[Petra Pasternak]
Attorney Lee Marshall is trying to balance work with family across the Continental Divide. The good thing, he says, is that it’s temporary. The Bryan Cave partner moved to the Bay Area from St. Louis a few weeks ago to take over as managing partner of the firm’s San Francisco office.
The prior office managing partner, Lynn McCreary, took a post in-house with client Fiserv.
Marshall, who’d lived in St. Louis for the past 10 years, said his two daughters (ages 7 ½ and nearly 10) and his wife would be joining him as soon as school’s out this summer.
The uprooting made sense. About 50 percent of Marshall's practice is biotech patent litigation, for which this market is better than St. Louis, he said. He also does a lot of appellate work. “My two main areas match up well with what we need [here],” he said.
Firm clients like Bank of America and the Alzheimer’s Institute of America are keeping Bryan Cave’s 10-lawyer San Francisco office busy. Since he took over April 1, he has hired one associate who starts mid-May. “That’s approximately a 10 percent increase in our office size,” Marshall said, laughing.
He says he’s looking for others, but it’s a slow process on both sides. No one’s jumping into bed too quickly these days. “I’m guessing with what happened with Heller and Thelen, that people are being a little bit more careful about their due diligence.”
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