They’ve Got Next: The 40 Under 40 - Ben Goodchild of Paul, Weiss

Ben Goodchild

Age: 36

Law Firm: Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison

Practice Area: M&A

Title: Partner

Location: New York

Law School: University of Cambridge, Downing College

Please describe two of your most substantial, recent wins in practice.

Perhaps the most rewarding deal I’ve ever worked on was the sale of Endeavor Energy to Diamondback Energy for $26 billion last year. Endeavor was owned almost entirely by Autry Stephens, a man who had started his company with his life savings of $250,000 and who wanted to ensure a transfer of wealth to his family.

We were able to resist the buyer-friendly rights to walk away or re-cut the price, which are common in oil-and-gas deals, and to ensure favorable investor protections for what was the largest-ever secondary stock offering in the oil-and-gas sector. Together, this resulted in a deal that maximized certainty and value for the whole Stephens family.

Last year, I was also fortunate to help Inhibrx execute a first-of-its-type transaction to sell its lung disorder drug to Sanofi while spinning off all other assets into a new public company. This innovative structure dramatically lowered the tax impact for Inhibrx, unlocking a transaction that might otherwise not have been done, ultimately benefiting future patients both for the drug that Inhibrx sold and its pipeline, which the team continues to develop.

What is the most important lesson you learned as a first-year attorney and how does it inform your practice today?

The most important lesson I learned as a first-year attorney was how critical it is to truly understand a transaction and be able to reduce it down, no matter how complicated, to its bare essentials.

This is truly something I find myself doing every day—because clients generally don’t want me and my team to show off all the legal thinking we’ve done on an issue; they want us to explain, in clear, business-friendly language, what the problems and possible solutions are. Once you can do that—and it’s even better if you can think about the deal in the same way from the other side’s perspective—it’s a lot easier to find potential solutions and help counsel your clients on how to get the results they want.

It’s also the thing I spend the most time on with my team. I’m entirely certain that they’re long tired of me constantly asking why we’re doing something, but by making sure we’re all on the same page on the “why,” we’re able to ensure that our associates are getting the most out of every deal. Understanding deals on that level is crucial to developing talented lawyers and allows us to give more responsibility to our associates early in their career, which I remember being incredibly rewarding as I came up as an associate.

How do you define success in your practice?

At its core, success means being the go-to lawyer for the most sophisticated clients’ most difficult problems. That isn’t built overnight, but when you look at the leaders in our field, the blueprint for those who are household names (at least within M&A circles) is pretty consistent.

You have to not only have complete command of the core corporate law issues, but also know all related legal issues, from tax to antitrust, inside-out, back-to-front and blindfolded. And you have to have been in the room giving that advice tens of times before—it’s really our experience and judgment that are the valuable commodities here. But that, in and of itself, wouldn’t be enough.

You need to have cultivated and maintained relationships (and a reputation) with board members, GCs and executives across the business landscape and within your own industry, as well as with the financial advisers, investor relations professionals and other folks we work with on a daily basis. And then, you have to repeat it. Not just on another deal, but also into another generation by building a team that can continue to support your clients on that most elite work.

What are you most proud of as a lawyer?

This is going to be slightly “soppy” as people back home would say, but it was a day when my mum saw my photo on a legal news website announcing a deal that we had signed and she sent me a screenshot saying she and my dad were proud of me.

It made me think back to what it had taken, not only for me, but also for my parents, for me to end up here. They were both the first college attendees in their families, my father used to go to work before I woke up and sometimes not get home until I was about to go to sleep and my mother spent countless hours taking me to museums, preparing me for exams and cooking our meals—all on top of her full-time job.

And so, for me to be able to lead front-page transactions (admittedly of legal websites) in a country where I have no law degree, no network to tap into, made me exceptionally proud of what I have achieved. But I know that achievement, like all of the others I have had, are thanks not only to my parents but also my teachers, lecturers, mentors, friends and colleagues and so my pride is not really for what I achieved but what that group of people I have known over time have achieved. And yes, I am moderately concerned by the fact that my mum reads legal websites.

Who is your greatest mentor in the law and what have they taught you?

Having worked across two countries, three firms and too many practice areas to remember, there are many people who have guided me along the way: David Lee at Allen Overy (as it then was), Joe Shenker, Joe Frumkin, Rob Schlein and countless others at Sullivan & Cromwell, Krishna Veeraraghavan and Scott Barshay who I still work with today, and countless more.

But the person whose teaching I go back to throughout is Graeme Virgo, who was my criminal law and equity professor during my law degree and the man who gave me a place at my law school. What he drilled into me, and my fellow students (many of whom have done far more with their law degrees than me), is not simply to think about what the law is but to think about why it is the way it is and how it should be.

That combination of seeking to understand the “why” of what we’re looking at and to understand its underlying rationale isn’t limited to mens rea and unjust enrichment. It’s what our jobs are as lawyers. And, while I may not have attended enough lectures or wowed the examiners with my papers, that way of thinking about the world was drilled into my skull and I see it as a defining reason for any success I’ve had.

Tell us your two favorite songs on your summer music playlist.

“Good News” by Shaboozey—it’s a classic summery country-crossover and it feels like I’ve been hearing it everywhere.And given they’re back on tour this summer, I’ve been listening to “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis—a monumental classic.

Ben Goodchild of Paul, Weiss and his fiancée.

Photo Illustration: Jonathan Hurtarte/Bloomberg Law; Photo courtesy of Ben Goodchild