Legal News

Chicago firm quietly opens Beverly Hills office

By Jason Siegel

Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon, a Chicago-based firm with 192 attorneys, quietly opened an office in Beverly Hills, Calif., last month after ramping up its team of 10 attorneys there so quickly that it couldn't get an office fast enough in Century City, Calif.

The firm is using the new office as a platform to expand its media and entertainment practice and build up its intellectual property expertise. While the firm had provided services for media and entertainment clients from Chicago, Managing Partner Robert Shuftan felt it could be more effective and focus on expansion by having a presence in Los Angeles. Some of its clients there now include Yahoo! Inc., MGM Studios, Viacom Inc. and its affiliate Paramount Pictures.

"This was clearly something we needed to do," said Shuftan, who leads the firm from Chicago.

The new office has space for 27 lawyers, but Shuftan expects to move into a larger space elsewhere on the west side of Los Angeles sometime within the next 18 months, he said. The office is the firm's only outpost outside its hometown. While Wildman has occasionally had other offices over the years, including one about a decade ago in London, it's never had a network of offices outside Chicago and isn't a part of any international law firm alliance.

The office is led by M. Kenneth Suddleson, the former vice chairman of Paramount, and has added to its roster from Kaye Scholer and Foley & Lardner. One of the more prominent additions was the hiring of Carole Handler, who was previously vice chairwoman of Foley's intellectual property litigation group.

The firm had contemplated opening the office for a few years and hired Nancy Derwin-Weiss in mid 2007 to build up a group of Wildman attorneys there. Five additional partners and four associates have been added since then. Wildman's three core areas of service are complex litigation, business transactions and intellectual property. The firm is focusing growth and recruitment on patent litigation, among other areas, Shuftan said.

-- Lynne Marek

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on October 24, 2008 (boomark / email).