On Thursday, the Dallas office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP announced that a 7-partner team of corporate and litigation lawyers would be joining the law firm’s Dallas office. All seven attorneys were partners at Haynes & Boone.
Akin Gump chairman Bruce McLean said “This is an extraordinary group of lawyers entering the prime of their careers. Their arrival will be a tremendous step forward for Akin Gump in Dallas and will greatly enhance our core strengths in corporate and litigation work … It is a rare opportunity to welcome a top-tier team with such a broad range of skills to our firm, and I’m thrilled that they will be joining us.”
Among the seven new partners are Tom Yang, Garret DeVries and Matt Zmigrosky, who would be focusing on strategic mergers and acquisitions, capital markets and securities, including private equity transactions.
The other four, who are well-known litigators, include Marty Brimmage Jr., Mike Warnecke, Arnold Spencer, and Sarah Teachout. They would be focusing on white collar, government investigations, antitrust, false claims matters, bankruptcy litigation, and commercial litigation.
Though the dates of joining have not yet been announced formally, but the deal is through. Ken Menges, co-head of Akin Gump’s firm-wide corporate practice and partner in charge of the Dallas office said elatedly, “The Dallas market is a critical hub of activity for many of our clients …. The addition of this team will greatly enhance our service offerings …. and both our firm and our clients will benefit immensely from their arrival.”
The deal reconfirms the status of Texas as one of the hottest legal markets. With the partners moving from Haynes & Boon, they would now have 88 partners while the number of partners at Akin Gump’s Dallas office would go up to 43.