Quote:
Originally Posted by Capsule F
To any lawyers on the forum: Does the growth of non-native firms affect Philadelphia firms in any way?
|
It could take business away from them. To give a practical example based on that article, H&K just stole a partner from Ballard. It's possible that clients who were using that partner at Ballard may reach out to him for other legal work which he may now direct to partners located at H&K's offices in NYC/elsewhere instead of Ballard's Philly office. That partner may also give work to junior associates located in H&K's other offices instead of Philly, particularly until H&K is able to properly staff their Philly office (which it sounds like they're going to be doing).
On the other hand, maybe now H&K devote more resources to their Philly office and work they were doing for Philly-based companies will now be done in Philly as opposed to being done in other offices (i.e. if they have any Philly biotech clients, maybe right now they have attorneys in their Boston office - which presumably has some biotech clients - do the work for those Philly clients, and maybe now they'll hire people to Philly to do it instead). This is all hypothetical, and I know next to nothing about H&K haha. At the end of the day, ideally with these big firms we want as many of the partners located in Philly as possible, because everything else follows them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Capsule F
Also, what is the general barometer regarding Philadelphia firms? Are the doing well? Expanding nationally? Growing?
|
jsbrook can probably speak more to this than I can since I'm in government and not private practice, but they seem to be doing relatively well recently, especially Morgan Lewis. Dechert was expanding a few years ago and was in the process of moving their 'main' office to NYC, but I think that all sort of blew up in their face and didn't go well. (Of course, this was 3-4 years ago now, so who knows what they're doing.) None of the others really seem to be struggling at all, which I think is more to do with the economy doing well on a macro level than anything else.