Denver's Holland & Hart is merging with Hale Lane Peek Dennison in Nevada to create a law firm with more than 415 attorneys in seven states.

"We've had Hale Lane on our radar for a long time," John Husband, chairman of Holland & Hart's management committee, said Tuesday.

He credited Hale Lane as being an expert in real-estate fractional ownership, or where a purchaser buys a fraction of a property. Both firms also have strong business litigation and natural resource practices. Financial terms of the transaction weren't disclosed.

The deal reflects the continuing consolidation of regional law firms. In the past two years, Denver's Brownstein Hyatt Farber merged with Nevada and California firms to strengthen its gaming and water resource law practices.

Holland & Hart, the largest firm based in the Mountain West, has 365 attorneys in 14 offices and expanded into Nevada in 2006. Hale Lane was founded in Nevada in 1971 and is one of Nevada's largest firms.

Husband and Timothy Lukas, Hale Lane's managing shareholder, described the two firms as sharing similar cultures in terms of how they serve clients and conduct community work. Holland & Hart opened an office in Las Vegas in 2006 and Reno in 2007, while Hale Lane has offices in Las Vegas, Reno and Carson City.

The Las Vegas and Reno offices of the merged firms eventually will be consolidated into one physical location, but Husband said he expects employment overall to grow over time.

Three attorneys with ties to one of the largest law firms in the city are branching out on their own. Gino Bulso and George Nolan, trial lawyers at Boult Cummings Conners & Berry PLC will team up with Bill Leader, a former member of Boult Cummings, to form a new firm specializing in trial and appellate court practice.

Initially the firm will be named Leader & Bulso PLC. The name will change to Leader, Bulso & Nolan PLC when George Nolan leaves Boult Cummings to join the new practice on July 15.

The three partners have more than six decades of legal experience and have brought about 200 cases to verdict. Boult Cummings is embracing the move.

"Gino and George have spent many years at Boult Cummings and have provided great service to us and our clients," says Jay Hardcastle, managing director of Boult Cummings.

"They are both outstanding attorneys who have contributed so much to our firm. We will miss them, but are very happy and supportive of their decision to join Boult Cummings alumnus, Bill Leader, to form a new law firm. We know that they will remain great friends of the firm."

Leader worked as a trial lawyer at Boult Cummings for 18 years and is the senior attorney at Leader & Associates PLC. He concentrates primarily in personal injury litigation.

Gino Bulso is a 22-year Boult Cummings veteran. His practice focuses on business and commercial litigation in state and federal courts. He is admitted to practice before all state courts in Tennessee and before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 6th, 7th and 11th Circuits, and the U.S. District Courts for the Middle District of Tennessee, the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas, the Southern District of Texas, the Southern District of California, the District of Maine, and the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

Nolan has practiced at Boult Cummings for 17 years. He specializes in tort litigation with an emphasis on automobile collision, medical malpractice, product liability, premises liability, and fraud suits.

He also maintains an active practice in the areas of business litigation, insurance coverage litigation, environmental litigation, and eminent domain litigation.

The firm will be located on the 17th floor of the Bank of America building.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said that "the most natural reading" of federal law goes against Ressam. Stevens said it is undisputed that Ressam was carrying explosives when he falsely identified himself on a U.S. customs form as a Canadian citizen named Noris. Ressam is Algerian. In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said that the court's interpretation is too broad. Breyer said such a holding would permit conviction of anyone on an explosives charge, even if they were carrying explosives legally while engaging in a totally unrelated crime.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had set aside Ressam's conviction on the explosives count. The appeals court said the law required proof that the explosives were carried "in relation to" the underlying crime of filing a false form. Prosecutors established no such relationship, the appeals court said.

Longtime San Diego criminal defense lawyer Kerry Steigerwalt has taken a majority ownership in Pacific Law Center, which has been the target recently of client complaints.
Steigerwalt will become managing partner of the 30-lawyer firm based in University City. It has been renamed Kerry Steigerwalt's Pacific Law Center.

Steigerwalt, a defense lawyer on several high-profile local cases, will have a 51 percent stake in the firm. Robert Arentz, former managing partner, will retain a 49 percent stake.

Six lawyers have been let go as a result of the merger of Steigerwalt's firm into Pacific Law Center, which Steigerwalt said should help the law firm erase some of its past problems.

The Better Business Bureau has fielded at least 38 complaints against Pacific Law Center – one of the most prolific legal advertisers in San Diego – over the past three years.

