McDermott offices in Washington DC (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

The head of McDermott Will & Emery's restructuring and insolvency group said he isn't betting on an economic downturn or recession happening soon. He think it's already beginning to happen.

"I don't know that we're betting on a downturn. I think we believe there is a downturn. I think we're at the beginnings of it right now," said Timothy Walsh, one of the global co-heads of the group.

Walsh said that, within the past six months, McDermott lawyers have brought on three new debtor representations—United Sporting Goods, Furie Operating Alaska and Agera Energy. And more filings are in the works, he added.

It's with this in mind that the firm announced Wednesday it was adding more seasoned partners to its ranks in Chicago—Felicia Perlman and Brad Giordano are joining McDermott's restructuring and insolvency group after jumping ship from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and King & Spalding, respectively.

Perlman is joining McDermott as a global co-head of the firm's restructuring and insolvency group.

"There's a lot of activity in the distressed market," Walsh said. "We think bringing them in gives us the extra bandwidth to service the clients we have now and service the ones we hope to get."

During her 20-year tenure at Skadden, Perlman handled the debtor proceedings of Millennium Health, a San Diego laboratory company, and Dendreon, a biotechnology company that reportedly went into deep debt after trying to sell the world's first cancer vaccine, a firm spokesman said. Giordano spent eight years at Kirkland & Ellis and less than two years at King & Spalding's financial restructuring practice.

Since July, the firm has added at least six lawyers to the restructuring practice, Walsh said. This includes Jeffrey Reisner, who became another global co-head of the group in September, and Kristin Going, who joined in July.

Both Reisner and Going had worked at their prior firms—Irell & Manella and Drinker Biddle & Reath, respectively—for at least 15 years, according to their LinkedIn pages. Reisner is based out of Los Angeles and New York, while Going is based in New York.

"We look at the expansion of our group as a way to service our clients while we enter this soft recession or deep recession period," Walsh said.

McDermott isn't the only Big Law firm that's been actively building out its bankruptcy-related practices. Earlier this month, four partners from Jones Day's bankruptcy and restructuring group jumped to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Debevoise & Plimpton.

In an interview with The American Lawyer, Scott Greenberg said Gibson Dunn was receptive to building up its restructuring group in response to growing concerns about an economic slowdown.

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius announced in September it had added three lawyers to its corporate restructuring and transactional finance practices. A month before that, a partner in Kirkland's Chicago office joined Mayer Brown as co-leader of the firm's global restructuring, bankruptcy and insolvency practice.

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