Biglaw

Biglaw Mega Firm Expanding (Again) In Northern California

Look who's growing.

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For the third time in three years, Squire Patton Boggs is looking to pick up additional lawyers in NoCal. As they have with Carroll, Burdick & McDonough, and Fernando & Partners in the recent past, the firm is now adding the lawyers from Singularity, a Redwood City, California-based intellectual property boutique as reported by Law.com.

Singularity was founded by a trio of IP partners, Frank Bernstein, Vidya Bhakar and Ronald Lemieux, and represent a wide variety of technology clients. The boutique will be winding down operations, as its partners will be moving to Squire Patton Boggs or have already found in-house positions.

It may not be a big surprise that Singularity decided to move to Squire Patton Boggs, two of the founding partners (Bhakar and Lemieux) worked there (or, more accurately, legacy firms of the current iteration) in the past:

“We choose Squire for a couple of reasons. One was familiarity, I was a former partner here,“ said Singularity managing partner Lemieux, who led the Palo Alto-based IP and litigation practice at Squire Sanders from 2000 to 2005, almost a decade before the firm merged with Patton Boggs to form its current iteration. “We have many good friends here, but it is also because Squire is well-situated for exactly what our clients need.”

And that familiarity is also playing well on the Squire side of the combination:

In a statement, Linda Pfatteicher, managing partner of the San Francisco and Palo Alto offices at Squire Patton Boggs, said the firm looked forward to “working again with our former colleagues Ron and Vid and to welcome Frank. Their commitment to collaboration, cross-selling and a client-and-firm-first attitude match the values and culture that are central to our firm.”

For Squire Patton Boggs, the acquisition is part of a larger effort to expand their IP litigation practice:

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“We have been working to expand our IP litigation practice—to provide greater critical mass and to bring in more people who are capable of first-chairing significant IP trial—and we also needed to do that in Silicon Valley,” said David Elkins, leader of Squire Patton Boggs’ global intellectual property and technology practice. “Over the last several years, IP litigation has become, if not in greater demand than corporate [work], at least equal.”

Apparently, these lawyers are singularly capable of filling that need.

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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