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Akin Gump Losing Lawyers to Greenberg Traurig and Hunton & Williams
Texas Lawyer
July 30, 2008
Miami firm Greenberg Traurig, which has offices in Houston and Dallas, will open an office in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 1 with seven lawyers, including three who are leaving Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld's Austin office.
Douglas Atnipp, Greenberg Traurig's managing shareholder in Houston, says the firm has eyed Austin since it opened the Houston office in 2005. "It's part of our plan to be in the state capitals of the fast-growing economic centers. ... Texas, California, Florida, New York and we are in D.C.," Atnipp says. "Part of our strategy is to be in the political capitals of the jurisdictions."
Atnipp says five lawyers from Akin Gump will help open Greenberg Traurig's Austin office, including three Akin Gump partners -- public law and policy partner Demetrius McDaniel, insurance and regulatory partner Thomas Bond and Austin managing partner Barry Senterfitt -- and two associates. McDaniel, Bond and Senterfitt could not immediately be reached for comment.
Also, Atnipp notes, two Greenberg Traurig lawyers who currently live in Austin but are assigned to offices in other cities will join the firm's new Austin office on Aug. 1. They are intellectual property shareholder John "Chip" Rainey who is assigned to the Houston office, and entertainment finance shareholder James Thoma of the Los Angeles office. Atnipp says Greenberg Traurig currently has about 50 lawyers in Houston and 46 in Dallas, so the Akin Gump group will push the firm over the 100-lawyer mark in Texas.
Meanwhile, Hunton & Williams also is actively recruiting Akin Gump lawyers, according to Akin Gump Chairman Bruce McLean of Washington, D.C. McLean says nine partners, including one in Houston, notified him in writing last week that they are moving to Hunton & Williams. Akin Gump currently is negotiating with those partners about their withdrawal from the firm, McLean says. He declines to identify them, but says they are leaving various Akin Gump offices.
Separately, on July 1, Hunton & Williams, based in Richmond, Va., announced it had hired eight Akin Gump labor and employment attorneys, including four partners and four associates. Hunton & Williams executive director Barry Koval of Richmond, Va., did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. McLean says Akin Gump regrets seeing its attorneys leave, but he says, "in the long run, it's not going to have an effect on us."
