On the heels of adding an 18-lawyer labor and employment boutique on the West Coast, Duane Morris has landed a six-attorney lateral group in Southern California that marks the end of DLA Piper’s work in the private client space.
The Philadelphia-based firm said Monday it brought on DLA Piper’s entire San Diego trusts and estates team, led by partners S. Andrew Pharies and Ellen Whelan. The team also includes special counsel Michelle Glasser, Gretchen Tomanek Shaffer, Erin Norberg and Liliana Menzie, as well as seven paralegals and staff members.
The team joins the private client services practice group at Duane Morris, which “achieves our strategic goal of establishing a West Coast presence to complement our East Coast strengths,” Michael Grohman, chair of the firm’s private client services practice group, said in a statement.
Including the San Diego newcomers, Duane Morris’ private client services practice has about 40 attorneys. According to private client services practice vice and incoming chair Amy Guss, the firm provides the new team with resources in key markets like New York and Florida.
“Duane Morris was a perfect fit,” Pharies said in an interview. “It has a strong trusts and estates practice that is valued internally and respected externally.”
The group specializes in domestic and international estate planning, including trust and estate dispute resolution and estate, gift and generation-skipping taxation for individuals, private foundations, boards of trustees and directors of charitable organizations and family-owned businesses.
Pharies said Duane Morris ticked all the boxes, with existing leadership from the trusts and estates practice that demonstrates its commitment to the practice area. It also provided a geographically consistent presence, statewide and internationally, as well as complementary practices such as corporate, tax, real estate and securities.
The decision to depart DLA Piper was mutual, Pharies said, noting that a private client practice focused on individuals often does not align with a focus on growth for large corporate and litigation clients.
Much of DLA Piper’s former trusts and estates group was based in Baltimore and San Diego, as a result of local practices started at Gray Cary and Piper Rudnick. About half of the San Diego team joining Duane Morris had originally practiced at Gray Cary.
“We have decided that the trusts and estates practice no longer fits with our firm strategy,” a DLA Piper spokesperson said in a statement, confirming the firm no longer offers trusts and estates as a service. “We wish these outstanding attorneys the best at their new firm.”
The move comes as Big Law firms continue to question their stake in private client work, in part due to a hefty insurance tag and a high amount of risk linked to trusts and estates work. Yet, some big firms have jumped back into the arena in recent years due to the emergence of wealthy individuals as an investor class.
“A lot of wealth has been created over the last decade,” Pharies said, noting that in particular a generational shift, as well as upcoming changes in wealth transfer tax exemptions, are fueling demand for wealth planning and will likely lead to more disputes in the future.
There’s also a great deal of opportunity for geographic expansion, Pharies said, as the U.S. remains the prime destination for international investment from individuals who’ve generated their wealth in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
“We’ve seen a lot of growth in the last 10 years, and moving forward, I’d expect that to continue,” Pharies said.
Reprinted with permission from The Recorder, © ALM Media Properties LLC. All rights reserved.
