Riding high after breaking the $3 billion gross revenue mark in 2017, Latham & Watkins has brought aboard a new member for its finance and real estate practice.

Michael Haas officially joined Latham on Wednesday as a partner in New York, where he will serve as global co-chair of the firm's real estate practice. Haas' move comes two months after he left his role as global co-head of the real estate group at Jones Day.

“[Latham] has a premier real estate practice,” said Haas about his new Am Law 100 firm, whose real estate investment trust expertise he called one of the best in the country. “This just a great opportunity to grow my practice and serve my clients with additional opportunities.”

During his decade at Jones Day, whose Cleveland headquarters he joined in 2008 after co-chairing the real estate practice at leading Ohio firm Roetzel & Andress, Haas has handled the property components of several large transactions.

Haas led Jones Day teams that advised DDR Corp., a publicly traded REIT, on its nearly $2 billion purchase of 76 shopping centers from American Realty Capital Properties Inc. in 2014 and DDR's $1.46 billion purchase a year earlier of 30 prime shopping centers from an existing joint venture with buyout giant The Blackstone Group LP. Haas also advised Beachwood, Ohio-based DDR in 2012 when it teamed up with Blackstone on a $1.43 billion deal to acquire 46 U.S. shopping centers from an affiliate of Israeli holding company Elbit Imaging Ltd.

An Ohio native, over the years Haas' clients have included a wide range of players in the commercial real estate sector, from private equity firms such as Blackstone and H.I.G. Capital LLC to investment management giants like AllianceBernstein LP and Brookfield Asset Management Inc. Haas said he likes to think of his practice as comprising the “ABCs” or “three legs of the stool” for his industry: real estate finance, real estate private equity and high-end investors in the space.

Haas said that Latham approached him about moving to the firm, but declined to discuss whether he used the services of a legal recruiter. Since leaving Jones Day in February, Haas said he took some time off to be with his family while preparing for his first new professional home in 10 years.

Latham's stunning financial growth within the past decade—a trajectory only matched by Kirkland & Ellis, which bested Latham in the gross revenue metric last year—was acknowledged by Haas as a key factor in luring him to the firm. Nonetheless, Haas had kind words for Jones Day, which has made headlines over the past year for its work on behalf of President Donald Trump.

“It's a great firm and I still have a lot of great friends there,” Haas said.

Haas joins Latham a month after the firm recruited O'Melveny & Myers partner George Davis in New York to serve as its new global co-chair of restructuring, insolvency and workouts. Latham has also welcomed aboard several other notable partners this year in former DLA Piper global board member and ex-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in Madrid, Hogan Lovells litigation and dispute resolution experts Jon Holland and Andrea Monks in London, former McDermott Will & Emery tax controversy co-chair Jean Pawlow in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., and Alston & Bird's former International Trade Commission litigation chief Jamie Underwood in the nation's capital.

Latham, which watched its former global chair and managing partner William Voge abruptly retire in late March, also had a pair of key partners leave its ranks this year in Christopher Brearton and Jennifer Perkins. Kirkland hired Perkins, a former co-head of Latham's global private equity practice in New York, while Brearton, an entertainment industry rainmaker in Los Angeles, joined movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett also hired two other ex-Latham partners, Eli Hunt in New York and David Greene in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.