Dechert Adds Leonard Klingbaum and Jennifer Harris as Partners, Launches Cross-Disciplinary Capital Solutions Team

Dechert LLP has recruited Leonard Klingbaum and Jennifer Harris as partners, creating a new Cross-Disciplinary Capital Solutions Team that consolidates the firm's capabilities in special situations finance, liability management, and distressed capital markets. Klingbaum will lead the team. The announcement, made from New York on June 29, 2026, positions Dechert to compete on the full arc of stressed and distressed credit work, from early-stage liability management through restructuring execution.

The Lateral Hires

Both Klingbaum and Harris arrive with established practices in the same specialized corner of the capital markets. The source describes them as leading practitioners across special situations finance, liability management, and distressed capital markets — three areas that increasingly overlap as companies reach for out-of-court solutions before formal restructuring proceedings become necessary. Hiring two practitioners with overlapping but complementary profiles, rather than a single lateral, suggests Dechert is building a team with genuine depth rather than a marquee name attached to a thin bench.

The Strategic Logic

Law firms competing in the distressed and liability management space have spent recent years assembling cross-disciplinary groups that can advise on the full capital structure simultaneously. A team that can move across debt instruments, negotiation strategy, and market execution in parallel is better positioned to handle the complexity of modern liability management transactions, which often involve multiple creditor classes and competing legal theories across tight timelines. Naming Klingbaum to head the new group gives the team a single accountable point of contact for clients evaluating which firm can actually coordinate across those disciplines.

What It Signals for Dechert

The firm is making an explicit structural commitment, not simply adding headcount to an existing practice. Launching the group under a distinct team name — Capital Solutions — signals that Dechert intends to market it as a standalone capability to corporate borrowers, private credit funds, and their counterparties. Whether the team can originate its own deal flow or will depend on cross-referrals from Dechert's broader corporate and finance practice will be the operative question as the group builds its client roster.