San Francisco-based Morrison & Foerster LLP is closing its Irvine office next month.
After June 30, Morrison & Foerster no longer will have an office in Orange County. The firm said it plans to work for local clients from its Los Angeles and San Diego offices.
“For over 20 years we have had many excellent clients served by our Orange County colleagues,” the firm said in a statement. “Our scale of practice in that market today, however, does not justify our continued presence (here) as a full service office.”
Rumors about a possible shuttering of Morrison & Foerster’s OC office have circulated for months after several partners left to join other firms, including Jones Day in Irvine, the Costa Mesa office of Bingham McCutchen LLP and Costa Mesa-based Rutan & Tucker LLP.
The final blow came late last month after Morrison & Foerster’s managing partner Dean Zipser and litigation partner Tom Umberg left to join the Costa Mesa office of Los Angeles-based Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP.
The remaining local Morrison & Foerster partners, counsels and associates are expected to join other firms. Some may move their practices to the firm’s other 13 offices.
Morrison & Foerster’s Irvine office counted some 50 lawyers in its heyday.
The office says it now has 17 lawyers practicing in OC, according to its Web site. But that number counts lawyers who already have left the firm, such as Zipser and Umberg, who started practicing at Manatt last week, and associate Bryan Smith, who joined the Irvine office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
More lawyers already could have left Morrison & Foerster for other firms. Calls and e-mails made to those lawyers weren’t immediately returned.
Morrison & Foerster counts more than 1,000 lawyers globally. The firm has practices in all areas including complex business litigation, intellectual property, real estate, tax, white-collar criminal defense and other areas.
The firm’s dissolution in OC is representative of the increasingly competitive nature of the local legal market.
Morrison & Foerster is one of many global and national firms with offices here vying for work from the county’s small to midsize businesses. But with more than 50 sizable law firms in the county, competition for clients and lawyers is getting steeper.
Morrison & Foerster isn’t the only big firm to struggle.
The Costa Mesa office of San Francisco-based Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw & Pittman LLP is rumored to be closing. The office once counted 20 lawyers in OC but after a series of departures in the past year is down to two lawyers and three others who split their time between here and Los Angeles.
Despite rumors, Pillsbury is committed to OC, managing partner Craig Barbarosh said in an earlier interview.
Legal sources speculate Morrison & Foerster is leaving OC for a variety of reasons, including a lack of clients able to pay higher rates and competition from other firms that are making more of a commitment here.
Some sources said a few lawyers left the firm because they felt slighted by the attention given to Morrison & Foerster’s other offices in bigger markets such as New York, Los Angeles and London.
Dan Hatch, a partner with global legal search firm Major Lindsey & Africa, couldn’t talk specifically about Morrison & Foerster for confidentiality reasons but spoke about why a global law firm might leave OC.
“If you sprinkle in some partner defections to an office with less than the valuable traction, sometimes it’s easier to cut and run,” Hatch said.
Opportunity
Manatt’s addition of Zipser and Umberg marks a coup for the firm, which has heavy practices in litigation, real estate, land use, finance, healthcare and other areas.
“When we have an opportunity to successfully acquire folks of Dean and Tom’s stature and experience, people who are really encroached in the Orange County community, that’s important to us,” said William Quicksilver, Manatt’s chief executive and managing partner.
Zipser, a litigation partner who handles complex business, intellectual property, real estate and class action defense work, led Morrison & Foerster’s OC office at various times since 2001.
Umberg, a litigation partner who deals with complex business issues, real estate development and federal and state policy and regulatory matters, also has led Morrison & Foerster’s OC office as managing partner.
He also served as deputy director at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Clinton and was a state Assemblyman.
Manatt has been expanding in OC since it opened its doors in 2001, right before the economic downturn of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
“Manatt’s enthusiasm for the Orange County market is really inspiring and that’s one of the most prominent reasons why I joined,” Umberg said.
The firm now counts about 30 lawyers in Costa Mesa but is adding more lawyers to its real estate practice to handle work that arises as real estate clients adapt to changes in the market, said Ellen Marshall, managing partner of Manatt’s Costa Mesa office.
The firm’s most recent addition includes Steve Edwards, former co-chair of the real estate practice group at O’Melveny & Meyers’ Newport Beach office.
Marshall is mum about whether more lawyers are expected to join Manatt from Morrison & Foerster.
