November 13, 2006

THE DAILY JOURNAL

By William-Arthur Haynes

Labor and employment partner Frank Birchfield found Davis Wright Tremaine’s willingness to explore creative cost structures compelling at a time when rate hikes at some firms are eclipsing fees for practice areas such as his.

“They’ve got a great business model going forward for what they’re doing with pricing and the economic challenges for my practice area, which are significant,” said Birchfield, who today joins Davis Wright’s labor and employment group in San Francisco from Howard Rice Nemorovski Canady Falk & Rabkin.

“We’re trying to remain very responsive to our clients in the markets when it comes to pricing our services,” said Lawton Humphrey, firmwide chairman of Davis Wright’s labor and employment group.

“Just because certain companies will pay more for [mergers and acquisitions] work doesn’t mean the tide can rise as well on labor and employment.”

Humphrey said Davis Wright is actively examining alternatives to the standard hourly rate model when pricing labor and employment services by offering more fixed-fee and retainer-based arrangements.

Birchfield’s work over the last nine years has encompassed management-side traditional labor in health care and media and some employment law. He’s provided counsel to America West, Sutter Health and Univision.

Birchfield won a defense verdict as first-chair counsel for a national media client facing claims of harassment, gender discrimination and retaliation by a mainstream television news personality. He first-chaired litigation in a premises liability matter involving an employee death and secured a defense verdict.

Birchfield said Howard Rice, a San Francisco firm of about 115 attorneys, wants to be among the top echelon of law firms and, based on the quality of attorneys, was capable of achieving that.

“I have a very particularized, specific practice that is a blend of traditional labor and employment law,” Birchfield said. “And I just have some challenges that are better satisfied by Davis Wright’s platform.”

Birchfield said talks about clients were ongoing with Howard Rice. Fiduciary responsibility to the firm prohibited him from specifying any clients by name, he said.

Litigation partner David J. Reis, chairman of Howard Rice’s labor and employment practice, was skeptical that rates influenced the move, which was brokered by Watanabe Nason Schwartz & Lippman.

“It was never my sense that Davis Wright’s [fees were] a lot lower than other big firms,” Reis said. “Maybe because they’re from Seattle they are. It doesn’t appear obvious to me that that’s the case.”

Reis and Birchfield practiced together at O’Melveny & Myers until 2004. Reis, who spent 13 years at O’Melveny, joined Howard Rice in May 2004 to head the firm’s employment group. Reis took over for Elizabeth Salveson, who left to become the chief labor lawyer in the city attorney’s office.

Birchfield and fellow labor and employment partner Dipanwita Deb Amar followed Reis from O’Melveny in close succession.

“I’ll miss him and I wish him the best,” Reis said. “I’m sure he’ll do well.”

Reis said Birchfield’s departure leaves the Howard Rice practice group, made up of three partners and four associates, in fine shape.

Meanwhile, Davis Wright has spent the better part of this year tackling an internal strategy to export to San Francisco the reputation its labor and employment practice enjoys in the Pacific Northwest.

The additions of former Morrison & Foerster employment partner Judy Droz Keyes in May and traditional labor partner Maria Anastas and senior associate Aaron Roblan from Jackson Lewis in July created “a heightened interest” among other attorneys in the firm’s labor and employment group, Humphrey said.

“What they’re seeing is that Davis Wright is committed to the labor and employment practice at a time when perhaps some other large firms are not as interested,” Humphrey said.

Davis Wright is bulking up in anticipation of an upswing in labor organizing activity in Northern California’s health-care and media industries.

“Frank is a very creative thinker and really attuned to industry trends,” Humphrey said. “There’s a lot of activity in labor organizing in the health-care field and potentially starting up in the media area in Northern California.”

Davis Wright, a 400-attorney firm with nine U.S. locations, allocates more than 15 percent of its lawyers to the employer services group, making it the firm’s fourth largest practice area behind the general practice, corporate and litigation groups.

“Davis Wright is well poised to be an attractive labor and employment firm for a number of clients that may start to find the larger law firms pushing rates too high,” Humphrey said.

Because of the firm’s overhead structure and number of attorneys in the practice, Davis Wright has been able to keep rates at a comfortable level for clients, Humphrey said.

“Other firms seem to be putting pressure to really ratchet up the rates and, not that we’re a low cost provider, we’re staying more consistent at a time when some large firms are taking their rates way up,” Humphrey said.