Alston & Bird Plans: TX, Maybe CA, London
A major Atlanta-based law firm has announced plans to open an office in Dallas and is thinking about expanding into California and London as well.
Alston & Bird will start small in Dallas, with an eight-lawyer office, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Dallas office will be staffed by five attorneys from Crews, Shepherd & McCarty, a litigation firm there that Alston & Bird is acquiring, as well as three Alston lawyers from the firm’s Atlanta office, according to Richard Hays. He is managing partner-elect of Alston & Bird.
Complex commercial litigation and intellectual property litigation will be the focus of the Dallas office, Hays says. One driving force behind the 800-lawyer firm’s potential expansion into California and London is its increasing interest in investing in alternative energy.
“A lot of that emanates from London,” Hays said of the firm’s current alternative energy work. “It draws on our practices that are elsewhere and it draws on our D.C. presence. In D.C. we have strong regulatory and public policy practices and a lot of these areas of public policy come in.”
Besides Atlanta and the new Dallas office, it now has a presence in Washington, D.C., New York, Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area.
