100-Plus Lewis Brisbois Lawyers Exit for New Employment Firm (1)

At least 125 Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith attorneys are said to be in the process of leaving the firm to join an offshoot boutique launched by former leaders of its employment practice.

The departures are largely California-based labor and employment attorneys, John Barber, a former Lewis Brisbois employment group chair, told Bloomberg Law on Tuesday. They’re jumping to Barber Ranen, a new firm launched by Barber and Jeff Ranen, an ex-vice chair in the Lewis Brisbois employment group.

“We had done as much as we could at Lewis Brisbois and we were both yearning for an opportunity to build something on our own,” Barber said in an interview. “The partners that remain [at Lewis Brisbois] are friends. There may be a little tension right now, but I have nothing but positive thoughts and things to say about them.”

Lewis Brisbois has seen more than 50 lawyers resign since Monday to join the new firm, according to Chicago-based partner Mary Smigielski.

She said Lewis Brisbois’ employment practice and the law firm remain “very strong.”

“We’ve been around for over 40 years and this is a change in the California employment practice,” Smigielski said. “The reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

Lewis Brisbois has about 1,700 lawyers spread across 55 offices in the US. The firm’s big corporate clients include Ford Motor Co. and Home Depot. It reported more than $700 million in gross revenue last year and about $1 million in profits per equity partner, according to The American Lawyer.

The firm expects to lose some of its California client base, but does not anticipate any significant impact, said Smigielski. She has verified with many “institutional clients” that they would continue working with Lewis Brisbois, sshe said.

Elior Shiloh, a New York-based partner who has been with the firm since 2014, has been tapped as the new chair of the firm’s employment practice.

Mass Exodus

Barber Ranen, and six other California-based equity partners informed Lewis Brisbois leadership of their plans to launch a spinoff law firm on April 27. They began recruiting associates and non-equity partners from the firm soon after, Barber said.

Lawyers in Denver, Seattle and Portland are joining the new firm, he said, along with a slew of California attorneys.

The mass exodus roughly halves the size of the firm’s employment group, which had about 200 attorneys nationally. It also marks the second significant practice group departure at the firm this year. A total of 32 cybersecurity lawyers, led by practice chair Sean Hoar, left in January to join the law firm Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete.

“We’ve seen a number of groups leave firms and it’s a threat that many firms are exposed to—groups of lawyers voting with their feet on what they want for their future,” said Kent Zimmermann, a law firm management consultant at the Zeughauser Group. He declined to comment specifcally about Lewis Brisbois and the Barber Ranen spinoff.

“You want to manage to the interests of the people in the firm who you could least afford to lose rather than trying to please everybody, which is rarely possible,” he said.

A 43-lawyer restructuring team from Stroock & Stroock left for Paul Hastings last year. Shearman & Sterling has more recently seen a wave of attorney exits, including a group of 20 Munich lawyers who joined Morgan Lewis in March, as merger talks with Hogan Lovells hit the skids.

“It’s entirely possible that we’ll see more splintering,” said Kate Reder Sheikh, a legal recruiter for Major, Lindsey & Africa. She also declined to discuss the Lewis Brisbois departures specifically.

“Groups may look for better platforms, especially if they’re at a firm that’s looking to merge and a merger isn’t happening,” she said.

Barber and Ranen, who are both based in Los Angeles, spent more than two decades apiece at Lewis Brisbois. Barber, whose clients have included Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. and food delivery company Home Chef, was a member of the management committee before his departure.

He said the move was not prompted by problems with firm management.

“The easiest explanation is that Jeff and I wanted to move in a new direction, rediscover the vigor we had earlier in our career,” he said.

Meghan Tribe contributed to this report.