LeClair Raids Donovan for New MA Office
At least 10 lawyers, including several practice group chairs, have jumped ship from the now 60-attorney Donovan Hatem in Boston to establish an office there for LeClair Ryan.
The Virginia firm has some 150 lawyers, more than twice as many as Donovan, and has a general business practice. Kevin G. Kenneally will head LeClair Ryan’s new Boston office, which opens July 23, according to the firm’s Web site. Prior to the move, he chaired the Donovan firm’s health care litigation and insurance and tort litigation practice groups. A. Neil Hartzell, who chaired Donovan’s business litigation group, is also making the move to LeClair Ryan.
Other Donovan Hatem lawyers (all but one of them partners) who also are joining LeClair Ryan are: Jeffrey L. Alitz, Paul G. Boylan, Michael P. Giunta, Jay S. Gregory, Warren D. Hutchison, Janet Barringer Pezzulich, Christopher J. Supple and Michael B. Weinberg.
“They’re all trial lawyers who have done everything from commercial litigation to tort defense,” firm chair Gary D. LeClair told Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. “They are very experienced trial lawyers.”
He said his firm, which recently established a presence in New York, had been talking with the Donovan Hatem lawyers for almost a year, the weekly reports. However, he denied a source’s claim that five Donovan associates also have accepted positions at LeClair Ryan.
“This represents an excellent opportunity for our clients to have a much greater depth of representation in a significant financial market,” LeClair told the National Law Journal in an article reprinted in New York Lawyer (sub. req.).
LeClair Ryan, which is headquartered in Richmond, also has offices in nine other Virginia cities as well as New York City and Washington, D.C. Donovan Hatem, a business and defense firm, also has offices in Newton, a Boston suburb, and New York City.
