Quarles & Brady’s Adsero Acquisition Boosts IP Reach in Denver

Quarles & Brady’s merger with intellectual property boutique Adsero IP boosts the firm’s reach into the Denver area, where life sciences and tech has been growing.

Adsero, based in the Denver suburb of Littleton, gives Milwaukee-founded Quarles a total of about 520 lawyers in a dozen US locations, including Chicago, Washington, Minneapolis and Phoenix. Quarles in December acquired the San Diego-based employment firm Paul, Plevin, Sullivan & Connaughton.

Adsero is “an ideal partner in the Denver market” with its growth trajectory over the past nearly 30 years and the “significant experience” of its team, Quarles managing partner Michael Aldana said in a statement.

The Denver-Boulder region has been a hot legal market in recent years, in part as a consequence of life science and tech companies drawing new capital. In recent years, Crowell & Moring opened a new Denver outpost while WilmerHale and Arnold & Porter doubled the size of their existing offices there.

Adsero, with a 29-person office, has had clients including Broadcom Corp., Bridgestone Regional Operations, and Sandoz Inc., according to Bloomberg Law court dockets. With the acquisition, Qualres’s IP group includes more than 140 lawyers and other professionals such as patent agents, said firm president Brad Vynalek in the statement.

Several other AmLaw 200 firms, including some of the country’s largest, have announced their own combinations in recent months, or have been rumored to be heading in that direction.

Done deals so far this year have included Holland & Knight, Morrison & Foerster, and Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe. Hogan Lovells, the ninth-biggest firm in the U.S., also has been reported to be in merger talks with Shearman & Sterling.

Quarles was the 116th-largest firm in the United States by revenue figures, according to The American Lawyer’s 2022 law firm survey, with just over $300 million in gross revenues.