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None of Dipo Ashiru’s childhood friends can believe he became a lawyer. In fact, he’s kind of surprised about it himself. It’s not because Ashiru doesn’t have the personality, skills, or aptitude for it—he does. It’s because Ashiru was once very certain he would become a doctor.
Ashiru partially attributes his former goal to a combination of family expectations and innate curiosity. He grew up in Nigeria as one of five siblings eager to please parents by pursuing respected and lucrative careers. As his older siblings took accounting, architecture, and aerospace engineering, a coveted spot as physician remained.
As the son of an entomologist, Ashiru was fascinated by the natural world. He dutifully enrolled into biology and premed classes only to experience academic fatigue in his senior year as eight combined years of medical school and residency loomed. He took the LSAT to reflect and buy himself time to figure life out but received something more: a high score that suddenly put top law schools within reach.
The young student was already accustomed to studying at top schools. He attended a rigorous military boarding school at age eleven, moved to Norway at sixteen on a scholarship to complete an international baccalaureate program, and got another full ride to study biology and political science at Franklin & Marshall College. For his juris doctor, he chose Columbia Law School. The esteemed institution counts three US Chief Justices among its graduates.
His upbringing taught Ashiru the values of hard work and perseverance as he learned to be a self-sufficient problem-solver. Few of his Columbia classmates grew up navigating daily power outages, carrying buckets of water home on their heads, and ironing their own school uniforms.
After his first year of law school, Ashiru remained uncertain about his future. “I believed I could use a law degree to do something good for the world, but I needed to find out what and how,” he says. The desire compelled the ambitious student to try public interest law clinics, where he helped domestic violence victims, housing court petitioners, and political asylum seekers.
Gibson Dunn is a leading global law firm, advising clients on significant transactions and disputes around the world. With more than 1,900 lawyers spanning twenty-one offices and dozens of practice areas, we operate as a unified whole.
Our global M&A practice, ranked by Chambers USA as “Elite,” is built on over 130 years of partnering with our clients to fulfill their business objectives through opportunistic acquisitions and timely dispositions. Our exceptional team has been recognized by Legal 500 for their “large M&A” deals. Our lawyers are dedicated to legal strategies that are meticulously tailored to every matter. This level of service is imbedded in the firm’s culture, with one M&A client commenting “the Gibson Dunn team is very practical and business oriented. They understand what matters most.”
Instead of finding his niche, Ashiru grew jaded about the glacial pace of change within broken systems. He sampled corporate law at Debevoise as a 2L and accidentally found his way to private equity funds where he fell in love with the complex negotiations and investment partnership dynamics.
As he built his career, Ashiru developed a new goal: to become a general counsel. Knowing that he needed to make considerable sacrifices to put himself in the right position, he left the law firm environment to broaden his legal skills. First stop was KKR, a large private equity firm and later TCW, a respected asset manager.
After six years as associate general counsel at the TCW Group, Ashiru was ready for a lead role. Following several attempts, he found success. Ashiru joined Veritas Capital as general counsel and chief compliance officer in 2021.
Ashiru stepped into his new role and felt like a rookie lawyer again, working sixteen to eighteen hours a day. But he relished the “rare and special” opportunity to build his own legal team.
He first hired a transactional lawyer to support Veritas’s complex deals. Then, he brought in a compliance director. After adding a few support staff positions and aligning outside counsel to his vision, Ashiru rounded out his “team of eight superstars” by bringing in his last hire: a private funds lawyer. “Complementarity and redundancy are important on any team,” he says. “No single person is so important that the firm can’t function without them.”
John Pollack, partner, private equity co-chair of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, recognizes Ashiru’s significant contributions to Veritas. “Veritas prides itself on excellence, deal speed, and great decision-making,” he says. “No surprise that Dipo is a perfect fit. It’s a pleasure to work with him—he pushes us to provide the best service we can.”
Today, Ashiru and his team are supporting an entrepreneurial-minded enterprise undergoing rapid growth. Veritas recently launched its own broker-dealer and has over $40 billion in assets under management. As a perennial top performer in a competitive landscape, for Veritas to continue to deliver exceptional returns as it expands, its attorneys will have to do more than simply provide sound legal support.
Ashiru and his team are putting the proper protocols in place to guide Veritas in its ongoing evolution as it adopts generative AI, launches new products, automates formerly manual processes, anticipates cyberthreats, and operates in an ever-shifting regulatory landscape.
For others who share Ashiru’s leadership ambitions, his advice is simple. “Expand your skills, grow your networks, know where you’re weak, and communicate well,” he says. “You don’t have to be an expert in everything, but you do have to know where to find every answer.”
Almost three years into his role, Ashiru is thriving. He says Veritas Capital should get a lot of credit for that. “I hire really good people and then get out of their way, and I’ve benefitted from like-minded colleagues who prioritize excellence and rely on me to deliver and lead,” he explains. Ashiru’s approach? He ingratiates himself to his fellow leaders by trying to solve the problems that bother them the most each day.
As the largest, most active private investment funds practice of any law firm in the world, Kirkland’s Investment Funds Group is the market leader in full-service legal advisory services to investment fund sponsors and global investors. The group has attorneys operating out of sixteen cities in major financial centers—and deep teams in all complementary practice areas—enabling Kirkland to serve private equity firms with complex transactions around the world.
Kirkland clients benefit from world class global regulatory advice and a full suite of specialists in every specialty from fund-level credit facilities to secondaries to succession planning, ESG, and more. In the last five years, Kirkland has advised clients on over 1,900 funds closed and, in process, exceeded $2.17 trillion in total commitments—more than any other law firm globally. Our clients range from renowned private equity firms to emerging managers, and the firm has a long-standing commitment to representing more middle-market and smaller managers than any other law firm. We also benefit from world-class lawyers who are specialists in almost every asset class within the private fund formation universe.
“Dipo is a force. He is a dynamic and collaborative leader and mentor who brings his remarkable energy and commitment to every endeavor,” says Nicole Washington, P.C., partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. “He is a pragmatic problem-solver, a skilled consensus-builder, and an accomplished strategist. It has been incredible to watch Dipo grow and develop the talented legal team at Veritas. My colleagues and I have been fortunate to work alongside Dipo and his amazing team, and we look forward to seeing all of their continued successes and accomplishments under Dipo’s leadership.”
At work, at home, or anywhere in between, Ashiru is finding ways to make a difference. Whether serving on the Prison Fellowship Board of Directors—an organization that provides resources for and restores prisoners, their families, and others impacted by incarceration—or serving meals to the homeless as a volunteer with City Relief.
Last year, Fortune listed Veritas CEO Ramzi Musallam among its twenty-one most powerful players shaping the $8 trillion private equity industry. Musallam has taken the firm’s managed assets from $2 billion to $40 billion. Veritas recently finished a deal to acquire Syneos Health and closed its eighth flagship fund with commitments topping $10.5 billion. As more players focus on software and technology-enabled solutions, Musallam and others are predicting big things for Veritas in 2024 and beyond. Ashiru and his team are ready to keep the organization moving forward.
“We are proud to work closely with Dipo and his colleagues at Veritas Capital. Dipo is a pleasure to work with. We particularly appreciate his thoughtful and practical approach to challenging legal and regulatory matters.”
–Scott Freling, Partner
