Winston & Strawn Reaps Heller Rewards
Winston & Strawn is expanding with the help of Heller refugees. A tipster reports on the latest internal Winston communication:
[We] are extremely pleased to announce that the firm has added a number of former Heller Ehrman attorneys who will greatly enhance Winston’s practices and international presence. Winston has acquired three partners in Hong Kong from Heller and Heller’s international trade group in D.C. In addition, we welcome Joe Armao, a well-known environmental litigator, as a partner in our San Francisco office.In Hong Kong, we are joined by capital markets and M&A partners Simon Luk and Michael Phillips and commercial litigation partner David Hall-Jones. Subject to local regulations*, these partners will be supported by additional associates and other professionals. Winston is also pursuing and fully expects to expand its presence in Asia with one or more offices in mainland China, likely to be in Shanghai and Beijing. We have begun the application process for this expansion. More details will follow as they become available.
In Washington, we have added four high-profile international trade partners: William Barringer, Daniel Porter, Christopher Dunn and James Durling, as well as associates Valerie Ellis, Matthew McCullough, Yu Li, and Ross Bidlingmaier. The international trade group will be supported by a number of non-lawyer trade professionals on the ground in Beijing.
Core practices primarily affected include complex commercial litigation, international arbitration and cross border deal-making capabilities. The firm has expanded materially in 2008 with the opening of the Charlotte office in January, the addition of prominent lateral attorneys to our existing offices and practices throughout the year, and this most recent expansion to Asia.
A press release will be available tomorrow morning on winston.com. An office page for our new Hong Kong location will be posted as well and will include address information and profiles of our new group.
We expect to take over existing Heller office space only as necessary. A full integration effort is underway; please take a moment to welcome our new team.
Regular readers of ATL will not be surprised by Winston capturing some top Heller talent.
Recent history after the jump.
Many of you will remember that Heller was once a merger target for Winston:
“Winston Heller” has a nice ring to it. But if the firms do merge, will Heller get to squeeze its name in? Or will Winston, occupying what Miles describes as a “position of strength,” simply swallow Heller whole, without any name change?
Despite the merger falling through, Winston had been viewed as a soft landing spot for some Heller people ever since dissolution became a reality. The question was whether there would be a lot of room, or just a little:
Peter Benvenutti, the chairman of the dissolution committee now controlling the firm, confirmed whispers that Baker & McKenzie and Winston & Strawn, both one-time merger candidates, had withdrawn proposals to pick up large groups of lawyers and their expensive real estate. While Benvenutti would not say whether deals on this scale are being discussed with any other firms, he did say there’s interest in taking over certain of the firm’s leases, and “we expect to have clarity in a day or two.”
One large practice group — and apparently an office lease — down, which Heller department is next to get picked up off the side of the road?
Good luck to those still waiting for their lifeboat.
Earlier: Anatomy Of A Dissolution: Why Buy The Cow When You Can Get The Milk For Free?
Law Firm Merger Mania: Winston and Heller, Sitting in a Tree? M-e-r-g-i-n-g?
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Comments
Bodes well for Winston. Weathering the storm well.
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Winston is actually having a better year this year than last year. Litigation revenue is up.
Winston and Strawn is made out of PEOPLE! PEOPLE!
Good post Elie.
What about the associates? I guess nobody gives a shit about them. I can't wait for the day when associates regain their power -- it could be in 10 years, but eventually the firms will regret how they treated associates during these "dark times". And we WILL remember which firms were honest and gentle. Fucking greedy partners.
7--In ten years you will still be an associate? Hmmm...probably right.
If their Chicago office is any indication, Winston is bad ass. If the market allowed me to be less risk-averse, I'd consider them alongside K&E and Sidley
what makes you think Winston is bad ass?
the three guys they hired in HK are largely money losers. leftovers.
what makes you think asses are bad?
11: rejected by winston during OCI
i'm so sad. :(
-nervous T-10 1L
email job leads to nervoust101l@yahoo.com
that int'l trade group has worked at every firm in DC over the last 2 years, with the possible exception of williams & connolly.
Good drinkers, talked about nothing but sports during half of my callback, more than solid in litigation, and easily the coolest looking offices in Chicago.
- 9
That Chicago office does good work, see e.g., Kwame Kilpatrick. Are they representing Rezko pro bono too?
Why did this get its own post but 27 Heller partners going to Orrick was merely a one-liner?
Orrick sux, thought you would know
18, wine and cheese?
18, why is the world such a cruel cruel place?
GULC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
18: maybe because Orrick scooped up the profitable Heller partners (that it hadn't already poached over the last year) before they dissolved, so the story at the time was the dissolution.
