Greenspoon Marder continues its West Coast expansion with the opening of its third office in California with a group of lawyers from entertainment boutique Eisner Jaffe.

James Turken, chair of Eisner Jaffe's litigation practice, is leaving the firm alongside fellow colleagues Rebecca Lawlor Calkins and Fawn Schanz, all of whom have joined Greenspoon Marder as partners. The fast-growing Am Law 200 firm has also hired Eisner Jaffe associate Jordan Bender, as well as solo practitioner Kathleen Hipps, who comes aboard as of counsel, and ex-California appellate Judge George Schiavelli, most recently a neutral at ADR Services Inc.

Los Angeles has recently become a hotbed of Big Law activity, with many out-of-town firms either setting up shop in the city or ramping up their local lateral hiring. Earlier this year, longtime Los Angeles legal mainstay Paul Hastings opened an additional office in Century City after landing 10 lawyers from Loeb & Loeb. Baker McKenzie, which shuttered a Los Angeles office in 1993, returned to Century City in March after hiring several Hogan Lovells partners.

“LA has always been a focus for our expansion,” said Greenspoon Marder co-founder and co-managing director Michael Marder. “We believe that it is critical for the growth of our firm as a national firm [and] to cover our existing and growing client base, which has gravitated to the West Coast.”

Greenspoon Marder, which earlier this year expanded to New Jersey by bolting on a local immigration shop, first made inroads in California when it opened a San Diego office in 2016 as part of an effort to capitalize on the Golden State's marijuana-friendly laws. Since then, Greenspoon Marder set up a second office with a concentration on cannabis work in Nevada City, which is located between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.

In Los Angeles, however, Marder said much of the initial focus of his firm's new outpost will be on building its litigation practice with a focus on specialty areas such as alcoholic beverage companies, the entertainment industry and the hospitality sector. As opportunities arise, Greenspoon Marder will be well-positioned to expand beyond those three areas.

“We expect that LA will be a major hub for the firm and so we're focused on not only that, [but] expanding our footprint in LA with other attorneys as we get settled,” Marder said.

Leading the initial growth at Greenspoon Marder's Los Angeles office is Turken, its new local managing partner and the former co-leader of the business litigation practice at now-defunct Dickstein Shapiro. Turken, along with Calkins and Schanz, joined Eisner Jaffe in early 2016 after fleeing Dickstein Shapiro in the wake of its aborted merger with Bryan Cave. A month later, Blank Rome agreed to take on more than 100 lawyers from Dickstein Shapiro as the latter dissolved.

In November, Greenspoon Marder added three lawyers in New York from another collapsed outfit, Wormser Kiely Galef & Jacobs. That same month, Greenspoon Marder also set up shop in Phoenix. The firm, which saw gross revenue soar last year, to nearly $134.7 million, opened five new offices across the country in 2017. Since the beginning of 2018, Greenspoon Marder has increased its head count from 203 to 224.

Greenspoon Marder has employed former Dewey & LeBoeuf CFO Joel Sanders as its COO and most recently as a consultant during its past few years of expansion, which kicked off in late 2011 when it absorbed the assets of bankrupt Florida firm Ruden McClosky. Earlier this year, Greenspoon Marder deputy managing partner Rebecca Faith Bratter told the Daily Business Review that alternative fee arrangements made up roughly 40 percent of the firm's litigation portfolio.