Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Monday, January 26, 2009

 

Page 3

 

Three Sheppard Mullin Litigators Establish Own Practice

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Three litigators from Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP’s downtown Los Angeles office have struck out on their own to establish their own five-, soon to be six-member firm in Century City, the attorneys announced yesterday.

Despite the ailing economy and collapse of several large law firms, former Sheppard Mullin partner Christopher S. Reeder, of counsel Beverly Y. Lu and associate Gabriel G. Green have joined with special counsel Ronald D. Reynolds and associate Christopher L. Hendricks to form Reeder Lu & Green LLP, which opened for business Wednesday.

Reeder told the MetNews that Jennifer Keh is expected to join them Feb. 2, and said the new firm was only “a short walk and a stone’s throw away” from Sheppard Mullin’s Century City office.

He declared the firm “up and running and getting to full speed,” but acknowledged that “times are tough” and said the firm’s goal is “to turn the negatives of the economy into a positive.”

The new firm said in a release that their cases mainly come from clients in Los Angeles, but cited growth in clients in the southwest in general due to recent successful representation of a developer in Arizona allowing progress on a proposed sports complex to house new training facilities for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox.

Reeder said that although the firm mainly represents developers, some lenders, franchisors and health maintenance organizations, they are a full service litigation firm with the ability to also handle transactional real estate and sports law work.

He added that he would like to bring on a pure corporate lawyer as a partner to “round out the firm” in the near future, and maintained that the partners—despite all being in their 30s—“ have the combined knowledge and experience to handle virtually every facet of business litigation,” while still being “young and aggressive.”

Reeder graduated from the State University of New York at Albany, and attended the University of Dayton School of Law before his admission to the State Bar in 1997.

Lu attended both college and law school at UCLA, and was admitted to the State Bar in 2000.

Green attended college at Pennsylvania State University and law school at the University of San Diego, and was admitted to the State Bar in 2002.

 

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