Newport Beach law firm Newmeyer & Dillion LLP is gearing up for more hiring despite its main practice being hit by a slowdown.
The firm, which specializes in real estate litigation and transactions, plans to hire 25 to 30 lawyers during the next few years, according to partner John O’Hara. Next year, it plans to bring in four to eight lawyers and additional staff.
Newmeyer expects the dragged down real estate market,thanks to the subprime mortgage mess and slow housing sales and construction,to actually boost business with an upswing in lawsuits.
“The economy in the real estate market is going to be down on the transactional side but litigation will be up,” O’Hara said.
The firm has Irvine-based homebuilder Standard Pacific Corp., Atlanta’s Home Depot Inc. and Newport Beach-based savings and loan operator Downey Financial Corp. as clients.
Newmeyer expects what it calls lower billing fees to attract companies that are shopping around for less expensive legal work, O’Hara said.
“We’ve actually had to turn down a lot of work on the transaction side because we didn’t have enough attorneys,” O’Hara said.
The firm has about 50 lawyers and more than 100 employees at its Newport Beach office. It also has seven lawyers at an office in Walnut Creek.
Newmeyer ranked No. 14 on the Business Journal’s annual list of law firms in early 2007.
Among those expected to join Newmeyer next year is a partner from a local law firm and an in-house lawyer at a national development company, O’Hara said.
He declined to give names. The incoming partners are “high profile” and will help bolster the firm’s real estate practice, O’Hara said. They are expected to bring several clients with them, he said.
A boost in lawyers could put Newmeyer in the running with some of the county’s biggest law firms that have real estate practices, including the Irvine office of Los Angeles-based Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, which has 70 lawyers; the Costa Mesa office of Phoenix-based Snell & Wilmer LLP, which has 70 lawyers; and Irvine-based Jackson DeMarco Tidus Peterson Peckenpaugh, with nearly 60 lawyers.
Costa Mesa-based Rutan & Tucker LLP, the largest law firm in the county, is the top firm with a real estate practice. It counts about 145 lawyers in all.
Newmeyer recently signed a lease to add 10,000 square feet to its headquarters. It plans to start working on the space next year after existing tenants leave in spring, O’Hara said.
The firm then will have a 53,000-square-foot office in Newport Beach. The additional space will be used to create more offices for lawyers and a few conference rooms, he said.
Newmeyer doesn’t have official plans to open another office, but it’s open to the idea, according to O’Hara.
