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Miriam Rozen
Texas Lawyer
02-02-2007

By next month, Dallas-based Jenkens & Gilchrist may look a bit different.

Currently, the Dallas office employs the majority of the firm's lawyers, 140 of 251 attorneys in six cities nationwide. But, according to one current and one former Hunton & Williams partner, the managing partner of another Dallas-based firm and a legal recruiter in Texas, all of whom request anonymity, Jenkens management is talking with Hunton & Williams management about a substantial number of lawyers from Jenkens' Dallas office laterally moving to Hunton & Williams' Dallas office.

"It's going to be more than 12 but less than 100," says a Hunton & Williams partner, referring to the number of Dallas Jenkens lawyers who may move to Hunton & Williams in Dallas.

Jenkens -- one of the largest firms in Texas -- recently announced changes to its management team. On Jan. 24, shareholder Patrick Mitchell succeeded Thomas Cantrill as chairman and president of the firm, following Mitchell's election to the post in November 2006.

Mitchell emphasizes that Jenkens is talking with multiple firms about multiple scenarios. "I don't think there is anything other than conversation between Jenkens & Gilchrist and Hunton & Williams. It is not the only firm we are talking to. We have a lot of offices. I have had conversations with Hunton & Williams, but it doesn't mean that firm is the leader of the pack. It doesn't mean they are committed to us or we are committed to them."

"We are not in a position to comment on opportunities that our firm is looking at," echoes John Eichman, a Jenkens shareholder in the firm's Dallas office and executive vice president of the firm's board of directors. "Jenkens is in strategic negotiations with multiple firms. We are not able to identify with whom at this time out of respect to the parties involved. We are just not at the point where management at the firms involved is prepared to go public."

At Richmond, Va.-based Hunton & Williams, which has 875 lawyers in 18 offices worldwide, Wally Martinez, the firm's managing partner, says, "We are now and always committed to expanding our operations in Texas. I have no comment on whether we are in negotiations."

Over the past three years, Jenkens has experienced turbulence and defections. The firm's troubles began when questions about its tax practice surfaced in 2003, after some former clients filed a class action suit, Denney, et al. v. Jenkens & Gilchrist, et al., over tax-shelter advice given by Jenkens that the Internal Revenue Service subsequently declared improper. [See "A Cautionary Tale," Texas Lawyer, Dec. 20, 2004, page 26.] In 2004, the firm negotiated a settlement in the class action that plaintiffs attorney David Deary, a partner in Deary Montgomery DeFeo & Canada in Dallas, recently said totals about $81.6 million. Cantrill said in 2006 the firm paid its $5.25 million share of the settlement, but Deary said insurers and former tax shareholders in Jenkens will pay the remainder of the settlement after a final order of judgment. [See "Jenkens Chooses Leader and Closes Offices," Texas Lawyer, Jan. 8, 2007, page 1.]

At the end of 2006 Jenkens closed its Washington, D.C., and Pasadena, Calif., offices. The single shareholder in the D.C. office, Sunwoo Lee, opted to stay in the nation's capital, joining Seyfarth Shaw as a partner. Four lawyers in California moved to McGuireWoods.

One lawyer in the California group, Gary Samson, former co-chairman of Jenkens' financial services practice in California, declines to identify any firms involved in discussions with Jenkens management. Samson, now a partner in McGuireWoods in Los Angeles, says that at the time he and other lawyers in California left Jenkens, "Nothing was far enough along even for us to consider it."

In mid-January, Houston's Fulbright & Jaworski announced it had hired four tax lawyers from Jenkens. The new Fulbright lawyers include partners Andrius Kontrimas and Patrick O'Daniel, senior counsel Lisa Rossmiller and counsel Donna Harris. Three of the departing Jenkens lawyers are working in Fulbright's Houston office. O'Daniel works out of the firm's Austin office. Kontrimas did not return two telephone messages and Rossmiller did not return one telephone message seeking information for this story. O'Daniel and Miller decline comment.

But in a press release