Elizabeth Temple, better known to her family, friends and colleagues as “Betty,” has spent her entire 25-year legal career with the same firm. That is, after the firm she first worked for merged with Womble Carlyle nearly two decades ago. A long-time corporate and securities partner and head of the firm’s Public Company Advisors Team, she was recently elected to chair the 550-attorney firm, which has 14 offices in seven states.
Temple
Temple, who practices in the Atlanta and Greenville, South Carolina offices, is the first woman elected to serve as Womble Carlyle’s chairperson, the youngest chair in the firm’s 140-year history and the first chair based outside of Womble’s original office in Winston-Salem. Her term as chair is set to begin Jan. 1, 2016.
Temple has held various leadership positions within the firm and said she hopes to use the leadership skills she has attained along the way to guide the firm and its clients to greater growth and success.
After earning her undergraduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1986, Temple attended UNC School of Law. After earning her law degree, she went to work for Parker, Johnson, Cook & Dunlevie in Atlanta before the firm became part of Womble Carlyle in 1996.
After seven years as an associate, Temple made partner and has been part of the corporate and securities practice group from day one.
Temple has been married to her husband, Rob, for eight years and has three children, including an adoptive daughter—Rob’s biological daughter—whose mother died of a rare form of cancer.
LW: Tell me about how you decided to become a lawyer.
BT: I’ve always been interested in being a lawyer. In high school I talked about going to law school, but I don’t really think I knew much about what a lawyer did, except what I saw on TV. Which, by the way, is not at all what I do every day as a lawyer because they don’t really make too many interesting TV shows about corporate M&A deals. I’ve always loved research and writing and negotiating and I’ve always loved business. I grew up in Gastonia, North Carolina, and my dad was an entrepreneur and had a successful business, and I always loved hearing about business and how things work. I remember hearing him on the phone on calls to Japan and to Europe and was always extremely interested in business. So, I think what happened was, I didn’t really know how you went into business so I decided I wanted to go to law school because my dad used to always work with lawyers.
LW: How did you decide your were going to specialize in corporate transactions?
BT: I never really had strong desire to be in court or to be a criminal attorney or even a litigator. It was never really my cup of tea. When I was a summer associate I sort of got an opportunity to see what it was like. Parker Johnson had a summer associate program where you did all kinds of different work for different departments … and I really did gravitate more toward the corporate attorney and just working with businesses, helping them grow, helping their businesses succeed and that was a lot more attractive to me than spending my days sending nastygrams back and forth and arguing. The thought of going and arguing a case – which is thrilling for many people – just wasn’t attractive to me.
LW: What does it feel like to be elected chair of such a big firm?
BT: It’s great. It’s been exciting. I’ve been in management before … and key positions in the firm. And I’ve been here my whole career so I know everybody really well. It’s not like a company where they’ll hire a CEO from the outside who has to come in and learn the company and learn the people — I know the company really well and I know our business really well, so it’s been really exciting. What’s really been fun is having the opportunity to sort of look at things fresh and look for places where I can make my mark and do things differently just because I’m a different person.
LW: How does it feel to be the first woman chosen to lead Womble Carlyle?
BT: I think it’s part of the territory. [Being a woman] is something that everybody’s focused on and I think that’s great. It’s good to be a role model for women who are going into the profession. I have young children and I’m married and I think that’s great, but I think it’s important to have great vision for the firm, and leadership, and I think that’s what’s really important.
LW: What are some of the challenges you see Womble Carlyle facing and how do you plan to face them?
