When the financial crisis began in 2007, Matt Browndorf launched a private equity fund. It was a move that, in theory, didn’t seem like the best idea on paper, but the venture ended up launching Browndorf to his next step—running his own business law firm. “When I was in the process of winding down the fund in 2011, two of my core investors said they thought I was a brilliant lawyer and would like to be my next two legal clients,” Browndorf says.
Browndorf hadn’t planned to go back into law. Before the fund, launched as Browndorf Private Equity, he was a high-profile East Coast attorney working for industry heavyweights such as Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney and Bryan Cave. A specialist in the use of technology in the courtroom, Browndorf worked on some of his era’s biggest cases, including latex glove and tobacco litigation. But it was Browndorf’s last case, defending former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, that drove him into a different industry. “The case lasted three years, from 2002 to 2005, and I burned out,” he says. “It was 18 hours a day, every single day, including Saturdays and Sundays. I asked myself, ‘Do I really want to do this with my life?’”
However, when his clients presented the opportunity to work for them as outside counsel, a transition back into law made sense since Browndorf had the opportunity to do things his own way. “It was just about me, hanging my own shingle,” he says.