Salt Lake City with the Wasatch Mountains in the background. Photo: Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock.com

Dorsey & Whitney is adding a seven-lawyer team from Holland & Hart and deepening its bet on Salt Lake City, where the firm has doubled in size since last year.

Matthew Wells, Aaron Murdock, James Kelly, Craig Frame and Jeffrey Bowman are all joining the Minneapolis-based Am Law 200 firm as partners in its corporate group. Holland & Hart's Kady Reese and Neela Pack are also joining the firm as associates.

The group's addition is part of a strategic growth by Dorsey & Whitney in Salt Lake City, which is now the firm's second largest office by head count with 62 attorneys. Over the last 18 months, the firm has added nearly 30 attorneys, including a 15-lawyer and legal professionals intellectual property team from Holland & Hart.

“It's a very interesting market because it's both an entrepreneurial market and business center market,” said Ken Cutler, managing partner of Dorsey & Whitney.

The recent additions from Holland & Hart build on key practices for the booming Utah capital—emerging companies, mergers and acquisitions and fund formation.

“We think we have the top M&A and public companies practice in Utah, and the opportunity to get the top emerging companies and funds practice in Utah was just irresistible for us,” Cutler said.

The group works with venture capital-backed technology companies, as well as other public and privately held companies and their investors, focusing on middle-market M&A work and private fund formation.

It was Dorsey & Whitney's strategic focus on mid-market M&A work, as well as its bench strength in its private funds and capital markets practices, that enticed the group, Murdock said.

“Everything that we do is happening in this market quite a lot and is growing,” Murdock said. “So it's a great time to be in these practices in Salt Lake City because it's a growth market across the board in all of those areas,” he added.

Murdock, a Salt Lake native, said the city has seen a transformation in the city since he began his legal career there at several years ago.

Murdock, a former Latham & Watkins associate, joined Holland & Hart in 2012 from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which shuttered its operations in Salt Lake in 2007. At Wilson, Murdock built a practice working with entrepreneurs, emerging companies and investors in the city's tech community.

“When I went to work at the Wilson Sonsini office, the venture-backed emerging companies were just starting out,” Murdock said. “There were a couple of funds, a handful of companies, there were few early notable IPOs and that kind of kicked things off.”

As for Dorsey, the firm is still in growth mode in the city, Culter said, noting that it plans on making another notable lateral hire in October. He declined to give any specifics on the addition.

“You build up momentum and a little buzz in the community, and it helps other top practitioners start thinking, 'Gee, maybe I should take a look,'” Cutler said.