Littler Mendelson to Merge with Cleveland Boutique

Friday, December 22, 2006

San Francisco based firm Littler Mendelson approaches merger agreement with Cleveland boutique Duvin, Cahn & Hutton. Duvin is presently a 47-lawyer labor and employment boutique; the merger with Littler will create a combined firm with 585 lawyers in 39 offices and could become one of the country’s 100 top-grossing law firms. In 2005, Littler posted revenues of $199.5 million, making it the 105th top-grossing firm in the country, according to the annual Am Law 200 survey. Mrkonich said the firm expects to post in excess of $225 million in 2006. Littler has grown into a national firm over the years, having added more than 100 lawyers since last year as well as new offices in Kansas City, Orange County and Fayetteville, Ark.
Source: www.law.com

Tags:  Littler Mendelson P.C.

Nixon Peabody Gains CA Boutique

Friday, December 22, 2006

Nixon Peabody acquired a four-lawyer Century City, California, boutique, gaining two partners with expertise in video games and new media transactions. The lawyers from Offner & Anderson will join Nixon’s 18-lawyer downtown Los Angeles office and bring all of their clients with them. Daniel Offner and David Anderson come aboard as partners and the firm’s two other lawyers as associates. In the past two years, the LA office has grown from two to 22 attorneys.
Source: www.law.com

Tags:  Nixon Peabody LLP | Los Angeles

Thelen Reid’s New London Office

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner announced the opening of its first European office – a four-lawyer branch in London. The new office will focus largely on real estate finance and will be staffed by lawyers from the firm’s U.S. offices. The announcement comes after the Dec. 1 merger between Thelen Reid & Priest and New York-based Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner. The new office will be the second international office for Thelen Reid, who already has a location in Shanghai as well.
Source: www.law.com

Tags:  New York

Arent Fox Heading West

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Arent Fox makes its presence known in California with Tuesday’s takeover of Los Angeles-based, litigation boutique O’Brien Abeles. This is the first expansion for the Washington firm since they closed four offices starting in 1993, keeping open only the D.C. and NY headquarters. Besides O’Brien Ables’ nine lawyers, Arent Fox is also adding two new attorneys and relocating two others to the CA office. Arent Fox’s revenue was up 7.7 percent last year, grossing $153 million in revenue with 260 lawyers.
Source: www.law.com

Tags:  ArentFox Schiff LLP | Los Angeles

Duane Morris Opens in Baltimore

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Duane Morris recently opened a Baltimore, MD office adding three partners and one of counsel formerly of DLA Piper. The new attorneys will focus on corporate practice group, handling venture capital and private equity work, mergers and acquisitions and securities law work. The new office will be comprised of Jay Gordon Cohen, Keli Isaacson, Wilbert Sirota as chairman, and George Nemphos as managing partner.
Source: www.nylawyer.com

Tags:  Duane Morris LLP

Latham & Watkins Ventures to Spain

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Latham & Watkins announced Monday that they will open offices in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain on Jan. 1. Chairman and managing partner, Robert Dell, expects to have six to eight lawyers in the new offices for the new year. The openings expands Latham’s European holdings to 10 offices. These branches will focus on mergers & acquisitions and private equity deals.
Source: www.law.com

Tags:  Latham & Watkins LLP

Fried Frank’s New Hong Kong Office

Monday, December 18, 2006

New York firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson announced that they will be opening a new office in Hong Kong. Nine partners from Simmons & Simmons of Britain have been recruited to move to this new office, along with 20 associates and six Fried Frank partners from the U.S. and Britain. This office opening comes four years after the proposed merger between Fried Frank and London’s Ashurst Morris Crisp. The merger would have been the first trans-Atlantic merger of firms of equal size, practice strength and profitability. But after over a year of no decisions, discussions of the deal ended in May 2003. Since then, Fried Frank has been expanding internationally on its own; its London office hosts 49 lawyers, Paris is home to 30, and the firm opened an office in Frankfurt in 2004.
Source: www.nylawyer.com

Tags:  Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP | Hong Kong

Kirkpatrick Lockhart & Preston Gates Merge

Friday, December 15, 2006

Pittsburgh’s Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham and Seattle’s Preston Gates & Ellis are set to merge, effective Jan. 1. The new 1,400 attorney firm will be named Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis. Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, the larger of the two, has about 1,000 lawyers in offices in Pittsburgh, Washington D.C. and London, and New York. Preston Gates & Ellis has offices throughout the Northwest, in Asia and in Washington, D.C.
Source: www.nylawyer.com

Tags:  K&L Gates LLP | New York

Asian Expansion for Bingham McCutchen

Thursday, December 14, 2006

A month after the announcement of the opening of a Hong Kong office, Bingham McCutchen plans to also open an office in Tokyo with 22 lawyers. The firm’s focus in Tokyo will be on its global restructuring practice. xJapan is the second-largest legal market in Asia for American attorneys, according to The National Law Journal. There are nearly twice as many attorneys there as there were in 2000 — but still remains much less than China — at 470 U.S.-based attorneys. The U.S. firm with the largest Japanese office is Morrison & Foerster, which opened in Tokyo in 1987 and now has more than 80 attorneys.
Source: www.law.com

Tags:  Tokyo

New Partners at Mayer Brown

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Mawe named 26 new partners effective Jan. 1. Six of the new partners are in New York. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has also recently promoted three attorneys to the partnership.
Source: www.nylawyer.com

Tags:  Mayer Brown LLP | New York