Lewis Brisbois Loses Eight Lawyers After Mass Exit, Email Scrap

Three senior attorneys have left Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith in recent weeks as the firm experiences high turnover across its offices in 2023.

The departures include Dallas managing partner Chris White, Portland managing partner Eric Neiman and Walter “Pete” Swayze, the co-chair of the firm’s life sciences practice.

White, who joined Lewis Brisbois about a decade ago, in late June left with three other attorneys to join Steptoe & Johnson PLLC. Neiman, who helped launch the firm’s Portland office in 2015, left late last month to join Epstein Becker & Green, and he was joined by two other Lewis Brisbois attorneys, including health care partner Sharon Peters, according to Epstein’s website.

Lewis Brisbois, which has about 1,600 attorneys across the US, has faced significant exits across practice areas this year. More than 100 lawyers left in May with the labor and employment group practice leaders John Barber and Jeff Ranen to launch an offshoot firm.

Weeks later, Barber and Ranen resigned from that firm after Lewis Brisbois released emails showing the two exchanged racist, sexist and antisemitic messages during their time at Lewis Brisbois.

Partners Nichol Bunn and George Pitcher have replaced White and Neiman as the respective heads of the Dallas and Portland offices, Lewis Brisbois said.

“We are excited about all the new members of the leadership team who have started in the last few weeks and are looking forward to share even more good news including new top tier lawyers joining us in the weeks ahead,” the firm said in a statement.

White, a trial attorney who focuses on professional liability defense, said he’d been considering new opportunities for about six months and that the controversy over the Lewis Brisbois email release played no factor in his decision.

“I wish all of them the best,” White said in an interview Wednesday of his former colleagues. “I have no hard feelings. I want them to be successful.”

White said he is bringing all of his clients—largely insurance carriers—to the new firm. He declined to name them.

Neiman did not respond to a phone call requesting comment. Epstein Becker, the firm he has joined, declined to comment.

It is unclear where Swayze, who was the co-chair of the Lewis Brisbois life sciences practice, is going. His bio has been scrubbed from the firm website and a response to an email sent to his Lewis Brisbois address said he no longer works there. He did not respond to a request for comment via LinkedIn.

Swayze, whose clients have included Teva Pharmaceuticals, joined the firm’s Philadelphia office in 2019 as a leader of its life sciences group and vice chair of its products liabilities practice. He has led the life sciences group with John Salvucci, who also serves as Lewis Brisbois’s Philadelphia managing partner.

In January, cybersecurity practice leader Sean Hoar left with a 44-person team to join the firm Constangy Brooks Smith and Prophete.

Lewis Brisbois’s longtime leader, Bob Lewis, stepped down in May following the exodus in the labor practice, before the management committee elected New York general liability attorney Gregory Katz as its next managing partner.

The firm previously said it discovered the Barber and Ranen emails after launching an investigation into an “anonymous complaint” about the lawyers. Following the release of the emails in early June, one Lewis Brisbois client, Los Angeles County,began winding down its relationship with the firm.