Pillsbury Opens Miami Office with Six Boies Schiller Hires

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP has hired four partners and two special counsel attorneys from Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP to launch the firm’s first office in Miami, Florida, its 21st worldwide.

Partner Jennifer Altman, who will serve as managing partner of the new Miami office, will be joined by partner Shani Rivaux and senior counsel Aryeh Kaplan in Pillsbury’s litigation group.

Partners Michael Kosnitzky and Keith Blum, along with special counsel Ivan Mitev, join as part of the firm’s tax practice.

Mitev works in New York, and Kosnitzky will split time between New York and Miami, while the others are all based in Miami.

Pillsbury Firm Chair David Dekker said Miami “has been a city of interest to the firm for a while, for a host of reasons.”

“We have an active and growing Latin America practice and believe this office will afford us even greater access to clients in the region,” Dekker said via email.

“South Florida attracts substantial inbound investment from other parts of the world too, and our international platform puts us in prime position to support demand for such cross-border advice.”

Pillsbury already has an office in Palm Beach, Florida, where the firm’s estates, trusts and tax planning team practices.

“Pillsbury partners have been pushing to open a Miami office for some time,” Dekker said. “Generally speaking, we focus on doubling down in areas where we already have strength, and that usually means building out existing offices with top notch lawyers.”

Pillsbury says Altman, Rivaux and Kaplan have experience litigating a variety of complex commercial litigation matters in healthcare, business torts, corporate investigations, consumer class actions and product liability defense.

Kosnitzky, Blum and Mitev, on the other hand, focus on tax, accounting, auditing and corporate governance and corporate forensic investigations.