The law firm of Blank Rome, headquartered in Philadelphia, announced that it is establishing an office in San Francisco. It also said that it will expand its reach into New York and Los Angeles by adding 21 lawyers. Five will be partners and they are all coming from the firms of Finestone & Richter and Margolis & Tisman. The deals take effect on February 1, according to The Philadelphia Business Journal.
Out of the 21 lawyers, 15 will be added to the office in Los Angeles. Three lawyers will join the office in New York and three will join the office in San Francisco. The office in L.A. opened in 2009 and it has 28 lawyers working there now.
There are close to 500 lawyers across all of Blank Rome’s locations, with 130 working in New York.
Alan Hoffman, Chairman and Managing Partner of the firm, said that the acquisitions include all of the lawyers at both firms except for one or two lawyers. The lawyers bring experience in labor and employment, commercial litigation, corporate mergers and acquisitions, real estate, banking and trusts and estates.
Six lawyers from Margolis & Tisman will work in Los Angeles and three each will work in San Francisco and New York. Michael Margolis works as a corporate litigator in L.A. while Stephen Tisman works as a commercial and employment litigator in New York.
Finestone & Richter was founded 37 years ago. All nine of the firms lawyers will join Blank Rome in its Los Angeles office. Their lawyers are experienced with transactional work. Jeffrey R. Richter operates a transactional practice and William Finestone deals with estates and trusts.
Margolis said in a statement that his decision to join Blank Rome was to “best serve the expanding needs of our domestic and foreign clients — particularly the rapidly growing number of Chinese and Korean businesses and entrepreneurs operating in the U.S.”
It has been reported that Blank Rome is in the middle of merger discussions with Nixon Peabody, which is based in Boston and has some 600 lawyers.