March 7, 2013
THE DAILY JOURNAL
By Joshua Sebold
SAN FRANCISCO – Arent Fox LLP made its move into San Francisco official Wednesday when the firm announced it has nailed down office real estate.
It plans to open up shop in June in the KPMG Building at 55 Second Street in the Financial District. Arent Fox Chairman Mark M. Katz first voiced his intention to expand into the Bay Area market in February 2012.
The announcement comes one day after Thompson & Knight LLP trumpeted the opening of its San Francisco office, becoming the second national firm to open in the city this year after Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC.
Matthew Clark, Arent Fox’s managing partner, said the move would leverage off the success of the Los Angeles office, which the firm opened in 2007. That office grew rapidly from 10 lawyers to 74.
The new office will be led by Robert C. O’Brien, who will also maintain his role as managing partner of the Los Angeles office. Clark said this model was similar to the firm’s East Coast operations, where partners regularly travel between offices.
O’Brien said the office would be full service with an initial focus on commercial litigation and white-collar defense. He said he anticipated an increased volume of work related to technology patents and health care law.
Clark said the move was mostly motivated by client demand, with a multitude of current clients requesting the opening of an office in the Bay Area.
Los Angeles partner Aaron Jacoby, who chairs the firm’s automotive industry practice group, said there was room for expansion in the San Francisco office in that field, although he added there are many dealers in the Bay Area with which the firm already works. He said automotive partner Victor P. Danhi would head those efforts, working full time in the new office, and added that he anticipates the addition of another automotive industry specialist in the near future.
Larry Watanabe, founding partner of legal recruiting firm Watanabe Nason LLC, said Arent Fox’s move to San Francisco fits into his overall view that firms in American Lawyer magazine’s Top 200 by revenue – specifically those in the lower half of the ranking – would continue to move into the Bay Area, in part due to pricing advantages over their counterparts in the Top 100.
“There could be an additional half a dozen firms in San Francisco easily by 2013, which will be dramatically more than any other region in California, I’m certain,” he said.
Watanabe predicted another firm would announce a San Francisco office in the next week or two.
“If you have offices in London and Kazakhstan and who knows where, you pay for that as a partner and it’s unnecessary, so the rates you pass onto your clients is higher. They have to constantly ask themselves, ‘Are my clients getting value from me being part of this firm?'”
Legal consultant Mozhgan Mizban of the Zeughauser Group said the timing of the moves by Thompson & Knight and Arent Fox was likely a coincidence, although she said it wouldn’t be too surprising for a firm to move up its announcement date by a day or two if it got wind of a similar move by a competitor.
Complex litigation partner Michael S. Cryan will be in the new office full time, along with Danhi, sports group leader Richard L. Brand, intellectual property associate Sheree Rowe and complex litigation associate Lynn R. Fiorentino. Complex litigation chair Stephen G. Larson will travel back and forth between Los Angeles and San Francisco.