Holland & Knight Hires Winston Real Estate Pro in San Francisco
After a dozen years at Winston & Strawn, Loren Higgins is heading to Holland & Knight to help further the firm's West Coast expansion.
March 21, 2018 at 08:57 PM
4 minute read
Holland & Knight has hired Loren Higgins to help the firm grow its real estate practice on the West Coast.
Higgins joins Holland & Knight as a partner in San Francisco. Prior to that, she was a partner at Winston & Strawn, which she joined in 2006 after leaving Munger, Tolles & Olson.
“One of the things that really attracted me to Holland & Knight is its environmental and land use practice on the West Coast, which I think gives me tremendous opportunities to expand my relationship with existing clients,” Higgins said. “I was also attracted to the depth of the firm's transactional bench, particularly the real state area, and the firm's financial practice in the health care sector.”
Higgins' practice focuses on commercial agricultural lending, health care finance and real estate finance. She also has experience advising lenders in connection with the construction of professional sports stadiums, including the $850 million financing of Levi's Stadium, the 68,500-seat home of the National Football League's San Francisco 49ers, in Santa Clara.
Holland & Knight's national real estate practice, whose New York-based group is led by former Dewey & LeBoeuf partner and prominent real estate lawyer Stuart Saft, is a boon to Higgins because most of her clients are large companies with operations across the country, she said. Those clients include American AgCredit, Capital One Financial Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.
“[Higgins] is an outstanding real estate finance lawyer with an impressive roster of clients and will play an important role in expanding our finance and lending practice on a nationwide basis,” said a statement from Douglas Praw, who joined Holland & Knight's Los Angeles office in 2015 and now leads the firm's West Coast real estate group. “Loren's addition is also significant as we continue to grow our San Francisco office and complement the wonderful work our firm's well-respected West Coast land use and environmental group does throughout California.”
According to the data provided by the firm, Holland & Knight currently has more than 280 lawyers in its real estate practice. The firm's San Francisco office, which opened in 1997, has about six real estate lawyers, and 16 members dedicated to land use and environmental work. In December, Holland & Knight hired Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman counsel Marne Sussman as a partner for that practice, although environmental counsel Andrea Sumits recently left Holland & Knight's Bay Area base to become a partner at Berkeley-based boutique Environmental General Counsel.
Holland & Knight has also been busy lately hiring laterally elsewhere, bringing on a pair of corporate lawyers in Miami from Bilzin Sumberg Baena Price & Axelrod, as well as adding a five-lawyer team in Mexico City from Jones Day, hiring former federal prosecutor Adam Bookbinder as a partner in Boston and grabbing Greenberg Traurig commercial and bankruptcy litigation partner Annapoorni “Anna” Sankaran in Houston.
“The culture at Holland & Knight is really open and very warm,” Higgins said of her new 1,079-lawyer firm, which saw its gross revenue and partner profits rise in 2017. “It has been a fantastic transition for me.”
Winston & Strawn also saw its financials surge last year, although Higgins declined to discuss Constance Ramos, a former colleague and partner at the firm in San Francisco who sued Winston & Strawn in late August for gender discrimination. Winston & Strawn successfully sought to have that dispute moved to arbitration, a ruling that Ramos, a former Honolulu high school classmate of President Barack Obama, and her legal team have appealed.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
You Might Like
View All
Faegre Drinker Adds Three Former Federal Prosecutors From Greenberg Traurig
4 minute read
Anapol Weiss Acquires Boutique Led by Star Litigator Alexandra Walsh
5 minute read
Pierson Ferdinand Lures Veteran M&A Specialist From Sheppard Mullin in Silicon Valley
4 minute readTrending Stories
Who Got The Work
Michael G. Bongiorno, Andrew Scott Dulberg and Elizabeth E. Driscoll from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have stepped in to represent Symbotic Inc., an A.I.-enabled technology platform that focuses on increasing supply chain efficiency, and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The case, filed Oct. 2 in Massachusetts District Court by the Brown Law Firm on behalf of Stephen Austen, accuses certain officers and directors of misleading investors in regard to Symbotic's potential for margin growth by failing to disclose that the company was not equipped to timely deploy its systems or manage expenses through project delays. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, is 1:24-cv-12522, Austen v. Cohen et al.
Who Got The Work
Edmund Polubinski and Marie Killmond of Davis Polk & Wardwell have entered appearances for data platform software development company MongoDB and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The action, filed Oct. 7 in New York Southern District Court by the Brown Law Firm, accuses the company's directors and/or officers of falsely expressing confidence in the company’s restructuring of its sales incentive plan and downplaying the severity of decreases in its upfront commitments. The case is 1:24-cv-07594, Roy v. Ittycheria et al.
Who Got The Work
Amy O. Bruchs and Kurt F. Ellison of Michael Best & Friedrich have entered appearances for Epic Systems Corp. in a pending employment discrimination lawsuit. The suit was filed Sept. 7 in Wisconsin Western District Court by Levine Eisberner LLC and Siri & Glimstad on behalf of a project manager who claims that he was wrongfully terminated after applying for a religious exemption to the defendant's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case, assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Anita Marie Boor, is 3:24-cv-00630, Secker, Nathan v. Epic Systems Corporation.
Who Got The Work
David X. Sullivan, Thomas J. Finn and Gregory A. Hall from McCarter & English have entered appearances for Sunrun Installation Services in a pending civil rights lawsuit. The complaint was filed Sept. 4 in Connecticut District Court by attorney Robert M. Berke on behalf of former employee George Edward Steins, who was arrested and charged with employing an unregistered home improvement salesperson. The complaint alleges that had Sunrun informed the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection that the plaintiff's employment had ended in 2017 and that he no longer held Sunrun's home improvement contractor license, he would not have been hit with charges, which were dismissed in May 2024. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, is 3:24-cv-01423, Steins v. Sunrun, Inc. et al.
Who Got The Work
Greenberg Traurig shareholder Joshua L. Raskin has entered an appearance for boohoo.com UK Ltd. in a pending patent infringement lawsuit. The suit, filed Sept. 3 in Texas Eastern District Court by Rozier Hardt McDonough on behalf of Alto Dynamics, asserts five patents related to an online shopping platform. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, is 2:24-cv-00719, Alto Dynamics, LLC v. boohoo.com UK Limited.
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250
