Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Nixon Peabody; and Cozen O'Connor are seeking to expand their Chicago attorney teams as they move into new offices.

Skadden's 190 Chicago lawyers will start in the new building at 155 North Wacker Drive on June 22, said Marian Wexler, the Skadden real estate partner who's coordinating the move. The space there will be a third larger, with 220,000 square feet and room for more lawyers, she said.

Cozen O'Connor, in turn, will move next April into one of the floors vacated by Skadden at 333 West Wacker Drive, where it will have room to double its attorney head count, said Tia Ghattas, the firm's managing partner in Chicago.

"We're actively recruiting," said Ghattas, noting that the firm is looking for corporate lawyers and commercial litigators who already have books of business.

While law firm expansion has slowed in Chicago during the recession, particularly compared to the accelerated growth in the prior five years, many national firms that set up shop in the city since 2000 are still looking to add lawyers. Efforts to recruit partners with business has been a constant, but firms in the past month have started to look for associates in certain practice areas, including finance, banking, litigation and bankruptcy, said Amy McCormack, who leads the Chicago recruiting firm McCormack Schreiber.

Nixon Peabody earlier this month moved into a new office building at 300 South Riverside Plaza, nearly doubling its Chicago space to 32,676 square feet. The firm has 22 lawyers there now and wants to add 15 to 20, said Stephen Rudisill, who leads the office. The firm opened its doors in the city in 2007 with a group of intellectual property lawyers.

"Chicago is a major market in the country so [the firm management would] like to add some of the other practices here," Rudisill said.

Skadden, which has its third-largest U.S. office in Chicago, has flexibility in the number of additional lawyers it could post in the new office, said Wexler, who declined to specify how many new attorneys might be coming on board. In the eight floors that Skadden will occupy in the new building, the firm also has a new cafeteria from which it will not only serve meals, but also provide food for meetings, allowing it to reduce catering costs, she said.

Cozen, which entered the Chicago market in 2000 and currently has 22 lawyers in the city, will have space for 46 lawyers in the new office.