Withers bets on hybrid art law-advisory model with hire of Frank Lord

The international law firm Withers has hired renowned art lawyer Frank Lord from independent practice to join its expanding hybrid art law-advisory team as senior counsel.

With Lord’s arrival, Withers is advancing a model that blends legal strategy with art-world fluency, responding to clients who increasingly need advice that reaches beyond traditional contract work.

Working with art and artifacts requires a different approach than traditional law, Lord told Urgent Matter. He has found that what clients often need even more than traditional legal advice is guidance in navigating the complex situations that can arise when buying or owning artwork.

Lord pointed to the rise of attention to Nazi-looted artworks and restitution, which requires attention to the ownership history, or the provenance, of artworks. He said he has worked with some of the best provenance researchers in the world, whom he can deal with differently than other lawyers because of his background as a historian.

“I understand how to write history. I understand how to evaluate historical evidence. I understand how to link or not link things together, because I spent more than a decade being trained to do that,” Lord said.

“If you have an object that's worth tens of millions of dollars that potentially has a provenance problem, you need the very best people looking at it, and you need people who understand what it is to go into an archive and dig through the documents and find what you need.”

His hiring follows the recent arrival of Mari-Claudia Jiménez, the former chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, who joined Withers as a partner to lead its art and advisory practice. Jiménez brings top-tier auction-house leadership and years of dealmaking experience.

Lord comes from a different direction. He spent a decade studying art history and earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before moving into law. The pair previously worked together in the Art Law Group at Herrick, Feinstein LLP, before Jiménez left for Sotheby’s executive suite.

“That's not the kind of experience that the attorneys who work in the same corner of art law that we do have. They just don't,” Lord said.

“I think, and Mari-Claudia believes also, that to serve our clients in the best way, we really need to understand the objects and the passion collectors bring to the objects and why the objects are important. I don't think it is enough just to be able to do a competent contract.”

Lord said that when he first entered the field as an art lawyer, he learned from the old guard that helped establish art law as a practice. At the time, there were only a handful of practicing art lawyers—a number that remains tight-knit, even as the field has broadened.

“Mari-Claudia and I were trained by extraordinary lawyers, and they were pioneers. They came along at a time when art law as a field was developing, but they came into it almost by accident. They didn't intend to be art lawyers. They didn't have backgrounds in art or art history,” Lord said.

“As the next generation, what's changing is that there are people now like me and Mari-Claudia who learned from those people, who were mentored by those people who are now bringing an additional layer of knowledge and expertise to the work.”

Since entering art law, Lord has represented a range of clients from collectors and dealers to auction houses and museums on art transactions, loan agreements, insurance and intellectual property matters, as well as disputes related to artworks.

Among his successes, Lord has helped place artworks in institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He has also advised his clients on the sale of hundreds of works at auction in the United States and abroad.

When Lord was asked if such hybrid law-advisory teams are becoming a trend in the art world, he replied that it couldn’t really become a widespread trend because of how unique his and Jiménez’s backgrounds are.

“You can't go out and hire somebody with the same skill set because they don't exist,” Lord said. “So, that is what we bring to the table, and that's what we bring to the table together, more importantly.”

The pair also announced they have hired Sarina Taylor to join the team from Milbank. Taylor is a former Christie's specialist in Asian 20th-century and contemporary art.