Beard to Head State’s Biggest Law Firm

Ronald S. Beard has been selected as chairman of the executive and management committees of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the Los Angeles-based law firm.

Beard will succeed Norman B. Barker in the five-year term on April 1.

The move makes Beard, 51, the equivalent of chairman and chief executive of the firm--and nominally the top lawyer on the West Coast.

The 738-lawyer firm is the largest in California and the fourth-largest in the country.

Beard, senior partner in Gibson Dunn’s corporations department and head of its international group, has served on the firm’s management committee since 1983.

He joined the firm in 1964 after his graduation from Yale Law School.

Elected as vice chairmen of the firm were Robert E. Cooper, 51, a senior partner in the firm’s litigation department in Los Angeles, and Wesley G. Howell Jr., 52, partner-in-charge of the firm’s New York office.

Barker, 62, will continue as a senior partner in the firm’s tax department and as a member of the executive committee.

Under Barker, Gibson Dunn “had the five best years the firm has had ever,” said Cooper, doubling revenues, increasing profits and expanding its international operations.

However, Beard faces the challenge of continuing the firm’s growth in a recessionary economy coupled with a sharp decline in business from the mega-mergers and acquisitions that fueled profit increases in the 1980s.

As at many other large law firms, Gibson Dunn’s revenue growth slowed last year while partnership profits fell.