Wake Up Call: Firm Leasing Up 51% in 3rd Quarter, Report Says

In today’s column, Allen & Overy’s flexible lawyering platform opened an office in New York; Stoel Rives is the latest firm to offer lawyers up to 50 billable-hours credit for diversity and inclusion work; Seattle’s booming economy is attracting Big Law firms into the market.

• Leading off, U.S. law firms that use over 20,000 square of office space leased a total of 2.1 million square feet in 2021’s third quarter across major markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington. That’s up 51% from the previous quarter to reach the sector’s highest quarterly total since the pandemic began in early 2020, according to a new report from Savills U.S. Savills said new leases, as opposed to renewals, accounted for 55% of law firm activity in Q3 by square footage. New York volume soared 94% for the quarter, while Chicago’s volume “quadrupled,” mainly due to Kirkland & Ellis’ “massive” lease. (Savills.US)
• As the legal talent war rages on, U.K. elite firm Allen & Overy announced it’s bringing its eight-year-old flexible lawyering platform, Peerpoint, to the U.S. With over 350 lawyers across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, the platform gives lawyers an alternative career path and in-house legal teams an alternative staffing solution, the firm said. The U.S. branch, initially based in New York, is led by former Deloitte U.K. legal brand leader Amie Davidson. (AllenOvery.com)
• Stoel Rives is the latest firm to offer lawyers up to 50 billable-hours credit for work done to promote diversity and gender equality in the law. (Stoel.com) K&L Gates, Hogan Lovells, Reed Smith, Dorsey & Whitney, and Hanson Bridgett are among other firms that have made similar announcements. (Above The Law) Foley Hoag said in April that it is offering unlimited billable hours credit for diversity and inclusion work, while Baker McKenzie has said it’s offering 125 hours. (BLAW)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Big Law firms are setting up offices in Seattle, attracted by the city’s booming tech, real estate, and employment industries. (The Recorder) Omaha, Nebraska-founded Kutak Rock opened its first office in Florida, in Tallahassee, with nine shareholders and one associate grabbed from a local firm. (PR Newswire)
• New York City regulators allege that a company that was co-founded by a lawyer who represents Airbnb hosts is profiting from so-called illegal short-term rentals. (New York Law Journal)
• A former Eversheds-Sutherland junior lawyer in London was sent to prison for eight years for sexual assault. (Legal Cheek)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Hogan Lovells brought in debt finance lawyer Matthew Schernecke in New York as a partner. He arrives after 18 years at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius; Kramer Levin grabbed Lowenstein Sandler private equity/M&A counsel Elisia Klinka as a partner in New York; Kilpatrick Townsend got DLA Piper patent litigator Stuart Pollack in New York as a partner; Fox Rothschild said real estate lawyer Jeffrey Chang joined as a partner in Princeton, N.J. According to his LinkedIn profile, Chang arrives from Saul Ewing; former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Michael DeSombre returned to Sullivan & Cromwell, based in Hong Kong as head of the firm’s Asia M&A and private equity practice and Korea practice. He’d been at the firm 25 years when former President Trump appointed him to the diplomatic post in January 2020. (Law.com)
• Kirkland & Ellis said former Securities and Exchange Commission senior counsel Kyle DeYoung joined the firm as a partner in Washington in its government, regulatory & internal investigations practice group. He arrives from Cadwalader; Davis Wright Tremaine hired former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission lawyer Fredrick Wilson as counsel in Washington. He arrives from White & Case, where he was senior associate. (DWT.com)

Technology

• Legal spend analytics and matter-management platform Apperio launched a new dashboard that gives law firms a clients view of data on legal spending. (iCrowdNewswire)

Legal Education

• Recently retired Georgia Chief Justice Harold Melton, who recently became a litigation partner in Atlanta at Troutman Pepper, is now a law professor at the University of Georgia. (Daily Report)