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BarJournal FEATuRE

JULY/AUGUST 2015
ExTra

Legal Legacy

Jones Day

BY PAuLA BATT WILSON

early six years ago, in July streetlights out, the restructuring was on a process, blight was attacked, serious crime was
2013, lawyers from Jones Day, breakneck schedule from the start. reduced, and the lights started to come back
acting as lead counsel, filed With the support of the Detroit corporate on. And Jones Day stayed; the Firm opened an
for bankruptcy protection for community — though facing opposition from office in Detroit in 2015.
Nthe City of Detroit. The filing other sectors — Jones Day’s team worked with Jones Day’s decision to take on the
came during a tumultuous 20 months for the city’s Emergency Manager over months challenge of restructuring Detroit was part
Heather Lennox, one of the three leaders of the of mediation and negotiation with the city, of its commitment to the Midwest heartland,
bankruptcy team and now Partner-in-Charge employee unions, and retiree stakeholders. The building on a long history of civic engagement
of Jones Day’s Cleveland Office. The team’s final plan enabled the city’s pensioners to retain in Cleveland. The Firm’s 20-month marathon
goal: no less than the restructuring of Detroit’s almost all of their current monthly pension in Detroit was foreshadowed in part by a crisis
$18 billion debt, while reinstituting basic allowances and increased the solvency of the in Cleveland’s history: the city’s default in
municipal services and laying a sustainable city’s retirement systems. News reports also December 1978, which eventually led to what
foundation for a revitalized city. heralded the “Grand Bargain,” an unprecedented Jones Day’s senior advisor, Dick Pogue, 91,
Jones Day’s decision to help save Detroit agreement by which various entities with no describes as “the Great Cleveland Comeback.”
was purposeful. The most complex municipal existing obligations agreed to contribute nearly Pogue recalls the 1970s in Cleveland as a
restructuring ever attempted would call upon $1 billion to the city’s restructuring efforts and, bleak decade. Twenty years earlier, in 1950,
vast Firm resources and demand extraordinary in the process, to preserve the venerable Detroit Cleveland was the sixth-largest city in the United
personal sacrifices from the lawyers involved. Institute of Arts. States. Having developed in the 19th century
In 2013, Detroit was in crisis, faced with a After nearly a year and a half of nonstop effort as a transportation and steel-producing center,
declining population, high unemployment, an by Jones Day’s team, lauded by the bankruptcy Cleveland later produced machine tools, auto
eroding tax base, enormous legacy obligations, court as a “singular and extraordinary parts, electrical equipment, and heavy chemicals.
dysfunctional city departments, blight, and a contribution,” the parties reduced the city’s debt Many of these industrial companies were family-
crime rate five times the 2012 national average. by approximately $7 billion and put the city on owned, and between 1910 and 1920, those
With trash collection spotty and 40% of the a path to fiscal and operational stability. In the families created more than 20 civic and cultural

Heather Lennox Richard W. Pogue

16 | Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Journal clemetrobar.org