December 20, 2013

THE RECORDER

By Nathalie Pierrepont

SAN FRANCISCO – Philadelphia based Fox Rothschild is joining forces with MBV Law, a San Francisco boutique, to expand its presence in Northern California.

On Jan. 1, the two firms will merge, adding six partners and one associate to Fox Rothschild’s 13 attorney office in San Francisco. The attorneys at the MBV Law handle both litigation and corporate matters, with a particular focus on M&A, ownership transition planning and contract preparation for architects, engineers and other design professionals.

Mark Silow, Fox Rothschild’s firmwide managing partner, said the team brings a client base that’s compatible with his firm’s. “They’re good lawyers, good people and they have the same philosophy about how we practice,” he said.

Fox Rothschild entered the San Francisco market in 2006 by merging with labor and employment boutique Grotta Glassman & Hoffman. Since then, it has grown locally and in other markets through small mergers and lateral moves, according to Silow.

William Mandel, senior partner at MBV Law, said his team was looking to latch onto another firm to support its national practice. “We were finding that our clients needed more services than we had to offer, such as estate planning, tax and employee benefits,” he said. “We were literally giving that work away.”
MBV discussed merging with a few firms throughout the year, but found they were “more formalistic” and their billing rate structures were “way out of whack” with his firm’s middle-market client base, he said.

The nearly 600-attorney Fox Rothschild, on the other hand, “operates like we do on a larger scale,” he said.

Legal recruiter Larry Watanabe, who brokered the transaction with his partner Ken Schwartz, said both firms will benefit from the combination. MBV offers Fox Rothschild “core practice areas and competencies that the firm could expand in San Francisco,” while Fox Rothschild provides MBV a “greater resource base than they currently have,” said Watanabe, a partner at Watanabe Nason & Schwartz in Solana Beach.

Mandel, his fellow partners Laura Terry Howard, Jonathan O’Donnell, L. Peter Ryan, Dwight Donovan, Syvia Magid and associate Jack Praetzellis will move to Fox Rothschild’s San Francisco on Pine Street within the next few months, according to Silow.