Lawsuits filed by former Pacific Law Center attorneys allege the firm gave lawyers too large a caseload for them to provide the type of service that the firm advertises. They also allege that the firm emphasized settling cases quickly.

Steigerwalt said in an interview yesterday that many of the firm's problems are behind it. "I recognize that Pacific Law Center has had issues in the past," he said. "You will not see any more client service complaints."

For Steigerwalt, the move allows him to tap Pacific Law Center's business model for growth. The law firm allows certain criminal defendants to pay legal fees over time instead of requiring large retainers upfront. It has a nationwide clientele.

"It's very successful," Steigerwalt said. "They're providing the service to the common guy who can't come up with a big lump sum payment."

In addition to criminal defense work, the firm provides bankruptcy and personal injury services. In addition to lawyers, the firm will employ 111 support staff.

Arentz formerly was a partner with Jeffrey Phillips, a Phoenix attorney, in Pacific Law Center. Phillips is no longer a partner in the new practice, but Arentz remains a partner with Phillips in an Arizona law firm.

Steigerwalt's mass tort – or class-action lawsuit – practice has been transferred to the Arizona firm in an asset swap as part of the transaction.

In addition, Steigerwalt operates a 22-employee legal marketing company to promote his firm. That company has been merged into Steigerwalt's Pacific Law Center.

"It will market our services locally and nationally, in the larger national markets through the Internet and TV commercials, and locally through TV, magazines and phone books," he said.

Two Richmond law firms are expanding their reach through a merger.

LeClairRyan and Wright Robinson Osthimer & Tatum are planning to merge March 31 in a deal that will broaden their national scope and add to their capacity to handle large, complex cases, partners with the firms said yesterday.

The combined firm will use the LeClairRyan name, and no job cuts are expected.

LeClairRyan said the merger would expand its litigation practice in product liability, construction, employment and the aviation industry, and provide its clients more representation on the East and West coasts.

"It gives us a greater depth and breadth of services," said Gary D. LeClair, the firm's chairman and chief executive officer.

Founded in 1988, the firm has 220 lawyers and about 225 other staff members at several offices in Virginia and in Boston; Philadelphia; Newark, N.J.; Washington; New York; and Rochester, N.Y.

Wright Robinson Osthimer & Tatum has 50 lawyers and 50 other staff members, as well as about 120 contract lawyers in the Richmond area. The firm, founded in 1986, has offices in Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington.

It also has built a practice in "discovery solutions," which involve litigation that includes millions of pages of documents or large amounts of data that require technological solutions to organize.

"We were one of the first firms in the country to really have a standardized practice group to do this," said Mark Yacano, a principal at Wright Robinson. "One of the driving reasons for this merger was the fact that LeClairRyan wanted to partner with us to continue to grow it."

The discovery solutions practice is at the firm's office on East Franklin Street in Richmond. It will stay there, while some Wright Robinson Osthimer & Tatum lawyers will move to LeClairRyan's offices in Riverfront Plaza.

Law firm Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLP, which has offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C., opened an office in San Diego on Feb. 13 that will serve as the center for its life sciences group.

The local office’s 13 attorneys and credentialed specialists offer corporate, patent procurement and patent portfolio management services to biopharmaceutical and other venture-funded and emerging companies.

Leading the team are Stephanie Seidman, a prominent biotechnology patent attorney who joins Bell Boyd as a partner from Fish & Richardson P.C., and partner David Fisher, who formerly managed San Diego’s Fisher Thurber LLP. He will lead the corporate and emerging company practice in the office.

Mike Abernathy, managing partner in the Chicago office, said the firm noticed a steady growth in corporate and venture capital clients during the last two and a half years as it developed its life sciences practice. Last year, he said the firm made in excess of $6 million in that area.

“We were looking to further that growth and started looking at other areas that had life sciences and were venture-funded, and we very quickly got to San Diego,” he said.

Seidman said the firm has “an excellent client base” mostly composed of emerging and startup companies that have received some venture funding and some that have been funded by Big Pharma.

Initial clients include Catalyst Biosciences Inc., the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Bell Boyd’s San Diego office is located at the Gateway at Torrey Hills, 3580 Carmel Mountain Road.

“We should see some movement of pent-up demand by this summer, but higher loan limits need to be implemented fully and promptly to have maximum benefit,” said Richard Gaylord, president of the realtors group and a broker with Re/Max in Long Beach, Calif.