7 More Powell Lawyers Defect in DC
Seven more lawyers have jumped ship from the Washington, D.C., office of Powell Goldstein.
The group of seven commercial real estate practitioners and a paralegal have moved to Seyfarth Shaw’s office there, in the latest of a series of defections from Powell’s office in Washington in recent weeks, writes the Daily Report in a article reprinted by New York Lawyer (reg. req.).
The departed lawyers are: team leader Ronald Gart, who is now a Seyfarth partner, along with Christa Dommers and Adam Walsh, Peter Segal, who serves as counsel to Seyfarth, and three associates, Greta Goldsby, Richard “RJ” Hamilton III and Tiffany Wrkich. Paralegal Judy Welch also moved with the group.
“We’ve got clients based in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York doing deals in Atlanta, Boston and Washington, so we needed a larger platform to serve those clients’ needs,” says Gart of the move to Seyfarth, which is headquartered in Chicago. His new firm has some 780 lawyers in 10 offices throughout the country and in Brussels, versus Powell Goldstein’s 250 attorneys in four offices in and around the Southeast. The firm is headquartered in Atlanta.
As discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post and a Legal Times article, Powell Goldstein has been struggling to catch up with rapidly growing competitors in recent years, as its own attorney roster in D.C. dropped from a high of 110 in 2002 to about 60 today.
Powell’s D.C. office lost eight other attorneys this month prior to the departure of the seven-lawyer real estate group.
The firm is reportedly discussing a potential merger with Womble Carlyle, based in Winston-Salem, N.C., that could create an 800-lawyer regional powerhouse if it is successful.
