Only a few weeks before Bryan Cave finalizes its cross-border merger with the U.K.'s Berwin Leighton Paisner, partner Elizabeth Kemery Sipes in Denver is peeling off for Perkins Coie.

Sipes, the former co-leader of Bryan Cave's private funds practice, joined Bryan Cave as counsel in 2013 after more than a half-dozen years in-house at publicly traded investment firm Janus Capital Group Inc. Asked about her now former firm's pending merger with Berwin Leighton, which is set to go live on March 31, Sipes said she is positive about its prospects but noted that her move had little to do with the combination.

“The strength of the Perkins Coie platform are really more on the domestic side than the international side,” said Sipes, when asked about the trans-Atlantic deal that will create 1,600-lawyer Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. “I wasn't running away from a merger by any means.”

Sipes, whose move to Perkins Coie was brokered by John Rooney of RFC Consulting, said the impetus for her job switch was to serve her mostly U.S.-based clients in the private funds space. Perkins Coie has a strong investment management team, Sipes said, some members of which she has worked with before during her time as a senior legal counsel at Janus Capital. (The latter merged last year with Henderson Group plc to form Janus Henderson Group plc.)

The fact that some of her clients, who are mostly registered investment advisers and sponsors, already have a relationship with lawyers at Perkins Coie is an added benefit to her move, Sipes said. Perkins Coie's expertise in the emerging companies arena provides her clients with more resources than she had at Bryan Cave, which had a smaller practice in the private funds space.

“A number of my funds are venture capital funds, so [it helps to have] a deeper bench for support once a fund is formed,” Sipes said. “It's synergistic to have financing teams that can support the venture capital funds in their investments through the latter part of their stages.”

Sipes said the Denver market is hot at the moment, with head hunters looking for partners and other lawyers willing to move and out-of-town firms seeking new recruits to set up outposts in the Mile High City. Perkins Coie, which opened a Denver office in 1996 after merging with local antitrust boutique Musgrave & Theis, now has 55 lawyers in the city, many of whom specialize in corporate and private equity. The opportunity to join an established local firm appealed to Sipes, rather than do something else, such as start a satellite office for an East Coast firm.

In December, Perkins Coie hired former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission official Michael Didiuk as a partner for its investment management group in San Francisco. The Am Law 100 firm, which has its roots in Seattle, added former federal prosecutor and cybercrime expert Christopher Veatch as a partner in Chicago and Lowenstein Sandler technology partner Matt Kirmayer in the Bay Area within the past two months. Perkins Coie did see its former government contracts chair Andrew Shipley decamp for Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington, D.C., while Stoel Rives snagged a five-lawyer Perkins Coie land use and real estate team in Portland, Oregon. Perkins Coie returned the favor in February, hiring Stoel Rives real estate partner Devin McComb in Seattle.

Earlier this month, Perkins Coie unveiled a record high for gross revenue, as the firm took in nearly $786 million in 2017, a year in which profits per equity partner slipped slightly, to $1.17 million. Bryan Cave, for its part, had profits per equity partner of $700,000 last year, one in which the firm's gross revenue slipped to $592.6 million.