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Berry Appleman to test Houston market

San Francisco-based corporate immigration law firm, Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP has confirmed its plans to expand to Houston and Dallas. The firm which plans to open doors mid February is busy headhunting top immigration attorneys in the area to man its new offices. Shawn Orme will serve as managing partner of the Houston office, while Steven Ladik will be the managing partner in Dallas.

Dallas-based Jenkens & Gilchrist's entire staff, consisting of more than 40 attorneys, paralegals and staff will be part of Berry Appleman, making the latter's total head count shoot up to more than 200 employees in its San Francisco; McLean, VA; Dallas; and Houston offices.

The firm hopes to pipe up its immigration compliance practice with the new strength it acquired from the new senior-level professionals' recruitment into the firm. Stating this the firm's managing partner at BAL, Warren Leiden said the expertise and experience of the veterans will help the firm assist multinational companies bringing foreign employees into the U.S., sending American employees abroad or transferring employees between countries outside the U.S. manage a global workforce.

02-02-2007

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Skadden adds teeth to antitrust practice group

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP & Affiliates has raided law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft's antitrust practice. It has hired Cadwalader's top antitrust lawyer Steven Sunshine as partner, along with Jess Biggio also as partner, and Matthew P. Hendrickson as counsel. The trio, who had joined Cadwalader about two years ago, will work on Skadden's M&A and antitrust practice.

Sunshine, a former lawyer with the Department of Justice's antitrust division, advises on antitrust aspects of M&A. On his part, Sunshine said he joined Skadden because of its huge M&A practice as well as its well-known antitrust practice. His clients include big names like De Beers, Deutsche Bank, Watson Pharmaceuticals, etc. and will assist Skadden's group which is currently advising Nasdaq on the competition elements of its £2.7bn bid for the London Stock Exchange.

Some more associates are also expected to join Skadden from Cadwalader in the coming weeks. Skadden's firmwide antitrust competition group will total at 24 with the new additions. One of the top corporate law firm's in the United States, New York-based Skadden was established in 1948 and has about 1,750 lawyers. Its M&A group topped the U.S. deal rankings for 2006 closed deals worth a combined $540bn (£274bn).

02-02-2007

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McDermott Will & Emery heads for China

Chicago's McDermott Will & Emery is teaming up with Shanghai-based firm Yuan Da Law Offices to enter into the Chinese mainland. The first of its kind, this East-West alliance which materialized after 18-months of courtship entails client-sharing and providing legal counsel in their respective areas. However, as per the Chinese laws, the firms will not be able to share profits and must account separately for how they bills clients. According to Chinese laws, foreign law firms cannot directly practice Chinese laws, but can advise on the legal environment in an inexplicit way.

Though it wouldn't have access to its partner's coffer, the 100-lawyer firm McDermott will benefit indirectly by gaining access to the latter's clientele list. McDermott officials are happy that the firm will have a stronghold in the mainland through its partner's presence. The firms hope to cash in on the rising demand for cross-border legal services in areas like securities offerings, trade disputes, public offerings, and overseas acquisitions.

02-01-2007

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Foley & Lardner partners with LexisNexis for its IT needs

After reviewing a substantial amount of data centers for nine months, Foley & Lardner LLP has zeroed in on the LexisNexis data center in Dayton, OH, as its main systems hosting center. The law firm, which has 1,000 lawyers working in 17 U.S. and two global offices, felt the need for a round the clock data center to serve clients better, and eliminate the unaffordable downtime. LexisNexis' Dayton data center serves clients in more than a 100 countries and boasts more than 99.99 percent availability. The new system will provide Foley & Lardner's critical data, better management, and effective storage.

02-01-2007

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Veterans, lament firms, are getting a little scarce downtown!

Law firms who opened offices in Boston and strengthened practice areas with lateral muscles are increasingly finding further expansion getting tougher. The reason is, as per law.com, the intense competition between national and international firms in the area.

Firm seniors often lament the ostensibly endless period of negotiation while hiring lateral partners takes its toll on the office and practice areas which clients have to suffer for. Hence few recruiters try to arm-twist these haggling partners into agreeing with the bait of lucrative packages, which in turn sparks off another competition among the firms to hook onto the scarce local talent through pay packets. Irrespective of the paucity, firms like Philadelphia-based Pepper Hamilton and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal are latest in the line to have marched into Boston valiantly and set their mark in the area. For Pepper Hamilton, of counsel Leonard Schneidman joined the firm in Boston from Foley Hoag, while a partner and an associate mans Sonnenschein Nath's Boston fort. Both the firms' higher-ups are hopeful of strengthening their teams by this year-end.

Among the anglers who could fill in their catch-buckets, is DLA Piper who has caught four to make a total of 56, but wants more. It aims, according to Elliot Surkin, the firm's Boston office's managing partner, to regain its former stand of 125 names in the Boston roster. He believes this will be somewhat easy due to their reputation as a firm having its roots in the area. The newcomers, he opines, might find the task steep. Of the two Philadelphia-based law firms with offices in Boston, Duane Morris is yet to hire new partners account and is still stuck at 30. The firm still hopes to climb up to the 75 mark, and soon. The other, Wolf Block Schorr and Solis-Cohen, has four Boston partners and six associates.

However, the key to emerge a winner has been exemplified by firms like Greenberg Traurig. In its seventh year in Boston, the firm's roster has 80 heads. When asked about the attrition rate, recruiters from placement agencies like Kwatcher Legal Placement, or Sullivan Consulting Group Inc. opine that some firms retain their old hands through thick and thin. They go all out to work with the veterans at the firm, who are indecisive and are susceptible to get swayed to the lure of moolah. The bonuses then fly high in such cases, they remarked, sometimes reaching figures like $100,000 and $150,000.

01-31-2007

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Greenberg Traurig bolsters real estate practice in NY

Greenberg Traurig, LLP, has announced several appointments to its New York real estate department. Craig H. Solomon, Gary S. Kleinman, Howard R. Shapiro, Joseph D. D'Angelo, Nicole Fenton, Howard Schochet, Dana Gallo, and Andrew Kellner, along with a number of associates, have joined the firm's New York real estate practice, which now has more than 65 lawyers. The move already seems to have borne fruit, since the law firm has negotiated some of the largest deals in the history of the real estate industry. A full-service law firm with more than 1,600 attorneys, Greenberg Traurig is ranked seventh on The American Lawyer's AmLaw 100 listing of the largest law firms in the U.S., based on number of lawyers.

01-31-2007

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McDonald Hopkins annexes Chicago firm

Chicago-based 13-lawyer firm Harris Kessler & Goldstein merged operations with Cleveland-based 120-attorney regional law firm McDonald Hopkins. The merger will fulfill McDonald Hopkins' ambition to accommodate its expanding Midwest clientele. The merger adds 13 Harris Kessler's employees to McDonald Hopkins roster, besides its existing 95 attorneys in Cleveland alone. With the move, McDonald Hopkins gained a foothold in the financial center of the Midwest.

Meanwhile, the new Chicago office will be looked after by Steve Harris, Rick Kessler and John Goldstein who will also continue to serve with the same personalized services in corporate law, healthcare, real estate, estate planning, and commercial litigation. McDonald Hopkins' attorneys concentrate in all aspects of business law, litigation, business restructuring, and estate planning matters.

McDonald Hopkins President Joseph LoPresti stated that the firm's merger was part of the move to "push deeper into the Midwest by striking acquisition deals". The recent move follows the firm's acquiring of Detroit auto industry law firm Linedahl Gross Lievois earlier in January 2006. In addition to Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit, the firm has offices in Columbus and West Palm Beach, FL.

01-30-2007

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