Top 50 Biglaw Firm Recruits Team Of Lawyers Away From Competitor To Open Up New Office

Biglaw firms continue to open new U.S. offices in the never-ending race to expand, and some are doing so by snatching up attorneys from competitors.

The latest firm to do so is Foley & Lardner, a firm that brought in $1,167,974,000 gross revenue in 2023, putting it at No. 45 on the Am Law 100. Foley is opening its doors in Raleigh, North Carolina, after hiring a group of life sciences and health care lawyers away from K&L Gates, a firm ranked at No. 40 on the Am Law 100. The American Lawyer has the scoop on the group lateral move:

Partners Joshua Skora, Andrea Cunha and Leah D’Aurora Richardson will lead the team, which currently includes three associates, with more attorneys expected to join later. The new Raleigh office is opening to accommodate D’Aurora Richardson, who is based there but also to help the Milwaukee-founded firm establish itself in a market it’s been eying for a while.

“It’s a market that we’ve looked at before but haven’t found the right groups to start there and build around,” Foley & Lardner chairman and CEO Daljit Doogal said.

The new team brought the right focus as the firm seeks to grow in North Carolina with the help of health care, corporate and private equity practices there, Doogal said.

According to Doogal, the firm’s headcount in its new Raleigh office is going to keep growing in size. “There’s a lot of talented lawyers in that market, where we want to grow it and grow smartly with the right people,” he said. “But when we enter a market, we want to immerse ourselves in the market, we want to service clients in that market, we want to hire locally for that, we want to immerse ourselves in the community. That takes an office of critical mass.”

Best of luck to Foley & Lardner as the firm works on further expanding its new office in Raleigh.

Foley & Lardner Opens North Carolina Office After Scooping Up Life Sciences Team From K&L Gates [American Lawyer]

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on X/Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.