Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton has launched a Global Climate Change practice headed by partners Randolph Visser and M. Elizabeth McDaniel. This practice group will counsel and advocate for clients impacted by climate change regulation. Visser is a part of the Construction, Environmental, Real Estate and Land Use Litigation practice group in the firm’s Los Angeles office. He focuses on environmental compliance, government contracts counseling and environmental enforcement defense and administrative and judicial litigation. McDaniel is a member of the same practice group, but works in the San Francisco office. She is a litigator, and specializes in environmental and real estate issues and California’s Proposition 65. Along with Visser and McDaneil, partners Polly Towill and Stephen J. O’Neil will head the litigation side of the practice. The new practice group will operate out of most of Sheppard Mullin’s offices, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., San Diego and Shanghai.
Source: www.marketwire.com
California salary increases continue as Chicago firm Winston & Strawn is the latest to bump up starting pay to $160,000. The firm has about 70 associates in its San Francisco and Los Angeles offices. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld also applied the NY scale to its CA offices and its D.C. headquarters. Cooley Godward Kronish also increased first-year salariess firmwide to the $160K pay scale.
Source: www.nylawyer.com
Steefel, Levitt & Weiss has lost five more attorneys from its San Francisco land use practice. Partner L. Elizabeth Strahlstrom has joined Bingham McCutchen’s land use and development practice. Associates William Fleishhacker, Miriam Montesinos, Alexis Pelosi and Elizabeth Sibbett followed their fomer Steefel Levitt bosses, partners Judy Davidoff and Arthur Friedman, to Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. Davidoff and Friedman joined Sheppard Mullin on April 2. Steefel Levin’s San Francisco office has lost six partners in the last year, and the attorney counts stands at 40, down from 80 in 2000.
Source: www.nylawyer.com
Less than a month after Stoel Rives announced its plans to close its San Francisco office, environmental and natural resources litigator Sandi Nichols has left to join Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis. Allen Matkins has about 200 attorneys practicing in six California offices. Stoel Rives plans to relocate the 14 other lawyers from San Fran to other offices. The firm specializes in land use and real estate practices, and has nine offices on the West Coast.
Source: www.nylawyer.com
In San Francisco, Covington & Burling has hired Tammy Albarran as a special counsel and Jason Zoladz as an associate. Albarran comes from Morrison & Foerster and Zoladz comes from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Sony Barrai has joined Schiff Hardin’s San Fran office as an intellectual property associate. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman has added Liane Randolph as a counsel in the Sacramento office; she will practice political law.
Source: www.nylawyer.com
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe announced on Thursday, May 3 that it would be increasing its first-year associates’ pay in all California offices except for Sacramento. The pay raise to $160,000 matches the raise that the firm already made in New York and Washington, D.C. During the frenzy of raises earlier this year, most firms only raised CA salaries to $145,000, though some like Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges went up to $160,000. Speculation abounds whether other big name California firms like Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher or Latham & Watkins will also bump up their salaries. On the other hand, for more middle-market firms that matched NY salaries, the chances are less likely that they will all make another raise in California.
Source: www.law.com
This week Bingham McCutchen acquired 40-lawyer L.A. litigation firm Alschuler Grossman. Name partner and legal powerhouse, Marshall Grossman, had wanted to join up with a national firm for over a year, and discussions finally started in November. Alschuler’s former name partners Stanton Stein and Robert Kahan, on the other hand, did not want to go national, and so on Jan. 1 they left with 35 lawyers to form Dreier, Stein & Kahan. The merger is beneficial for both firms as Bingham was weak in litigation, and Alschuler found itself lacking a corporate componenet when Stein and Kahan departed. Bingham now has more resources for expansion in Southern California; with three acquistions in California over the past five years, the firm is growing significantly in the Sunshine State.
Source: www.law.com
After hiring an 18-lawyer capital markets team from Kilpatrick Stockton, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal has opened an office in Charlotte, NC. John Suhr, Jonathan Nugent and James Tucker all joined Sonnenschein as partners, along with counsels Linde Carley and Keith Jones, and 13 associates. The partners, who will be heading Sonnenschein’s capital markets practice, specialize in commercial real estate finance and equity investment by traditional and capital markets lenders. Sonnenschein has been expanding recently, having announced in March plans to open in Silicon Valley; the firm also intends to open in Dallas.
Source: www.legalweek.com
Longtime labor & employment powerhouse, Littler Mendelson, is finally facing some competition from regional firms and boutiques. With 617 lawyers and 41 U.S. offices, Littler is the largest labor & employment firm in the U.S. The San Francisco-based firm has expanded greatly in recent years, adding 13 new offices since the start of 2005. However, other firms are following suite and becoming more national in scope. Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart has added six offices in the last three years; 400-lawyer Jackson Lewis also added six. Two Atlanta-based firms, Fisher & Phillips and Ford & Harrison have pushed beyond the Southeast, together opening more than 12 offices in cities such as Dallas, Minneapolis, Phoenix and Philadelphia. The firms’ expansion is generally a part of a strategy to compete nationally, though most deny that they follow other firm’s into specific markets.
Source: www.nylawyer.com
