In light of the loss of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld’s Silicon Valley office and news of some other departures, we decided to catch up with firm Chairman R. Bruce McLean. Or he decided to catch up with us.
We got a call from him this afternoon from D.C., where firm leaders are gathered at HQ this week for Akin Gump's tri-annual strategic planning effort.
Bruce McLean |
Despite losing the newest of its three California offices (Silicon Valley, 2005-2008, R.I.P.), McLean says the Golden State is among the firm’s four key priorities, and rather than start from scratch in the Valley after Yitai Hu defected in June, it will expand its 11-lawyer San Francisco base.
“From our perspective, being focused on one office in Northern California is probably a better course of action for us than trying to focus on two,” McLean said. Having both right now would be “biting off more than we can chew.”
So, Washington, D.C., energy partner Richard Gittleman will be moving to San Francisco sometime after Labor Day.
“We’re also very, very interested in Northern California in the part of our energy practice that has enormous growth potential, and that is in renewable energy,” McLean said.
And, at the end of August, senior counsel Abrar Hussain, who runs the firm’s India practice, will return to the city after about a year and a half in London.
McLean was cautious about setting a goal for how big the San Francisco office could become, though he said he wouldn’t be too surprised to see it around 50 lawyers in two years by growing the litigation, corporate and labor and employment practices.
California, McLean said, is “a place where our clients need to have our services, so it’s really important that we have depth in the key core practice areas of the firm.”
McLean also said the loss in Silicon Valley and recent partner departures in Austin were largely a result of a “reshaping” of practices.
The reshaping includes a focus on 10 core practices and higher-billing parts of practices such as labor and employment and intellectual property.
As for the loss of three partners in Austin who did legislative work, which was reported on Monday, he said, “We took a very hard look at the legislative work we were doing at the state level and decided … that no longer fit the description of the kind of work” the firm wanted.
He wouldn’t comment on the loss of five partners in D.C., reported on Tuesday, though, except to say that theirs was a different story. The loss of four labor and employment partners in California and Texas earlier this month wasn’t part of the reshaping either, he said.
In addition to growing in California, the firm’s other three priorities are growth of the corporate and energy practices and growth in London, McLean said.
“We have been looking at our practices over the course of the last five months and we’ve done a lot of self-evaluation of where we are and where we want to go,” McLean said. “For the immediate future we’re going to try and build in San Francisco.”
— Niraj Chokshi
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