A recent shuffling of lawyers among local firms has brought three new partners to the Irvine office of K&L Gates LLP in a round of lateral hires.
The Pittsburgh-based firm has a modest presence in Orange County, relative to its national and international spread, with 35 lawyers. It counts about 2,000 lawyers in more than 40 offices in the U.S. and internationally.
K&L Gates has been growing its size in Orange County recently. It debuted on the Business Journal list of local law firms last year at No. 39 with 23 attorneys, a tripling of the year-earlier total. The list ranks firms by the number of attorneys based in local offices.
Ellen Darling and Brendan Ford made the move earlier this month from the Costa Mesa office of Phoenix-based Snell & Wilmer LLP.
The two have been working closely in Snell & Wilmer’s product liability practice.
Darling, who spent 21 years at Snell & Wilmer, said she was attracted to her new firm by its international reach.
“In light of my client base, including those in OC, I felt that an international platform was better for me and for my clients,” Darling said. “Some of my clients have lawsuits overseas that I couldn’t do anything with. And there are a lot of regulatory issues. Snell doesn’t have a D.C. presence; K&L does. It’s for me to expand my wings a little bit.”
Snell & Wilmer has nine locations in the Western U.S. and in Mexico. The firm has about 400 attorneys in total, with 64 based here. It was No. 6 on last year’s Business Journal list.
“We wish them well,” said Warren Platt, a Snell & Wilmer partner whose practice focuses on civil litigation. “They’re excellent attorneys. They’ve been a valuable part of the firm for a number of years.”
Darling works primarily with medical device makers and pharmaceutical companies, as well as healthcare providers and lab companies.
Litigation Practice
Ford had been at Snell & Wilmer for almost eight years. He has a litigation practice that concentrates on product liability, healthcare and environmental cases, with clients ranging from automakers and medical device manufacturers to physicians and clinics, among others.
Ford cited K&L Gates as an international draw and said the opportunity to make the switch in tandem with Darling also carried weight.
“The fact that K&L Gates has a number of pharmaceutical clients … provided a strong opportunity for me and Ellen to cross-market,” he said. “And the ability to have the national and international platform was attractive to me.”
Three associates from Snell & Wilmer are expected to join them this week.
K&L Gates also tapped Jan Weir, formerly a partner in the intellectual property practice at Newport Beach-based Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth.
Stradling Yocca was the third-largest law firm here on last year’s Business Journal list, with 108 attorneys here. It has six offices throughout California.
K&L Gates’ focus on biotechnology helped draw Weir.
“A lot of my practice over the recent years has focused on biotech and life sciences,” Weir said. “I now have access to Ph.D.-level molecular biologists and biochemists, and that gives us a tremendous amount of bandwidth. It maybe has to do with the nature of where we are in OC and the times we’re in. There’s a growing life science industry here.”
Weir brought a team of three associates from Stradling Yocca: Taylor Foss, Joseph Mellema and Jennifer Mauri.
