Portland, Oregon.
Stoel Rives has added five lawyers from Perkins Coie to its real estate and land use practice in Portland, Oregon, as the Am Law 200 firm seeks to shore up its succession plans.
Andrew Solomon, Christopher Criglow and Dana Krawczuk have all joined Stoel Rives as partners in its real estate and land use group, the firm announced this week. Perkins Coie senior attorney Christian Scott is rejoining Stoel as counsel in its real estate group, while Laura Kerr is coming aboard as an associate.
“We’re very excited to have them on board,” said David Filippi, who was named co-managing partner of Stoel Rives’ Portland office early last year.
The decision to bring on the group came as result of an internal examination by the firm, Filippi said. Several of its real estate and land use practice have retired or will be retiring, thereby forcing Stoel Rives to assess the needs of its clients and its own future plans for its practice.
David Filippi.
“This was a combination that made a lot of sense for us,” Filippi said. “We were filling some needs here for our clients [and] we have a platform that works very well for them. It’s certainly a move that benefited both sides.”
Criglow, Krawczuk and Solomon worked together at Perkins Coie in its real estate and land use practice in Portland.
“Stoel [Rives] is focused on the Pacific Northwest,” said Solomon, who joined Perkins Coie in 2001 following his graduation from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland. “It provides a wonderful platform for my real estate practice, which really is an Oregon-focused practice.”
Solomon’s practice centers on the development of industrial properties, as well as management of a variety of asset classes, including retail leasing work.
Criglow, who joined Perkins Coie in 2005 from Jones Walker, does work in the industrial property space and specializes in agricultural and timber transactions. Krawczuk, who arrived at Perkins Coie in 2012 as senior counsel from Ball Janik, works on land use issues with a heavy focus on clients working on development projects in the Portland metropolitan area.
“Portland has changed very rapidly over the past several years,” said Solomon of the city, featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes” last month in a piece about its time of transition. “Where before it was very much a local market, now you’re having more and more big institutional owners of real estate come into this market and buying assets, so that’s definitely changed the dynamic here.”
And Stoel Rives’ headquarters in Portland, the largest Big Law office in the city, is working to help feed that demand for legal services, Filippi said.
“To have a strong and vibrant real estate land use practice [is] absolutely fundamental for many of our clients, not just here in Portland, but in the Pacific Northwest more broadly,” Filippi said. “This was a very strategic investment move on our part.”
Stoel Rives, which saw its gross revenue slip slightly in 2017, to $210.3 million, made headlines last summer after it announced the cutting of 17 administrative staff positions as part of a strategic plan to revamp its operations. In November, Stoel Rives said it would move its accounting department from Portland to an expanded office in Boise, Idaho.
The recent hires in Portland are the latest by Stoel Rives in its home city, where last year the firm hired Steven Boender and Kevin Burnett from K&L Gates to shore up its offerings to startup clients.
