June 20, 2006

THE DAILY JOURNAL

By Gabe Friedman

LOS ANGELES – Greenberg Traurig has hired Paul Schumacher to lead a broker-dealer securities litigation practice for the firm’s expanding Santa Monica office.

Schumacher spent the last three years as a Bingham McCutchen partner in Los Angeles. While there, he developed a specialty advising investment clients on litigation and regulatory matters before the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq.

“Paul made a decision he obviously felt was in his best interests,” said Tom Orewyler, a New York-based spokesman for Bingham McCutchen.

Bingham McCutchen, based in Boston and San Francisco, is considered an industry leader in this area of law, according to several legal recruiters. Schumacher’s departure for Greenberg Traurig is seen as part of the Miami-based firm’s plan to expand aggressively in the Los Angeles market, the sources said.

Greenberg Traurig “has quite a bit of this work back East,” said Schumacher, “but they really didn’t have anybody on the West Coast. I’m kind of the beginning of that.”

Thomas Loo, co-managing partner of Greenberg Traurig’s Los Angeles office, said the firm has hired 22 lawyers, including six partners, since April 2005 because it’s gaining esteem in the local bar.

“It’s people like Paul Schumacher who sought us out,” said Loo. “We fortunately enjoy having people ask about us, rather than having to tell people we’re the other Greenberg – not Greenberg Glusker.”

Schumacher graduated Loyola Law School with honors in 1983 and spent 15 years at the Long Beach firm, Keesal, Young & Logan. He shares at least one client with Greenberg Traurig, Morgan Stanley, but declined to name any other clients.

Since announcing it would open a 10-lawyer Century City office in 2000, the firm has hired 110 lawyers in the Los Angeles market. It now occupies five floors, roughly 100,000 square feet of office space, in Santa Monica’s Winter Garden corporate park.

In the past year, the firm has recruited two high-profile lawyers to its intellectual property practice, Ian Ballon, formerly of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, and Susan Heller, of Loeb & Loeb.

Greenberg Traurig is based in Miami and has 1,500 attorneys in 32 offices. Bingham McCutchen has main offices in San Francisco and Boston and 950 attorneys in 11 offices.