The Irvine office of Philadelphia-based Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP has tapped two partners, three other lawyers and three support staffers from the Costa Mesa office of Dorsey & Whitney LLP. Ellen Bancroft and Bryan Gadol, former partners at the local office of Minneapolis-based Dorsey, led the shift.
Bancroft most recently served as head of Dorsey’s California corporate group. She has worked on more than 50 public and private acquisitions, and about 40 initial public offerings.
Gadol also worked in the corporate practice, handling mergers and acquisitions, as well as venture capital transactions.
The newly arrived group includes Joo Ryung Kang, of counsel, and two associates, Randy Wood and Wendy Kottmeier.
They’ve joined Morgan Lewis’ business and finance practice, and boosted the size of the firm’s OC office to 30 lawyers.
Morgan Lewis has 24 offices total, including eight abroad.
“We’re excited about the broader platform and the enhanced international capabilities,” Bancroft said. “Morgan Lewis has 1,600 legal professionals, and of that, more than 350 [are] in the corporate area. We’re doing very sophisticated financings, and mergers and acquisitions transactions.”
The recent additions are the latest reflection of Morgan Lewis’ ongoing efforts to grow its OC office. The firm makes its first appearance this year on the Business Journal’s ranking of the largest local law offices by attorney count—at No. 39 (see List, page 34).
Dorsey is ranked No. 32 on this year’s list, with 28 attorneys here.
“We have seen such great growth in Irvine in recent years,” said Stephen Finn, managing partner of Morgan Lewis’ OC office. “We’re thrilled to continue this momentum with this group of well-recognized and well-connected lawyers in the Orange County business community.”
Bancroft was among the five honorees at the Business Journal’s Women in Business Awards last year. She spent 10 years at Dorsey, and prior to that was with the Irvine office of San Francisco-based Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP as a partner for eight years before the firm closed in 2003.
That’s when she and six other partners, along with 11 associates, joined Dorsey.
She said her latest transition from Dorsey to Morgan Lewis has been helped by a reunion with former colleagues.
“Morgan Lewis [also] took a lot of the Brobeck team when it went under,” Bancroft said. “It was terrific to be able to rejoin a lot of my former colleagues. We knew people in the system already. That made the move easy.”
