ParfumGigi@aol.com ParfumGigi@aol.com
6 janvier, 2007 10:52
Jenkens & Gilchrist Appoints New Chairman, Closes Two Offices
Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
Texas Lawyer
01-05-2007
Change is afoot at Dallas-based Jenkens & Gilchrist for the new year with shareholder Patrick Mitchell poised to succeed Thomas Cantrill as chairman this month and the firm shutting the doors on offices in Washington, D.C., and Pasadena, Calif.
Mitchell says the 251-lawyer firm closed the two offices on Dec. 31, 2006, but both office closings have been in the works for several months.
Meanwhile, Mitchell says, the firm's shareholders voted in late November 2006 to appoint him chairman.
Cantrill, chairman since January 2004, says he has wanted to step down for some time to return to his estates practice full time.
The D.C. office, which Mitchell says once had as many as 25 lawyers, had shrunk by the end of last year to a single intellectual property shareholder. Instead of transferring to a Texas office or the Jenkens office in Chicago, the IP shareholder, Sunwoo Lee, stayed in Washington, D.C., by joining Seyfarth Shaw as a partner.
Mitchell says the D.C. office opened in the early 1990s initially to do loan workouts for NationsBank Corp. (now Bank of America), but dwindled to fewer than 10 lawyers over the past four or five years.
"It had grown to an unmanageable small size for purposes of continuing it as a full-fledged office," Mitchell says, noting that the lease is also up in 2007.
The Pasadena office initially opened in 2001 for bank lending work, Mitchell says, and shareholder Linda Sartin moved from Dallas to California to help lead the practice there. But Mitchell says Sartin notified him in 2006 that she wanted to leave California, and that prompted the firm to take a hard look at the future of the office.
Mitchell says the firm notified the lawyers in Pasadena they could transfer to the firm's Los Angeles office, but Sartin and three others decided instead to join McGuireWoods. McGuireWoods announced on Jan. 2 that Sartin joined the firm as a partner in Charlotte, N.C., and Gary Sampson, who was co-chairman of the financial services practice in California along with Sartin, joined McGuireWoods as a partner in Los Angeles. Sartin did not return a call seeking comment. Matthew Wrysinski and Donald Kirkelie joined McGuireWoods in Los Angeles as associates.
In addition to headquarters in Dallas, Jenkens has offices in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Chicago and Los Angeles.