BT: I think this is a time for pretty significant change in the legal industry coming out of the Great Recession in 2009. Really, since then, the market really has transformed and we’re seeing that not only is it very competitive for clients, but for talent, for great lawyers and great people. There’s more and more competition for lawyers with the best experience and who have geat practices … speaking for our 14 offices, one good thing is, we’re in a great market. I think our firm is well-positioned in the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic. We’re in markets that are largely predicted to grow pretty dramatically in the next couple of decades, but even with that growth there are challenges ahead. I think clients really want value out of their outside service providers, and lawyers fit right in there. They want to make sure that at the end of the day they’re receiving value for the significant cost of outside legal assistance. We’re always trying to make sure that we’re keeping up with, if not ahead of, our clients. They’re sophisticated … and their needs are constantly changing as the economy grows and technologies change. It’s a challenge for all firms to grow and keep great talent. At the end of the day, you want to be there for them and help them with their success and you have to have the people to make that happen.
LW: How would you describe the corporate culture of Womble Carlyle, and what sets it apart from other firms?
BT: We have always had very clear core values: integrity, devotion to clients and respect for the individual. And it’s always in that order and we talk about them all the time. We really believe in that and I think our clients see it. I think it’s best embodied in the teamwork we use when we service a client. Our clients tend to be middle-market, public and private companies, and it really requires a team … it’s not just one lawyer who can meet their needs and teamwork is not easy for lawyers many times. It takes a bit of sharing credit and accolades and, on the flip side, responsibility and accountability. And I think we work very hard to create an enormous amount of teamwork and the thing that really sets Womble Carlyle apart is that while we’re a 500-plus attorney firm with 14 offices … we really do operate as one firm … I’m in Greenville, South Carolina and we may have 30 attorneys but when I’m working with a client, I feel like I’m an office of 500 attorneys. I have associates who work directly for me who aren’t even in the state … it’s really seamless and we’ve been doing it for so long and so well that it’s just become sort of natural and that’s really an exceptional thing, I’ve discovered. Because of that one-firm mentality I really do believe we can deliver a better value and more services to our clients because we’re not limited by geography. That’s the Womble way and it’s just natural.
LW: How do you see the legal profession changing in the next decade or so?
BT: I think there’s going to be a wave of consolidation. I think that firms are going to tend to pursue a path of growth one way or the other … and I predict this year is going to be a big year for law firms’ consolidation because it’s harder and harder to find great talent. There’s a demographic component to that … you know, you think about the baby boomers and they’re retiring. There’s a big wave of that and a lot of law firms feel like you really need to be bigger … to thrive in the future. I think there’s going to be a lot of mergers and consolidations of law firms. Also, I think you’re going to see more and more specialization—firms more focused on specializing the services they provide to clients. It’s going to be very hard for large firms that are generalists to survive. There’s been a very big trend in my world toward particular associates — but also partners — going in-house. I see middle-market public companies and private companies increasing their number of in-house counsel and the work that they actually send to outside counsel tends to be more specialized work. For example, they’re probably less likely to send out general corporate work but they definitely need an SEC expert to do their stock offering Or, they need an environmental expert to do an environmental issue because they’re not going to be able to staff that inside as well as they can use outside resources. So, I see a trend toward specialization. Or, at least, the smart firms will be doing that because that’s where the work is going to be. I think that clients are looking for law firms that have experts but they also understand where the value proposition is and where you need to have a partner doing the work versus an associate, and just looking more closely at how you staff a matter, how you deliver the services, who’s doing what and I think clients are really very educated on all of that more so than ever before and they will demand value and service.
LW: Your life sounds like a busy one. What do you do with whatever free time you have?
BT: We live in Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina, on a horse farm. My husband actually works in New York City and commutes back and forth, so we are very busy. But we have a horse farm that we run. We live in a 1904 restored farm house and my husband and I and my kids are very much into history and art and architecture, so we’ve restored our house. We’re actually building a carriage house with historic materials — all the materials are antique materials. We collect antiques. My husband loves military history, and I do too. Our kids are active in every single sport you can imagine. My husband works for a media company in the sports business, so we’re all rabid sport fans. And we both went to Chapel Hill and are big Tar Heel fans, so we go to our share of Carolina games, as well.
Follow Heath Hamacher on Twitter @SCLWHamacher