June 27, 2013
THE DAILY JOURNAL
By Alexandra Schwappach
SAN DIEGO – Firm says closure isn’t due to financial considerations but to a shifting of the firm’s focus.
Six years after opening its San Diego office to capitalize on the area’s transactional work, Goodwin Procter LLP plans to close the 18-attorney outpost this fall, sources said Wednesday. The firm notified staff earlier this week that the office would shut its doors on Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year.
Firm Chairwoman Regina M. Pisa and managing partner Robert S. Insolia said in a firmwide memo that the decision to close the San Diego office “was not driven by financial considerations” but instead by the firm’s desire to invest more in its Los Angeles, Menlo Park and San Francisco offices.
“This is a determination that San Diego, from a geographic perspective, is no longer a strategic location for building the future of the firm, and a decision to reallocate our investments to those markets in California that hold greater promise for us,” the memo said.
The firm opened its San Diego office in 2007 with the idea that the area would be a “significant source of corporate transactional work, particularly in the life sciences and biotech areas” but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
“We haven’t been able to realize our initial vision for San Diego despite our best efforts,” the firm said in the memo.
Lee Feldman, Goodwin Procter’s director of communications, said the firm would not comment further.
“Obviously it was a very difficult decision to reach,” he said. “It involves real people, and we take these things very seriously.”
Goodwin’s San Diego office opened with attorneys from Heller Ehrman LLP, including partner Stephen Ferruolo, who has since retired and become the dean and a law professor at the University of San Diego Law School. He is also of counsel at Goodwin, a position he said he doesn’t expect to retain.
Ferruolo said some attorneys were offered relocation packages – either to the firm’s Los Angeles office or to one of its Northern California offices – and some were offered an opportunity to work from home for a period of time.
The firm has extended such offers to eight of the 18 attorneys at the firm, Feldman said, most of whom are associates and professional-track attorneys. The other 10 will leave the firm.
Legal recruiter Larry Watanabe said it is “highly unlikely” that any of Goodwin’s San Diego attorneys will relocate to Los Angeles. Many will jump to other firms in the area.
“Most of the partners have family lives and other elements that make it impossible to commute to L.A. from San Diego,” he said.
Recently Goodwin has put an emphasis on building its Menlo Park office, snagging talent such as former federal prosecutor Grant P. Fondo. Some legal experts think its growth in that location has come at the expense of the firm’s other California offices.
“Goodwin’s total headcount in L.A. and San Francisco has shrunk,” Watanabe said. “The emphasis they are placing in California is solely on Silicon Valley because of its importance to tech clients.”
Last year San Francisco managing partner Paul G. Churchill left the firm for Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC. The firm closed its Century City office in 2011.
Watanabe placed David Kleinfeld, chair of the San Diego office, and his group from Foley & Lardner LLP in 2010. The group included Kleinfeld, partner Kurt Kjelland and several other lawyers representing a multimillion-dollar practice, he said.
“Goodwin had ample opportunity with David to build the office, but I don’t believe the firm was committed to doing so, primarily based on the importance of their Silicon Valley office,” Watanabe said.