Legal News

Thelen is Reelin?; Firm Loses Part of its ?Crown Jewel?

By Nathan Koppel

The legal waters in the Bay Area are mighty choppy these days. With Heller Ehrman in dissolution mode, legal recruiters and firms are now circling Thelen LLP.

Yesterday, the Legal Times’s blog reported that Pillsbury Winthrop had poached two lawyers, Michael Evan Jaffe and Ronan J. McHugh, from Thelen’s construction litigation and international dispute practices.

“Construction litigation is Thelen’s crown jewel,” said Kenneth Taber, co-leader of Pillsbury’s litigation section. Ouch. Isn’t the rule that you aren’t supposed to mess with another firm’s crown jewels?

Seyfarth Shaw, it seems, also has its eyes on the crown jewels. In this September article in the Recorder, which noted that Thelen had lost almost 200 lawyers since 2006, Seyfarth partner Richard Holderness said he wanted to hire construction lawyers and that it was “watching Thelen very closely.” Thelen, he said, has “a lot of construction lawyers and a lot of attractive construction clients.”

Thelen declined comment in the Recorder article. A firm spokesman declined to comment to the Law Blog.

Michael Jaffe, formerly chairman of the international arbitration and disputes resolution groups at Thelen, starts as a partner at Pillsbury today, as does counsel Ronan McHugh.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 02, 2008 (boomark / email).