Gregory M. Shumaker ’87 J.D. to succeed Stephen J. Brogan ’77 J.D. as Jones Day’s managing partner

Notre Dame Law School alumnus Gregory M. Shumaker ’87 J.D. will be the next managing partner of Jones Day, the firm announced on November 18.

Jones Day is a global legal institution with more than 2,400 lawyers in 40 offices around the world. Shumaker will be just the eighth managing partner in Jones Day’s 130-year history and the third consecutive Notre Dame Law graduate to lead the firm in that role. He will take over for fellow ND Law alumnus Stephen J. Brogan ’77 J.D. starting January 1, 2023.

Brogan has served as Jones Day’s managing partner since 2002. Previously, alumnus Patrick F. McCartan ’56, ’59 J.D. led the firm as managing partner from 1992 to 2002.

“Greg Shumaker is a talented lawyer and a proven leader. He is a Jones Day lifer, beginning with his summer clerkship in 1986, and he loves the firm. He has the ability, dedication, and instincts necessary to enable the firm to continue its incredible success, accepting both the opportunities and responsibilities that face the firm and the legal profession in the future,” Brogan said.

“Greg is a natural born leader who has a disarming charm while at the same time possessing an iron will to protect our clients and the firm. He will be a wonderful steward and take great care of our institution and the more than 20,000 people whose lives depend upon its good fortune,” Brogan added. “Jones Day is blessed to have him assume the role of its eighth managing partner.”

Brogan helped recruit Shumaker to Jones Day in 1986. “I could see then that he had special gifts as well as the high character that someday might permit him to lead our firm,” Brogan said. “That day is here.”

Shumaker said Brogan has been one of the most consequential Jones Day partners in its long history.

“I have admired his incredible and magnetic leadership skills since he interviewed me in law school more than 35 years ago,” Shumaker said. “Throughout a near half-century of service to the firm, he has been the person most responsible for transforming Jones Day from a high-quality national law firm with a Midwestern base into a uniquely integrated global law partnership, in which attorneys throughout all offices work collaboratively to provide the highest level of client service.”

Under Brogan’s leadership, Jones Day has added more than 600 lawyers and 18 offices, expanded its presence in Australia, entered Latin America, and returned to the Middle East. At the same time, the firm continued to strengthen the quality of its legal services, becoming a mainstay in the BTI Consulting Client Service A-Team report that measures client service, and securing the top spot in that survey each of the past six years.

Brogan also greatly expanded Jones Day’s pro bono commitments. He was the driving force behind the firm’s efforts to represent the interests of asylum-seekers at the southern border of the United States. Since 2014, Jones Day has operated facilities that act as remote trial sites along the southern border and now has a fully operational office in Laredo, Texas, staffed on a rotating basis by lawyers and professional staff from across the firm. In addition, Jones Day has assisted asylum-seekers in refugee camps in Lesvos, Greece. To date, more than 1,000 lawyers from virtually every office in the firm have participated in this work, providing legal assistance to more than 15,000 individuals.

“Steve likes to say that ‘people don’t change great institutions, great institutions change people,’” Shumaker noted. “That is certainly true as a general matter, but there is no doubt that, over the last 20 years as Jones Day’s managing partner, Steve Brogan has transformed the scope of the firm’s services while establishing values and operating principles that make this such a unique and successful institution. It is a tremendous honor and responsibility to carry on his legacy, continuing the firm’s contribution to the profession and to the advancement of the rule of law around the world.”

Shumaker has spent his entire career with Jones Day in its Washington, D.C., office. He became a Jones Day partner in 1997 and has served in many leadership capacities in the firm since that time, including partner-in-charge of the Washington office, firmwide hiring partner, and, since 2015, the leader of the firm’s Global Disputes Practice, which consists of more than 200 lawyers around the world who handle international arbitrations, investigations, and cross-border disputes in tribunals outside the United States. In his 35 years with Jones Day, he has been involved in a number of high-profile litigation matters, including the Detroit bankruptcy litigation, the largest municipal bankruptcy in history.

He has continued to serve Notre Dame Law School as a member of the Law Advisory Council and as a member of the Notre Dame Law Association Board, including as president of the NDLA Board from 2008 to 2009.