Preston Gates Plans Expansion of OC Office
By CHRIS CZIBORR
The Irvine office of Seattle-based Preston Gates Ellis plans to nearly triple its Orange County attorney roster from nine to 25 in the next year or so.
“If a good merger candidate comes along then we could be there instantly,” said firm corporate partner Bart Greenberg. “If not, we’ll look seriously at lateral candidates.”
The office earlier this year snagged four corporate transactional lawyers,Greenberg, Elaine Levin, James Shnell and Karen Goodin,from the Costa Mesa office of Los Angeles-based Riordan & McKinzie. All now are corporate partners.
“I got very hooked on the idea of how my practice could benefit from a firm that had more of a national presence and multi-state offices,” Greenberg said. “And we think Orange County is still a wide-open legal market.”
Greenberg said the Irvine office is looking to develop a transactional and intellectual property focus.
He said that “trend” isn’t the best word to describe how firms are adjusting their practices to the changing economy.
“It’s more people just trying to survive,” he said. “Things are very spotty,there are people out there who are very busy and there are people out there with absolutely no work.”
Greenberg said those who had aligned themselves with dot-coms and tech companies are struggling, while those who were representing more “old world” clients have not been affected as severely.
Nonetheless, his firm is happy to count Microsoft Corp. as a chief client and still is focusing in OC’s high-tech companies, as well as medical device makers, emerging businesses and general litigation work.
“The goal is not to make this a full-service office, but rather to focus on expanding the core competencies of the firm,” he said. “The firm really grew up with Microsoft, doing that company’s IP transactional work.”
Preston Gates has 11 offices, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Hong Kong. The firm set up its Irvine office in 1997.
Preston Gates has been involved in some prominent cases, including its representation of the state of Alaska in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill litigation, which resulted in civil settlements totaling nearly $1 billion.
