Legal Pad

Greenberg Traurig Kicking Tires in S.F.

Must be too sunny in Florida for Greenberg Traurig. The firm wants in on the San Francisco fog.

President Matthew Gorson confirmed Tuesday that he has been interviewing in San Francisco for the last six months with the hopes of opening an office here sometime in the first quarter of 2010. The firm already has a 30-lawyer office in East Palo Alto.

“There’s good opportunity now,” Gorson said. “The markets are different from Silicon Valley to San Francisco and it’s helpful to both offices to have a dual location.”

While we’ve heard a name floated for who might open the office, Gorson insisted nothing -- no lease and no hire -- has been finalized. Stay tuned.

—  Amanda Royal

Lateral Aspirants, Start Your Engines ...

After a rough 2009 for most firms, partners are busy behind the scenes checking out their options, according to a couple of recruiters we checked in with.

“Anybody who has been waiting to make a move will be ready once they know where the numbers are,” said recruiter Stacy Miller Azcarate. “I have so many people who have said, ‘I’m going to call you in January.’”

In 2009, recruiter Avis Caravello said many partners were jockeying to make sure they were paid what they deserved.

“The focus on the compensation, ‘If I don’t get X,’ was really heightened this year, because there’s less to go around,” she said.

“This is a busier time than typical for this time of year,” she said. “Some people definitely know now. They have a pretty good idea of their comp. I wouldn’t want to be a chairman at most firms this year, they are really trying to keep everyone happy and keep everyone in place.”

Why 2009 is like a hairball, coughed up after the jump.

Litigator Takes Over King & Spalding's Silicon Valley Office

Recent big law Bay Area immigrant King & Spalding has got some new leadership in Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

Veteran litigator Tim Scott, who came on board from Sidley & Austin when the firm opened the office last year, is the new managing partner of the Redwood Shores office.

“The plan is to continue recruiting quality partners, and we’re in the process of doing that,” Scott said. “We went from zero to 25 or 30 in the last eight months.”

There was no party, although a toast was raised at the firm’s Halloween party where at least one King & Spalding lawyer was elaborately disguised as the late King of Pop, according to people familiar with the party.

The former MP Courtland L. Reichman had moved from Atlanta, the hometown of the firm, to run the two new offices. In San Francisco, Reichman is ceding his power to Fritz Zimmer, a product liability lawyer who joined the firm when it opened up its office here. Reichman also runs the firm’s IP practice and the firm decided to hand over the offices to local lawyers.

— Zusha Elinson

Firms Pledge Their Support of Pro Bono

Chief Justice Ronald George praised a roomful of do-gooding lawyers late yesterday for tackling “the challenge of the unrepresented litigants in our civil justice system.” The event marked Bay Area firms’ signing, or re-signing, of a pledge to commit resources to pro bono services. Among other things (.pdf), the signing firms agree to try to annually devote the equivalent of 3 percent to 5 percent of their billable hours to pro bono work.

The chief justice, left, and chief judge, center, shook a lot of hands Thursday, with firm representatives like Baker & McKenzie of counsel Howard Fine.

See what other firms are on the hook to do good, after the jump ...

Big-Deal Firms Hang On In Small-Deals Era (And Cooley Rallies)

The number of deals law firms have been working on is woefully down from the 2007 peak, a recent MergerMarket report (.pdf) shows.

But even though there’s half as much work, the big deals firms are hanging on to their market share. And some interesting news is that Cooley Godward is moving up in the rankings, despite the recent loss of star rainmakers.

Latham & Watkins, Jones Day, Cooley, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati lead the pack in the number of deals completed on the West Coast in 2009.

Cooley’s surge, and the deal landscape, after the jump

Valley Boutique, Now BigLaw Outpost, Looks to Grow

Last month, we checked in with several firms that had recently opened offices in Silicon Valley.

We did not mention Dallas-based Haynes & Boone, which arrived in the Valley in February not by opening an office, but through a merger, so we decided to check in with Ed Kwok, an IP partner at the firm’s Silicon Valley office, to see how things are going.

Haynes & Boone absorbed MacPherson Kwok Chen & Heid, an IP boutique that had 21 lawyers spread between San Jose and Irvine.

Combined, the firms count several high-tech heavyweights among their clients: Samsung, Boeing, Lattice Semiconductor, Taiwan Semiconductor, AT&T and Agilent.

“Geographically, MacPherson Kwok had more Silicon Valley clients and East Asian clients,” Kwok said. “We have some advantages in understanding the Asian way of doing business.”

O'Melveny Looks to Unload Extra Square Footage in S.F.

When a Cushman & Wakefield flyer appeared on the market this week describing more than 87,000 square feet of O’Melveny & Myers space on four floors at 2 Embarcadero Center, it looked like the firm might be shrinking massively.

O’Melveny had been bullish back in the fall of 2007 (who wasn’t?). By that time, it had announced plans to expand into 170,000 square feet in Embarcadero Center.

We know the economy’s bad, but could O’Melveny have surreptitiously laid off half its attorneys in San Francisco — or over-estimated its growth so wildly? A few calls later, we’re leaning toward the latter.

Not exactly shrinking in S.F., but not growing, either, after the jump ... 

Day Casebeer's Suitor Goes Cheap on Associates

With Day Casebeer set to be acquired by Howrey, we wonder what the handful of associates at the little Cupertino firm think about the big changes to Howrey’s associate compensation.

If you didn’t see the news, Howrey announced in a memo (that, like all internal law firm memos, appeared on Above The Law) today that it’s reducing salaries and billable hours for a select group of its young associates, while upping the amount of training they get.

Welcome to Big Law, Day Casebeer associates … after the jump.

Reed Smith Moving Into Thelen's Old Digs

Reed Smith is packing it up at Embarcadero Center and moving across Market to Thelen’s old office space. The firm will rent 100,000 square feet on five floors at 101 Second Street, on the corner of Mission.

Signing bonus: Its new digs will be called the “Reed Smith building.”

The space can accommodate 152 lawyers, who will move in in August. The firm plans to expand to the 23rd floor by 2012, which will accommodate another 40 lawyers.

All lawyers from Reed Smith’s current San Francisco office will relocate to the building and some lawyers from its Oakland office will also move.

Reed Smith took on several prominent Thelen lawyers when the firm collapsed last fall, 25 in all, including a nine-lawyer labor and employment group lead by partner Linda Husar, and a 13-lawyer energy group led by partner Ellen Bastier. Looks like they’ll have to pack up their new offices and move right back where they came from.

The landlord of the building, Hines, settled a dispute with Thelen sometime in February, when an eviction process filed by the landlord in late November was dismissed. Hm … fortuitous timing for all three parties, isn’t it?

Hines is also Reed Smith’s landlord in Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Va.

— Amanda Royal

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Law Blog Master Probably Doesn't Soothe Boalties Much

David Lat has his escape plan mapped out: He’s stashing $1,000 in cash under his mattress and if the legal business implodes, taking his infamous blog, Above The Law, with it, he’s taking off to the Philippines.

That’s where Lat’s got an uncle who lives on a hill and has a basement “with my name on it,” Lat said to crowd of 100-plus nervous law students at Berkeley Law over hot dogs and sodas Tuesday.

“Reading all of this can give you an anxiety attack, but this is the world we are living in,” he said. He recounted what he told a questioner at the D.C. NALP conference last week who complained his blog was giving her anxiety attacks: “What kind of rock are you living under with just you and Above the Law? If people are panicked, it’s because there are reasons to panic.”

Reasons to panic include salary deflation. The good news compares lawyers to vermin and recommends yoga … after the jump.