Launched in early 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Glenn Agre has since grown to roughly 40 lawyers with offices in New York and San Francisco and developed a significant reputation for changing outcomes in high-stakes restructurings. Building on the founding partners’ formidable skills in bankruptcy and trial lawyering and evolving to embrace new talent and technological innovation, the firm is forging a path into the future as a premier litigation and trial firm.

Glenn Agre Managing Partner Andrew K. Glenn spoke with Turnarounds & Workouts about the firm’s journey over the last five years. He cited the long-standing relationships between the founding partners as key to Glenn Agre’s early success. “A personal partnership makes a business partnership exponentially stronger,” he said. “Trust is the true foundation of this firm. The friendship among the founding partners has allowed us to weather the inevitable ups and downs of a startup in a way I don’t think a group of strangers could.”

Andrew noted that the firm grew in strength by recruiting excellent new legal talent. “The lateral associate candidates we attract are among the best that Big Law has to offer,” he said. He also explained how Glenn Agre developed its reputation for creditor-side work through a series of major wins: “The common thread across all of these is that we don’t just participate in cases, we change outcomes.”

While nurturing the next generation of litigators, the firm also invests in the industry’s technological future, using AI for fact-intensive tasks. “AI eliminates one of the primary distinctions between a firm like ours and a 1,000-lawyer firm,” Andrew said.

Looking forward, Andrew said the firm’s priorities include expanding debtor-side work (where AI is expected to reduce labor intensity), building broader transactional capabilities, continuing organic growth, and deepening cross-border work. “The era of the five-year, billion dollar Chapter 11 is probably over,” he noted. “We’re well positioned for a world that rewards nimbleness and cost-effectiveness.”

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