Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

 

Page 3

 

Goodwin Procter Opens Downtown Office, Adds Three Partners

 

By TINA BAY, Staff Writer

 

The Boston-based firm of Goodwin Procter yesterday expanded its Los Angeles office by opening a new location in downtown and adding three partners to its locally-based real estate practice.

The firm, which opened its first California offices in Century City and San Francisco last April, now has a total of 21 attorneys working locally—10 in Century City and 11 downtown.

Lew Feldman, chair of Goodwin’s Los Angeles office, told the MetNews that expanding from the East Coast to California has “long been a part of the overall plan,” and noted that the firm plans to open an office in Silicon Valley within a year.

With a location downtown, he said, the firm’s litigation practice would benefit not only in terms of proximity to courts and financial institutions, but also in recruiting and attracting talented attorneys, Feldman said.

Lawyers living in areas such as Pasadena and La Crescenta generally do not want to take a job on the Westside, he explained, so having a downtown location to attract those individuals is important.

“There really are traffic limitations and transportation limitations to people’s willingness to take an opportunity no matter how good it is,” he said, adding the firm’s goal is to find, bring in and resource lawyers who are “best in class.”

The chair said that although its two-location Los Angeles presence is not large compared to many of the big-name firms, Goodwin is “moving up the food chain pretty rapidly” because its growth is based on quality as opposed to quantity.

The firm’s approach is slow but “very strong and consistent,” aiming to enter new markets by finding select groups of partners who can become integrated into the firm by working with a core group of East Coast partners, Feldman explained, pointing to the addition of partners Dean C. Pappas, Dani L. Vogt and Edward C. Hagerott Jr. to the firm’s local real estate capital markets and real estate investment management groups.

Pappas and Vogt are former Mayer, Brow, Rose & Maw partners, and Hagerott Jr. joins from Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Pappas described Goodwin as one of the preeminent real estate capital market firms in the U.S.

“My sense is as the firm grows in the west coast, it’s footprints are going to grow larger,” he said. “I expect that our business will grow rather significantly in the next short while.”

Goodwin’s downtown location focuses on financial institutions and litigation. Its Century City location emphasizes investment banks and real estate transactional interests, including venture capitalists.

The firm as a whole specializes in the areas of private equity, technology, life sciences, financial services, real estate, real estate capital markets, intellectual property, products liability and mass torts.

In addition to a downtown office, Goodwin also opened an office in San Diego yesterday.

 

Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company