Orrick Nabs Ropes & Gray Lawyers, Opens New Boston Office

Orrick kicked off 2019 with a bang — grabbing four partners from Ropes & Gray for its cybersecurity and privacy practice, and opening a new office in Boston.

“Data privacy and security are increasingly important to our clients globally so we decided to strengthen our advisory side and litigation side,” Mitch Zuklie, Orrick’s chairman told Bloomberg Law on Jan. 2, shortly after the announcements were made.

Bolstering the firm’s cyber and data protection is part of the firm’s “strategic focus on helping clients to innovate in the tech, energy and infrastructure and finance sectors,” he added.

The new team will focus on the transactional, regulatory and litigation aspects of data and innovation, and bring Orrick’s global headcount for the practice to 11 partners.

The new hires from Ropes & Gray’s privacy and cyber practice include Doug Meal and Heather Egan Sussman, who will both be based in the firm’s new Boston outpost.

Meal will lead Orrick’s Cyber, Privacy, and Data Innovation practice, and Sussman will co-lead the Cyber & Privacy advisory practice with Orrick’s Aravind Swaminathan. Sussman will also be the head of the Boston office.

Rounding out the team brought in from Ropes & Gray are partners Michelle Visser, who will work in Orrick’s San Francisco office, and Seth Harrington, who will be in Boston.

Zuklie said locating the office in Boston was not about geography since Orrick’s clients are global, but because of the legal talent available in the area.

“Boston has great strength in areas such as life sciences, intellectual property and private equity, and we hope to be adding additional lawyers in the future,” Zuklie said.

Boston is the fifth office Orrick has opened in the past five years. It opened an office in Houston in 2016, in Austin in 2018, in Abidjan in 2014 and Geneva in 2015.

According to Zuklie, the new cyber and data privacy practice will draw on an array of expertise from Orrick’s other U.S. and European offices, including London, Paris and Germany, to help clients prepare for — and litigate, if necessary —matters involving data breaches.

Meal said that the Ropes & Gray practice had been involved in some major data breach incidents, including the 2007 data theft at T.J. Maxx and other retailers of more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers.

“We want to combine our practice with that of Orrick’s to create the leading practice in this area, which is of great interest to our clients,” said Meal.