Pa. Law Firms Swap Partners in N.J.
It’s something of a musical chairs situation in central New Jersey as Pennsylvania law firms strive to establish a significant presence in the booming corporate area by raiding one another’s attorney rosters.
As detailed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, 275-lawyer Saul Ewing was the victim of a December attack by 500-attorney Blank Rome, which lured away five Princeton litigation partners from its fellow Philadelphia-based competitor to open its own office in the area. But now Saul Ewing has struck back, reportedly replenishing its attorney ranks by conducted a similar raid on a local office of a Pittsburgh-based BigLaw firm, Reed Smith.
Reed Smith is supplying four of the five lawyers that Saul Ewing is now hiring to fill the Princeton slots left vacant by last month’s Blank Rome incursion, reports the Times, a central New Jersey newspaper.
“You can see how competitive the marketplace is for individual attorneys, and for law firms,” says Marc Citron, managing partner of the Saul Ewing office in Plainsboro, N.J.
Carl Buccholz, Blank Rome’s managing partner and chief executive, says such new hires show how law firms must jockey for position in one of the region’s hottest growth areas. “Our strategy for growth over the past several years has been to be where our clients are and in centers of influence,” he tells the Times. “We have an existing client base in central New Jersey, and also we believe that market is a center for a lot of industries in which we have clients: pharmaceuticals, biotech, venture capital.”
There’s no word on what law firm 1,500-lawyer Reed Smith may now be targeting to fill the hole in its central New Jersey attorney ranks resulting from the Saul Ewing raid.
