Southern California appellate boutique Horvitz & Levy is opening its first San Francisco office after bringing on Kirk Jenkins, the former chairman of Sedgwick's appellate task force.

Jenkins, who joined the Burbank-based firm in January, is set to move into the firm's new digs in San Francisco's iconic Transamerica Pyramid Center on Friday.

Jenkins had practiced at San Francisco-based Sedgwick since 1994 and moved to its Chicago office in 2004, before the insurance-focused firm's wind-down at the beginning of the year. He said that even during his 14-year tenure in Illinois, he had always maintained ties to the Bay Area legal market and had planned on returning.

Kirk C. Jenkins, of Horvitz & Levy.

“There was never a time when I was in Illinois when I was more of an Illinois lawyer than a California lawyer,” he said.

Jenkins is vice president of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers and he says that more than half his work has always been based in California appellate courts.

“Where we've been for the past year or two, even if what happened with Sedgwick hadn't happened, I probably would have come back,” he said.

For the firm's part, David Axelrad says that Horvitz & Levy has for years considered moving into the San Francisco market. “Appellate lawyers are very deliberative types and we give things a lot of time and a lot of analysis,” Axelrad said. With about 40 lawyers, all based in Southern California, and 50 years of working in appellate courts across the state, Axelrad said that the move was “a natural extension of what we've been doing statewide for many, many years.”

The firm also has pre-existing clients in the San Francisco region. Axelrad said that Horvitz & Levy has “a long and very good relationship” with San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., as well as insurance firms with large presences in the Bay Area, including Farmers Insurance. “We just reached the decision point where it made sense to solidify and expand that statewide presence,” Axelrad said.

Axelrad added that Jenkins' interest in applying data analytics to the appellate process could help make inroads in the region's high-tech sector. Jenkins maintains blogs crunching numbers on the decision-making process of both the Illinois and California supreme courts.  That, Axelrad said, brings “a whole new dimension to the type of information and analysis that we can provide our clients.”

Jenkins notes that the prospect of practicing in an appellate specialty firm, rather than within a large general practice firm, limits the possibility for internal turf battles over work. “It's a positive change to join a firm where everybody does appellate law. It's all we do,” he said of his new firm. “As far as talking to clients and talking to trial lawyers in other firms, we can't and aren't interested in taking over the trial work.”

Jenkins said that there are short-term plans to bring on a junior lawyer with several years of experience practicing appellate law. He said, “Beyond that, we're going to take this one step at a time and are certainly open to adding additional people.”

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