Biglaw, Lateral Moves, Partner Issues

More Shake-Ups At Reed Smith

Lateral moves are afoot.

By  
on

Lateral MovesA lot has been happening at Reed Smith since we first reported on massive lawyer layoffs. Back in January, we reported that 45 attorneys were being laid off — and it seems that things haven’t gotten more stable since then.

Seems some partners are heading for “greener” pastures. The American Lawyer reports that Reed Smith has lost a pair of partners to McGuireWoods:

The Richmond, Virginia-based Am Law 100 firm [McGuireWoods], which saw average partner profits break the $1 million mark in 2015, has scooped up longtime Reed Smith partner MARY HACKETT in the Steel City, where she once headed the firm’s financial services litigation group, and its current practice leader DAVID POWELL in San Francisco. Sources told sibling publication The Legal Intelligencer that the team oversaw a $60 million to $70 million book of business, including handling work for Bank of America Corp., a key McGuireWoods client.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, just today McGuireWoods announced that they’d scooped up yet another Reed Smith lawyer:

David S. Reidy, a leading financial services litigator with a cutting-edge practice advising financial technology companies, has joined McGuireWoods as a partner in the San Francisco office.

Reidy comes to McGuireWoods from Reed Smith, where he was a partner leading the FinTech practice. He represents financial services companies and other clients in consumer class action and individual privacy, debt collection and unfair business practices cases, and has extensive experience litigating Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and California Invasion of Privacy Act matters.

The Legal Intelligencer reports Reed Smith’s reaction to some of these lateral moves:

Tamara Box, chair of Reed Smith’s ­financial industry group, said in a statement that the legal landscape is very fluid, lawyers regularly move from firm to firm and Reed Smith is more frequently than not the beneficiary of those laterals.

“In this case, however, we wish this small handful of lawyers who are leaving our firm all the best at their new firm,” Box said in the statement. “Our financial industry group remains busy, very much in demand and, of course, growing: we had close to a dozen partners join our group last year, building out further our market-leading litigation, finance, regulatory, FinTech and restructuring capabilities.”

Sponsored

This reads as every bit the PR-appropriate non-statement as you’d expect. But you have to imagine after the firm conducted the largest layoff of 2016 to date, associates are nervous after McGuireWoods started eating their lunch.

Update 3/29/16 9:50 a.m.: McGuireWoods has just announced that three more partners have joined the firm from Reed Smith:

McGuireWoods has expanded its nationally recognized government investigations and financial services regulatory practice with the addition of William Goydan, John Lukanski and Kiran Somashekara as partners in New York.

Goydan, Lukanski and Somashekara represent clients in complex securities matters, focusing on internal investigations and regulatory enforcement matters before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and state securities and insurance regulators. They also advise companies on compliance with securities industry rules, reporting requirements, enhancements to policies and procedures, regulatory developments, and enforcement trends and best practices. Goydan and Somashekara join McGuireWoods from the New York office of Reed Smith while Lukanski comes from its Princeton, New Jersey, office. All three practiced in the financial industry group.

But those aren’t the only lateral moves going on at Reed Smith; American Lawyer has the details — some good and some bad:

Reed Smith, which earlier this year announced plans to let go of 45 lawyers and staff despite a successful financial year in 2015, saw litigation partner MILES COOLEY in Los Angeles join Kelley Drye & Warren. STUART SHANUS, a financial services litigator and former managing partner of Reed Smith’s office in Century City, California, has joined Wade & Co.

Reed Smith did hire BLAIR PETRILLO, a deputy chief counsel in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s office of the accountant, as counsel for its corporate and securities practice in Pittsburgh. Reed Smith also picked up Pinsent Masons international arbitration and commercial disputes partner BJORN GEHLE for its offices in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Sponsored

<sarcasm>What a time to be alive and working at Reed Smith! </sarcasm>

If you are working at Reed Smith and have more details about the lateral moves, or want to sound off about any of the changes at the firm, please feel free to email us at tips@abovethelaw.com or send an SMS/text message to (646) 820-8477. As always, we’ll keep your name strictly confidential.

McGuireWoods Bags Big BofA Book, Plus More Lateral Moves [American Lawyer]
McGuireWoods Takes Team of Reed Smith Finance Litigators [Legal Intelligencer]

Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Biglaw Firm Cuts Headcount; Attorneys Among The Victims

Topics

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,