Newt Gingrich will join Dentons law firm as a globe-trotting “thought leader,” in the words of the firm’s CEO.
The former U.S. House speaker joins as Dentons completes its merger with Atlanta powerhouse McKenna, Long and Aldridge.
Gingrich, a Republican who represented Georgia in Congress for 20 years and ran unsuccessfully for president in 2012, will join Dentons’ public policy and regulation practice June 1. That is also the target date to complete the firms’ merger, said Dentons Global Chief Executive Elliott Portnoy, though some technical problems could delay that.
Gingrich will advise clients across the globe on “how they can position their business to thrive and navigate the intersection of regulatory, policy and business hurdles,” Portnoy told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday. Dentons is now the largest law firm in the world, with 6,600 employees in 50 countries.
“There’s a certain natural interest in a globalized firm that understands the importance of two really unique things,” Gingrich told the AJC.
“One is how do you think about global companies and global issues?” he said. “Second, how do you realize the actual action point is local? The actual application of the law in the end always comes down to a geographic point.”
McKenna Long has long had a political bent, and the Dentons merger creates a lengthy roster of former officeholders, appointees and aides from both parties.
It has a pair of former presidential candidates in Gingrich and Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont who also was chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Gordon Giffin was U.S. ambassador to Canada and now leads the firm’s U.S. public policy and regulation practice.
The firm also is home to plenty of Georgia politicos, including former state House Speaker Mark Burkhalter, former U.S. Rep. Buddy Darden and Eric Tanenblatt, a former George H.W. Bush administration official who is a major Republican fundraiser in Atlanta.
Gingrich, an avowed futurist, said he was especially interested in Dentons' new technology initiative. In addition to his duties at Dentons, he said he is working on a movie about George Washington and a novel about global terrorism.
Since leaving Congress in 1998, Gingrich built an array of businesses known as "Newt Inc." that made him a multimillionaire before large parts of it collapsed during his presidential bid without Gingrich at the helm. Since his presidential race, Gingrich has kept up Gingrich Productions — buoyed by children's books written by his wife, Callista — and was a host on CNN's short-lived "Crossfire" revival.
Gingrich said he would be “cheerfully commenting” on the 2016 race but not joining it.
In so doing, he gave a pitch against limiting who can participate in the Republican debates. Gingrich’s own campaign was buoyed by his debate performances — particularly when he won the South Carolina primary — and he said that even though there could be 16 Republican candidates by the first debate in August, all should get a shot.
“I don’t know how you do it early on, but I’m very much concerned that we don’t have either the news media or the party institutions kill people before they even get a chance to see the voters,” Gingrich said. “The American people should decide which candidates are real, not some formula designed by people to see the best-known.”
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