Polsinelli is poised to announce the opening of an office in Seattle after adding an eight-lawyer group led by the former leader of a leading 120-lawyer local firm.

Stephen Kenyon, a former CEO of Foster Pepper, quietly joined Polsinelli on May 7. Seven other Foster Pepper lawyers have since joined him at Polsinelli's new Emerald City outpost, the 21st office for the Am Law 100 firm.

The Seattle opening will be the 19th office that Polsinelli has opened under the stewardship of W. Russell Welsh, who has been chairman of the Kansas City, Missouri-based firm since 1998 and will hand over its leadership reins to real estate partner F. Chase Simmons next year.

It is rare that law firm leaders like Kenyon move firms. He declined to comment on whether Polsinselli had held tie-up talks with Foster Pepper as part of some broader merger discussion, citing a nondisclosure agreement that he and Welsh had signed.

When asked about the possibility of any potential combination, Foster Pepper's managing partner P. Stephen DiJulio issued a lengthy statement to The American Lawyer. The statement said the firm has often been approached by larger firms looking to enter the Seattle market. It also said that Foster Pepper had posted “record-breaking” revenue in the past two years.

“After examining some recent opportunities and deciding not to pursue a combination, we made the strategic decision to sharpen our focus on what we see as our long-established core strengths: real estate and land use, public finance and municipal government,” DiJulio said. “As a result of the firm's new focus, departures were expected. The majority of the partners that have left the firm have practices that no longer aligned with our core strengths. Some felt their practices were better-suited at a larger platform. We respect their decisions and wish them well. We do not expect these departures to have any significant impact on our practice, our revenue or most importantly, our ability to serve our clients.”

As the former CEO of Foster Pepper, Kenyon said he heard plenty of pitches from other law firm leaders looking to expand into the Pacific Northwest market. Most of them, he said, amounted to a “march to the sea approach” that failed to articulate a more meaningful strategy.

Polsinelli sang a more harmonious tune, said Kenyon, who stressed how his new firm's six national practices lined up with demand for legal services in Seattle. Polsinelli's prominent health care and intellectual property practices are a natural fit for the growing city's technology scene. Kenyon also said the firm's success growing other offices had made his group receptive to joining a national platform.

“Polsinelli certainly had a well-defined and client-focused reason for wanting to be in Seattle, and that was one of several distinguishing features I would say about the firm,” Kenyon said.

Polsinelli's six national practice groups are health care, IP, real estate and financial services, business, litigation and labor and employment.

The lawyers joining Polsinelli from Foster Pepper include Kenyon and fellow partners Jessica Andrade, Stephen Fisher, James Fredman III, Kirsten Koester, Robert Mahler and Jane Pearson, as well as associate Adrienne McKelvey. The new hires work in a range of practice groups, including health care, government investigations, bankruptcy and corporate transactions. Mahler is a white-collar lawyer with a Band-1 ranking in Washington by Chambers and Partners.

The move into Seattle shows that Polsinelli, which has been one of the nation's fastest-growing firms in the wake of the economic recession a decade ago, will continue to grow. Last year, the 783-lawyer firm pulled in $475 million in gross revenue. In 2010, Polsinelli had 413 lawyers and $167.5 million in gross revenue, according to ALM Intelligence.

Welsh said that Polsinelli, which in early 2016 bolted on the bulk of prominent IP-focused firm Novak Druce Connolly Bove + Quigg, has sought to bolster its West Coast operations in recent years. The Seattle opening, as well as other new offices in San Francisco in 2014 and Los Angeles in 2011 are part of that continuing effort by Polsinelli.

In Seattle, the firm will be entering a less-crowded market. The largest offices in the city are those of Perkins Coie, Davis Wright Tremaine and K&L Gates. According to ALM Intelligence, Perkins Coie is the only office with more than 300 lawyers, and Davis Wright is the only other firm to have more than 200 lawyers in Seattle. Foster Pepper is the sixth-largest firm in the city, according to ALM Intelligence, with 112 lawyers.

“We see Seattle as an opportunity, broadly, for practices where we've distinguished ourselves nationally—health care, tech, real estate,” Welsh said. “There are more [construction] cranes in Seattle than any city. I think it's an overlooked market, but it won't be overlooked by us.”

Seattle is one of the few growing large metropolitan areas in the northern half of the United States, according to a Seattle Times analysis of U.S. Census data. From 2016 to 2017, the city was one of just five U.S. metropolitan areas that saw a net increase in population from domestic moves. The other four cities were all in the so-called Sun Belt: Atlanta; Riverside, California; Dallas; and Phoenix.

Earlier this year, national labor and employment firm Fisher & Phillips entered Seattle by acquiring local shop Michael & Alexander. Last week another firm with longtime roots in Seattle, the IP-focused Miller Nash Graham & Dunn, expanded in the Pacific Northwest by absorbing Portland, Oregon-based Marger Johnson.

Asked if Seattle would be the last office opened under his expiring watch as Polsinelli's longtime leader, Welsh said, “Never say never,” before laughing and adding: “It's likely to be, all kidding aside.”