Dechert announced that Leonard Klingbaum and Jennifer Harris have joined the firm as partners. Both are practitioners in special situations finance, liability management, and distressed capital markets.
Klingbaum will lead Dechert’s new cross-disciplinary capital solutions team. The team will work across the firm’s capabilities in private credit, capital markets, private equity, and restructuring.
Klingbaum is based in New York, while Harris is based in Los Angeles. Their arrival strengthens Dechert’s bi-coastal presence and expands the firm’s ability to serve clients across East Coast and West Coast financial markets.
The team will advise asset managers, companies, and sponsors across the capital deployment spectrum. This includes financing strategy, direct lending, liability management, distressed M&A, and special situations transactions across the capital stack.
Klingbaum has extensive experience advising credit funds, direct lenders, and borrowers. His work includes event-driven and opportunistic financings, special situations transactions, liability management, workouts, restructurings, and insolvency matters.
Klingbaum’s experience spans lending, high-yield, and mezzanine transactions, from the lower-middle market to large-cap. He has been named by Forbes among “America’s Top 200 Lawyers” for 2024 and 2025 and has been ranked by Chambers USA and IFLR1000.
Harris focuses on credit opportunities, intercreditor relationships, and esoteric finance transactions. Her practice includes distressed and structured financing, liability management, workouts, DIP and exit financings, FILOs, second-lien financing, mezzanine financing, and special-situations lending across multiple industries.
The additions are part of a larger wave of lateral partner hiring at Dechert. The firm said it has added more than 45 lateral partners this year, including several restructuring partners.
Dechert said the hires reflect its strategy of deepening core strengths across litigation, investment management, finance and restructuring, capital markets and securitization, and mergers and acquisitions. The firm has long advised asset managers specializing in private credit.
Dechert works across private credit strategies including asset-based lending, distressed debt, permanent capital, direct lending, subordinated debt, specialty finance, special situations, and venture debt. The firm said more than 80% of Private Debt Investor’s top 100 private credit firms are clients.
Dechert has advised clients for more than 150 years. The firm serves clients across financial services, private capital, real estate, life sciences, and technology from offices in commercial centers worldwide.
KEY QUOTES:
“Attracting talent like Leonard and Jennifer is central to how we continue to meet our clients’ increasingly complex needs across a very sophisticated investment landscape. They are deeply respected across the industry and bring a breadth of experience and client relationships that will be incredibly additive to our platform.”
Mark Thierfelder, Co-Chair of Dechert
“Leonard and Jennifer bring a rare combination of capabilities that enable us to advise clients seamlessly across the full lifecycle of their investments, from deal origination through execution and beyond. They deepen our bench in New York and Los Angeles and position our practice to meet the growing scale and complexities of the market.”
Michael Poulos, Vice Chair and Global Head of Strategy at Dechert
“Dechert has built one of the premier platforms in the world serving asset managers and borrowers, and I am excited to join a firm with such exceptional talent, global reach and a strong client base. The opportunity to deepen the firm’s capital solutions capabilities alongside Jennifer, who brings exceptional experience, makes this a very exciting time, and we look forward to contributing to the firm’s continued momentum.”
Leonard Klingbaum, Partner at Dechert
