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Rainmaker's Exit Prompts Akin Gump to Close Taiwan Office, Reassess Silicon Valley Office
The Recorder
June 11, 2008
Rainmaker Yitai Hu is leaving Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, causing the firm to close its Taiwan office and take a closer look at its Silicon Valley office, firm Chairman R. Bruce McLean said Tuesday.
A patent litigator with big Taiwanese-based clients like RealTek Semiconductor Corp., Hu has kept both of those offices busy since he opened them for Akin Gump in 2005. The firm will now decide whether it makes sense to continue in Silicon Valley, said McLean.
"He is the predominant business developer in that office," McLean said. "Over the course of the next several weeks we will assess the impact of Yitai's leaving."
The departure apparently came after Hu, who has split his time between both offices, expressed interest in returning to his native Taiwan more permanently. McLean said that didn't make economic sense for the firm, since Hu's team in Taiwan does primarily lower-billing patent prosecution work. He also said that the firm didn't want Hu so far away from his clients' big patent cases in the United States.
"We had a meeting here in Washington, D.C., last Friday," McLean said. "We have decided that we are going to part company."
Hu did not return a phone call and e-mail seeking comment Tuesday, and McLean said he didn't know what Hu's plans were, only that he would be leaving the firm on or before Aug. 1.
The fate of the Taiwan office, which has nine patent professionals, will remain in Hu's hands since it was mainly doing work for his clients, McLean said, but it definitely won't fly an Akin Gump flag.
In Silicon Valley, the mood was somber after the 10 other Akin Gump lawyers there got the news Tuesday afternoon.
"It's up in the air," said Sean DeBruine, office managing partner. "I think everybody here is looking at their options."
DeBruine and McLean said that Hu's clients kept the majority of the lawyers busy in the office with big patent cases. Aside from Realtek, Hu also does work for Sunplus Technology Co. and Elan Microelectronics Corp. McLean said he didn't expect the clients to stay with the firm.
Akin Gump has more than 1,000 lawyers and had revenues of over $750 million last year, according to this year's Am Law 100 list.
The firm opened the Silicon Valley and Taiwan offices in 2005 when Hu joined the firm -- along with others like DeBruine -- from Shaw Pittman. Before that, he worked for Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner.
The sudden pallor cast over Akin's office is a reminder that even as law firms continue to pile into the Valley, not everyone finds the pot at the end of the rainbow, legal recruiters say.
"I think it's a good example of, no matter who you are and how big you are, that you should have a strategic plan when you come into the Valley and you need to execute on it crisply," said Carl Baier, a local legal recruiter.
DeBruine said he'd hoped that the office would be further along at this point. It's been hard to recruit laterals, he said, although the firm did bring on IP litigator Steven Hemminger from White & Case last year. "It's a tough place to hit the ground and be successful," he said.
DeBruine had only good things to say about Hu, and hinted that it might not be the end of the road for the team that's worked on Hu's cases.
"I think he's an excellent lawyer, and I think he's got great instincts," said Debruine. "I don't know that this is the end of our association."
