December 16, 2006

THE DAILY JOURNAL

By Robert Iafolla

LOS ANGELES – Goodwin Procter took advantage of the uncertainty surrounding Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan to net Rachael S. Wexler, a young corporate attorney with a significant practice.

When she joins the firm’s Los Angeles office as a partner Wednesday, Wexler will become the first corporate attorney in either of Goodwin Procter’s West Coast offices.

“She will be the first portal into that market here,” said Lewis Feldman, head of Goodwin Procter’s Los Angeles office.

Feldman said the office, which opened last April, will be adding attorneys with “similar skill sets,” but declined to offer specifics.

Wexler’s departure marks the third attorney to leave Alschuler Grossman’s transactional group since the firm publicly announced plans to split in January.

The plans, which remain tentative, would see the firm’s entertainment ligitators and transactional attorneys, led by Stanton “Larry” Stein and Robert L. Kahan respectively, form a new firm with New York-based Marc Dreier. Meanwhile, Marshall Grossman’s commercial litigators would continue under the Alschuler Grossman banner.

As with several attorneys who left the Santa Monica-based firm during 2006, Wexler said “when the firm looked at its options, I began to look at my options,” referring to its reported merger talks.

Wexler said that in addition to counseling on private equity matters, she’s been focusing her transactional practice on nanotechnology, life sciences and renewable energy, and she wanted to find a firm with the resources to allow growth in those particular niches.

“If I can work with companies that make the world better and help people live longer and healthier, that’s a great way to spend my day,” said Wexler, whose husband researches stem cells at UCLA.

Although she only spent 15 months at Alschuler Grossman, she credited working with Kahan and the transactional group with helping her develop her practice.

Wexler earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the philosophy of science from the University of Chicago, and a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1995. She practiced at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles for five years before going in-house with the investment banking and brokerage firm US Bancorp Libra.

For the four years prior to joining Alschuler Grossman, she was a partner at Guth Christopher, a corporate boutique in Los Angeles.

“Rachel is a wonderful lawyer, and she’s chosen a firm with a high level of expertise in the area she wants to go into,” Alschuler’s Kahan said.

Goodwin Procter has 700 attorneys in five domestic offices, including about 100 corporate lawyers.

Following Wexler’s departure, Alschuler Grossman has 81 lawyers in its one office.

Wexler said she expects to bring her full book of business with her, which includes Arrowhead Research Corporation, a nanotechnology company; and GKM Newport Generation Funds, a Los Angeles-based private equity group.

The search firm Watanabe Nason Schwartz & Lippman represented Goodwin Procter in the move.

Another transition is on the way for Wexler, as she is pregnant with her first child.

“My intention is to start a family and build the firms’s corporate franchise on the West Coast,” she said. “Both of those things will be very fulfilling, and I know the firm will be fully supportive.”