Wall Street Litigation Firm Starts With Selendy Gay Recruits (1)

Selendy Gay Elsberg co-founder David Elsberg, who recently left the firm, is taking two partners with him to a new Wall Street boutique.

Michael Duke and Vivek Tata are joining Elsberg at Elsberg Baker & Maruri, which launched Wednesday. The firm will do plaintiff and defense work and expects to handle five trials and arbitrations this year, Elsberg said in an interview.

“My practice has grown large enough that this is something I can do comfortably, in terms of feeling good that the firm financially is going to be on strong footing,” he said.

Elsberg helped launch Selendy Gay in 2018 after leaving Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and he became a name partner in 2022. Selendy Gay emerged as a prominent litigation firm despite having fewer than 80 lawyers, representing Assured Investment Management over accusations of fraud by its funders and a plaintiff alleging Apple Inc. is infringing on a patented design.

“We’re excited to have our first spin-off firm,” Selendy Gay founding partner Faith Gay said in an interview. She hopes to collaborate with the new firm as Selendy Gay does with others on complex legal matters, she said.

Whether Elsberg’s new firm can achieve the success of Selendy Gay is the test he faces.

“We’re going to take an aggressive approach and come up with creative solutions for difficult problems,” Elsberg said. “Part of our business model is definitely going to be to make sure we have good, close relationships with other firms that are better known as being good co-counsel.”

Growth Plan

The new firm’s other name partners, Rollo Baker and Silpa Maruri, joined from Quinn Emanuel. Baker was co-chair of Quinn Emanuel’s corporate governance practice and Maruri was co-chair of the Delaware practice.

Maruri represented Elon Musk when the billionaire fought in court to acquire X, the platform formally known as Twitter. Baker represented Mirae Asset Management over a $6 billion terminated transaction.

Tata and Duke were promoted to partner at Selendy Gay in January. They represented UMB Bank, which alleges pharmaceutical company Bristol-Meyers attempted to get out of a $6.4 billion contractual obligation by intentionally delaying FDA approval of a cancer drug. Tata has defended Alphabet Inc.'s Google and YouTube against allegations of an illegal ‘automatic renewal’ subscription scheme.

The new firm also hired Jared Ruocco, who also had a stint at Quinn Emanuel.

Elsberg Baker & Maruri aims to ramp up its early operations with 14 associates within the next two months. The firm will approach growth organically—by being picky with talent and turning away work if the bandwidth and quality of work can’t be sustained, Elsberg said.

The firm will only offer associates equity partnerships on a seven-year promotion track and will use a modified lock-step partner compensation, which pays lawyers based on seniority and rank. Partners can make more outside of that, depending on the business they are bringing into the firm.

Elsberg said he will continue to do work for investment funds and litigation matters including breach of fiduciary duty and bankruptcy. He has represented investment fund Fairfield Sentry Ltd. and global energy corporation Vitol Inc., which is seeking arbitration against a company they allege has not paid Vitol for delivered product.

The new firm will offer alternative fee arrangements for certain clients and legal matters but will rely heavily on the traditional billing hour. “From the point of view of firm economics we all feel most comfortable with the revenue coming in primarily from hourly cases,” Elsberg said.