Add this to the list of Orange County exports to the rest of the nation: legal work.
When companies across the country need a good lawyer, they’re more likely to call a law firm’s OC office than in the past.
It once was that regional and national law firms came to the county to serve local companies,and compete with homegrown firms such as Newport Beach’s Stradling, Yocca, Carlson & Rauth LLP and Costa Mesa’s Rutan & Tucker LLP.
The local offices have raised their profiles in recent years, enough to attract some of the biggest company names, including Coca-Cola Co., Home Depot Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc.
“Any time a regional office matures and the lawyers become prominent in their fields of expertise, you’re more likely to attract clients,” said Brett Williamson, a partner at the Newport Beach office of Los Angeles-based O’Melveny & Myers LLP.
As much as two-thirds of the work at some local law offices comes from companies outside the county, according to the firms.
Part of the challenge for firms in OC is getting outside the shadows of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“Perceptions change slower than the reality,” said Jeff Thomas, partner in charge at the Irvine office of Los Angeles-based Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. “But I think that’s coming around.”
Working with growing OC companies has helped local offices land work with big outside clients. Lawyers at the OC offices of regional and national firms have cut their teeth on local bankruptcy, public offering and intellectual property rights work.
With that work has come expertise in technology, drugs, medical devices and other areas.
At O’Melveny & Myers, national clients include International Game Technology, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers Inc. About half of the Newport Beach office’s business comes from outside OC.
At Gibson Dunn in Irvine, about 30% of clients come from outside OC. They include Janus Capital Group Inc. and Williams Co.
At the Costa Mesa office of Los Angeles-based Latham & Watkins LLP, about a third of the work comes from OC. Another third is from the rest of California, with the remainder coming from outside the state. Clients have included Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., Office Depot Inc. and Coca-Cola.
The Newport Beach office of Century City-based Irell & Manella LLP, which came here in 1979, has about half of its business from outside the county. Local lawyers have helped with intellectual property litigation at Texas Instruments, Columbia University and the Netherlands’ ASM Holding NV.
The Costa Mesa office of San Francisco’s Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman LLP has done work for JPMorgan Chase & Co., Clear Channel Communications Inc. and Home Depot, said Craig Barbarosh, managing partner at the local office.
The trend is part of an evolution of the law business here.
A few decades ago, OC companies struggled to find top-notch lawyers nearby and had to look to Los Angeles.
In the late 1970s, a handful of firms came down, including O’Melveny & Myers, Latham & Watkins and Irell & Manella. Gibson Dunn already was here, having come way back in 1964.
The local offices of the regional and national firms still trail the biggest OC-based firms in size, though they’re all part of the top 10 here.
The big firms “really caused the legitimization of the legal practice down here,” said Tom Crane, managing partner at Rutan & Tucker, the county’s largest firm by lawyers and whose local roots go back to 1906. “That made it a much more high-profile legal practice (area).”
The regionals and nationals added expertise to their staffs. For years, though, they largely served the local market.
Things started getting more complicated in the 1990s, as OC’s technology and biomedical sectors ma-tured. And that got the local offices more notoriety.
“If a lawyer here is retained by a local company to handle a very sophisticated, difficult transactional case that’s going to get a lawyer exposure outside the county,” Gibson Dunn’s Thomas said.
At the same time, firms were moving away from generalist lawyers toward those specializing in an industry or specific type of work.
“I consider myself and my colleagues not defined by where we practice, but rather how well we do our particular area of expertise,” O’Melveny & Myers’ Williamson said.
That has led to firms landing work elsewhere and steering it to lawyers in OC. With technology, place isn’t as important as it used to be, said Susan Robinson, associate dean for career services at Stanford Law School.
“A lot of the firms are operating on a national basis, so there’s not as much separation between offices,” she said.
Lawyers in Costa Mesa can videoconference with others in Boston. They can use Blackberrys to send e-mails regardless of where they are.
“Technology has made it a lot easier to work outside California and outside the U.S.,” said Rick Sherman, managing partner at Irell & Manella’s Newport Beach office. “Years ago, you would do everything by overnight mail or by faxes.”
The county’s status has risen among top students, according to Stanford’s Robinson.
“I’ve certainly noticed a change over the years,” she said. “Before, students who were interested in L.A. didn’t tend to consider Orange County as often.”
For Pillsbury Winthrop’s Barbarosh, who does a lot of bankruptcy work in New York, it took some time to educate other lawyers on OC.
“I’ve been traveling back and forth there pretty regularly for eight years,” he said. “When I would first go out there, I would hand them my business card, and they would say CAsta Mesa? And I would say, ‘No. COsta Mesa.'”
