March 3 , 2009
LOS ANGELES DAILY JOURNAL
LOS ANGELES – Philadelphia law firm Blank Rome opened for business in Los Angeles on Monday with a new office headed by former partners from some of the city’s most well-known firms.
William Small from Bingham McCutchen; Glen Rothstein from Liner Grode Stein Yankelevitz Sunshine Regenstreif & Taylor; Warren Koshofer from Glaser, Weil, Fink, Jacobs & Shapiro; and Lawrence Hinkle and Andrew Kim from the now-defunct Dreier Stein Kahan Browne Woods & George will establish Blank Rome’s office in Century City and expand the firm’s presence in California.
“California and Los Angeles in particular have been part of our strategic plan for some time,” said Blank Rome Managing Partner Carl Buchholz. “We service over 200 existing clients in that market and think the opportunities for growth are enormous.”
Blank Rome’s move into California is part of a larger effort to bolster the firm’s entertainment and real estate practices. Hinkle, Kim and Rothstein focus their practices on entertainment, media and related litigation. Koshofer and Small have a roster of real estate clients. An added benefit of the Los Angeles office, Buchholz said, is its geographic proximity to the firm’s Hong Kong office, which has grown from four to 18 attorneys over the past two years.
“We’ve known about Blank Rome for quite a while,” Hinkle said of his decision to join the firm. “They were very, very excited about this opportunity and were a thousand percent behind opening an L.A. office.”
The 500-attorney firm also will be looking to expand its California offices by hiring additional staff and associates – at a time when many other large law firms are laying them off.
“We recognize that it’s a challenging environment,” Buchholz said. “But the economy will turn, and we’re looking at this as an opportunity to take off at the other end.”