Now Winston and other third tier firms are picking up the leftovers. Would you rather have a bunch of rainmakers or your own post on ATL?
Sounds like they snagged some legit associates.
I went to American with one of them - and he's badass.
Good for WS.
Don't forget. Boycott of ATL tomorrow. Lat understands that readers are unhappy as evidenced by his more frequent posts and his work on the weekend. You can check the blog until midnight or on Saturday, or check an alternate blog tomorrow, such as WSJ, to see if ATL posts anything interesting. Save our community! We can't avoid the blog forever, but one day will let Lat know we want a change.
Nothing about Nixon Peabody picking up 90 Thelen attorneys?
Ellie, you need to read your inbox more often.
And 90 attorneys is a tad more than the “number” of Heller lawyers welcomed into Winston & Strawn.
See the ABA J story here:
http://www.abajournal.com/news/up_to_90_thelen_lawyers_are_joining_nixon_peabody/
24: has a tight ass, I would know
Question - Why has my work ISP been banned from commenting? I made a comment about boycotting ATL and it gets deleted and my ability to make comments removed. Elie and/or Lat, you got to chill the fuck out. Relax. Your over reaction and detour into useless information is bad enough, but censorship? Really???
Congrats to W&S!
This post is really misleading. W&S managed to get a SINGLE partner from Heller-SF. Other firms--Orrick, Hogan, Sidley, Jones Day, etc.--did much, much better in the feeding frenzy. Even Luce managed to get two Heller-SF partners.
I agree with 30, overblown press on this one - Seems to me that W&S is more ashamed than impressed.
Why no news of Goodwin Procter's acquisition of Heller attorneys to open its London office?
http://www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=135333&d=415&h=417&f=416
http://goodwinprocter.com/OurFirm/Offices/London.aspx
Or what about Goodwin just having opened its Hong Kong office?
http://goodwinprocter.com/NewsEvents/News/Goodwin%20Procter%20Announces%20Opening%20of%20Hong%20Kong%20Office.aspx
http://goodwinprocter.com/OurFirm/Offices/HongKong.aspx
In all these times of gloom and doom and downsizing and layoffs, its nice to see that some firms continue to reap the rewards and strategically expand.
It wasn't too long ago that they were big only in Boston, then they acquired Shea & Gardner in D.C., have a growing office in NYC, 5(!) California offices, and now they're going global.
In the last 2 years that int'l trade group has worked at Willkie, V&E, Heller, and now Winston. Don't turn away now...they may move again before Elie has a chance to make another post.
I think the problem with Elie not posting about Goodwin, etc. is that he is too lazy to do any outside research whatsoever. I bet if you went back over the articles he posted and got some inside information, you would see that 90%+ of what he posts comes from reader emails.
The fact that he can't be bothered to google: +"law firm" +heller +join, or whatever, and relies on having things hand delivered to him is ridiculous.
90% of this dude's job seems to be copy and pasting emails that readers send in.
Also, once again, in the Morning Docket he royally fucks up some links. I mean, how hard is it to make sure that you are linking to the specific article you reference and not the homepage of the site?
Any insider news on W&S's Charlotte office?
Yes, this is really bad journalism.. Of all the firms that attempted to pick up Heller partners, W&S fared the worst.
Can we get someone to replace this author? Perhaps another contest? Vote Y if you want someone else, N if you want to keep the current author. My vote:
Y
Y
Outside of Chicago, Winston is not relevant.
35: I have heard Winston's Charlotte office is slow...not terribly surprising given the state of the credit markets since September. The Charlotte office has, however, continued to add both new and lateral attorneys since their colonization in January of this year.
15 + 33 = trade group rejects
23: "Orrick scooped up the profitable Heller partners (that it hadn't already poached over the last year) before they dissolved"
Ha ha ha!!!! You must be joking. Profitable HE partners? Sorry, but I think most of the strength (IP Lit) went to Covington, not Orrick. And as for the big pickup they made once the firm was dissolving? Quantity doesn't mean quantity, friendo.
And don't let the nonsense and useless "former practice group leader" titles fool you. If they had been any good at leading practices at Heller, things might have turned out differently.
We'll see who's still at Orrick in a few years and whether those that joined there are truly, "profitable."
This is not accurate reporting. W&S picked up only a few residual pieces of Heller. Only a few Heller partners were interested in going there.
Y
That whole little group from Heller DC never fit into Heller. They did as they wanted too. Each and everyone of them were a ROYAL PAIN in the back end
44 that's neither true nor fair.
Agree with 45. They weren't even there long enough for me to get to know all of their names.