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.

The lease was for the entire 14th floor of the building. Howard Greenberg, president of Howard Properties Ltd., was the exclusive tenant representative for Kaufman Borgeest & Ryan, in partnership with Barry Lewen and Lewis Cowan of Grubb & Ellis. This was the 13th lease transaction in which Greenberg had represented the law firm since 2000, totaling more than 126,000 sf of space.

Cowan tells GlobeSt.com that the lease term is 15 years. He notes that in terms of economics, it was a competitive market deal, but he could not provide an aggregate lease value at this time. He did confirm however, that asking rent is around $45 at the property.

Cowan also explains that the reason for the move was a value play. "They could get much more for their dollar within the framework of the transaction." Kaufman Borgeest & Ryan was approaching the expiration of a lease for 26,000 sf in Midtown at 99 Park Ave.

The law firm of Locke, Lord, Bissell & Liddell LLP (LLBL), has formed a new Financial Guaranty Insurers Section to aid financial guaranty insurers who will soon be traveling through a maze of legal issues surrounding the securities they insure in the subprime lending sector.

"The housing downturn is threatening to cripple some bond insurers that wrote billions of dollars of guarantees in the past few years on securities backed by risky subprime-mortgage debt because they entered into contracts known as credit-default swaps," said Brian Casey with LLB&L. "These events are also forcing the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and its constituent insurance regulators to reconsider how bond insurers should be regulated, particularly with respect to the insurer's backing of derivative financial instruments."

The firm says new cases are already surfacing in the marketplace.

"We are currently following over 200 active lawsuits in the United States directly resulting from the collapse of the subprime market, and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg," said Tom Cunningham, LLB&L's Class Actions Practice Group Leader.

Two Houston law firms made the cut among the top advisers to merger and acquisition clients conducting deals in 2007, a new report shows.

Vinson & Elkins LLP, which is ranked as the second largest in the local market, according to the Houston Business Journal 2008 Book of Lists, was 18th out of 20 firms with 101 M&A deals worth $102.6 billion during the year according to M&A advisory and research firm The Mergermarket Group.

The firm also placed 14th, up from 23rd in 2006, in the ranking of legal advisers to North American buyout deals, working 12 transactions with a value of $46 billion.

Baker Botts LLP, the third-largest Houston firm, ranked 18th on the North American buyout list, involved in two deals worth $44 billion.

The top-ranked legal advisers in M&A deals in 2007 in four measured categories were:

New York-based Sullivan & Cromwell LLP (total North American M&A value $470.8 billion);

Los Angeles-based Latham & Watkins LLP (most deals, 303);

New York-based Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP (total North American buyout value $156.4 billion); and

Kirkland & Ellis LLP of Chicago (total number of buyout deals, 85).