Law firm mergers are supposed to create momentum. Sometimes they create recruiting opportunities for the competition instead.
Barely a month after Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader officially combined, Sidley Austin has poached an 11-lawyer New York funds team from the newly merged firm.
The group is led by partners Brian Foster and Patrick Calves, who are bringing their team to Sidley’s global finance practice. It’s the kind of lateral move firms dream about: an entire, fully functioning team that can plug in on day one instead of spending months trying to build a practice lawyer by lawyer. Bloomberg has additional details on the group lateral move:
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“Both of them are premier lawyers,” said Yvette Ostolaza, chair of Sidley’s management committee. Sidley has been steadily investing and growing its fund finance capabilities as it looks to service existing clients across its platform, she said. …
Foster and Calves are “very client-centric in their delivery of services, but also people that value making sure that that next generation of lawyers is stellar,” Ostolaza said.
When Hogan Lovells Cadwalader launched, firm leaders touted the combination as the beginning of an ambitious New York growth strategy. That’s undoubtedly still the plan, but it’s a little harder to grow when your competitors are helping themselves to your talent.
Group moves like this have become one of the defining features of today’s lateral market. Rather than convincing individual partners to jump ship, firms increasingly want fully functioning teams that can hit the ground running on day one. It’s expensive, but so is waiting for competitors to build out those capabilities first.
Sidley saw an opportunity and didn’t waste any time taking it. Congratulations to the firm, and to the newest members of its global finance practice.
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Sidley Snags Funds Finance Team From Hogan Lovells Cadwalader (1) [Bloomberg]
Staci Zaretsky is the managing editor of Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.