduated from St. Ignatius, went on to Harvard University and got his law degree from the University of Michigan, but always knew he was comng back to Cleveland. He has framed the two-sentence telegram that Squire, Sanders & Dempsey sent him in 1977, offering him a job straight out of law school.
He became a lawyer because "I didn't want to be powerless," he said. "I didn't want to feel like there was nothing I could do to protect the people I cared about."