Silicon Valley boutique Tomlinson Zisko is shutting its doors for good; the firm has been downsizing for several years and shrunk from 20 lawyers in 2002 to only five this year. Founding partners Timothy Tomlinson and William Zisko are moving their corporate and securities practices to Greenberg Traurig’s Silicon Valley office. Former Tomlinson attorney, Heather Meeker, helped launch the Greenberg office in 2004, and recruited Tomlinson and Zisko to the 1,600-lawyer firm. With the new additions, Greenberg’s Silicon Valley office will now have 15 corporate lawyers and 43 attorneys total. Real estate partner James Janz is going a different direction, joining Sideman & Bancroft in San Francisco. Three other Tomlinson attorneys also joined Sideman – coporate and IP partner Polly Dinkel, counsel Kelly McCarthy, and real estate partner Susan Taylor.
Source: www.law.com
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
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
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
Howrey has recruited the managing partner and co-chair of the IP litigation group of Dewey Ballantine’s Silicon Valley office. Jeannine Yoo Sano will join Howrey’s East Palo Alto office, leaving her former office with eight attorneys, including only one partner. Dewey’s shrinking numbers are largely attributed to the failed merger with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, after which many attorneys got offers elsewhere. Sano was drawn to Howrey because of the firm’s focus on IP, antitrust, and global litigation. The addition of Sano is a part of Howrey’s plan to expand in the Bay Area; accordingly, an antitrust partner was recently hired in San Francisco.
Source: www.law.com
Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps has recruited hot-shot land use lawyer, Timothy Tosta, from Steefel, Levitt & Weiss. Tosta will join the San Francisco office, along with four other real estate attorneys from Steefel. Tosta’s departure adds to the number of partner losses Steefel has faced in the past year; the firm’s attorney headcount is now at 50. Most of the lawyers who have left have gone to larger national firms. Luce, Forward has 200 attorneys and five offices in California, though it plans to expand further into the Bay Area and Los Angeles. It’s 21-lawyer San Francisco office focuses on real estate, bankruptcy, and business and real estate litigation.
Source: www.nylawyer.com
While other top firms tend not to emphasize rate-sensitive practice areas like land use or labor and employment, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton is focusing its attention on these practices. The 490-lawyer firm just hired two new San Francisco partners and two associates for its real estate, land use, natural resources, and environmental practice. In February the LA-based firm also hired an employment partner in San Francisco. Most top firms have minimized these practices because the clients are not as willing to pay higher billing rates; however, Sheppard attorneys say that keeping these practices strong gives the firm a broader range and safeguards it against varying economic circumstances. High rates are not pushed as hard at Sheppard, where the general feeling is that if your rates are such that you can work enough to make a profit, there is no problem.
Source: www.law.com
Schiff Hardin has expanded its Energy/Federal Energy Regulatory Commission practice with the addition of eight lawyers and one legislative affairs specialist, formerly with Sullivan & Worcester. Two of the attorneys are launching a Schiff Hardin office in Boston, while the rest are joining the D.C. office. Schiff Hardin has almost 400 attorneys practicing law in offices located in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Lake Forest, New York, San Francisco, and Washington.
Source: www.lawfuel.com
Peter Mostow, the head of the renewable energy practice at Stoel Rives, has left for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, along with John Pierce, another partner in the practice. Mostow will work in Wilson Sonsini’s San Francisco office, while Pierce will be based in Seattle. The partners’ departure was a sound choice considering that Wilson Sonsini has close ties to the venture capital community and a tendency to jump into up-and-coming practice areas; moreover, San Francisco is ideal for Mostow since California boasts a booming renewable energy field. Last month five other partners left Stoel Rives’ San Francisco office; the firm now has 14 lawyers there.
Source: www.law.com
Seattle-based Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro has opened an office in San Francisco to better serve their clients, local tech companies. The firm is known for its plaintiffs work managing multistate national class actions in securities, antitrust and consumer fraud cases. Specifically in the Bay area, Hagens Berman is involved in the DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and SRAM antitrust cases. To head the new office, the 38-lawyer firm recruited former Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins partner Reed Kathrein; he will also be in charge of the LA branch. Joining Kathrein in San Francisco are two associates and an of counsel from the Lerach firm.
Source: www.law.com
