New York white-collar litigation boutique Park Jensen Bennett is closing its doors, with co-founders Tai Park and Douglas Jensen returning to Big Law, this time at White & Case, and fellow name partner Steven Bennett joining 12-lawyer Scarola Zubatov Schaffzin.

Park and Jensen will be partners in White & Case's global white-collar practice. Joining the firm with them from Park Jensen Bennett are Tami Stark, former branch chief and assistant regional director with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, who joins as counsel, and Christopher Greer and Mehtab Brar, who are joining as associates.

Founded in 1999 by Park, a former Shearman & Sterling partner, and Jensen, who was at Chadbourne & Parke, Park Jensen Bennett specialized in white-collar defense, securities litigation and complex commercial litigation matters. 

Bennett, a longtime Jones Day partner, joined the firm and added his name to its shingle in 2015.

Shuttering their firm and heading to White & Case and its global platform was a way for him and Jensen to take their practice to the next level, Park said.  

“Over the past 10 years our focus has been more on individual representation,” said Park, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

“We wanted to re-engage with the corporate representation, as well as doing individual representation,” Park said. “White & Case's just incredible global coverage would enable us to take advantage of that network to really increase our practice to the next level.”

After a decade as a prosecutor, Park joined Shearman in 1999 as a litigation partner representing executives and companies, commercial and investment banks and major accounting firms. 

Similarly, Jensen spent over a decade as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, including as deputy chief of the criminal division and chief of the narcotics unit. He then joined Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman as special counsel before heading to Chadbourne & Parke in 2005.

Since launching a decade ago, Park Jensen Bennett has represented a number of prominent clients in high-stakes matters. Park represented the former head trader of residential mortgage-backed securities at Goldman Sachs, Edwin Chin, in a civil action brought by the SEC. More recently, he was one of four lawyers proposed last year by former Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen to serve as a special master to review seized Cohen files. 

In 2014, Jensen represented former Dewey & LeBoeuf accounting manager Jyhjing “Victoria” Harrington in her plea deal in connection to the law firm's fraud case.

In joining White & Case, with its 2,150 lawyers, Jensen said he doesn't expect to stop representing individual clients on white-collar matters. 

“Ten years ago, most of that work was done by small boutiques like ours, but that's changed,” he said.

“A lot more big firms are getting into that niche and White & Case, in particular, has been at the forefront of that,” he said, noting the firm's successful representation of former JPMorgan foreign exchange trader Richard Usher, among other matters.

“The addition of Tai and Doug is an example of our commitment to expanding our white-collar capabilities as part of the firm's 2020 strategy,” said the global head of White & Case's white-collar practice, Darryl Lew, in a statement.  

“As former federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Tai and Doug have played pivotal roles in virtually all of the high-profile white-collar cases in New York over the past 10 years. They will help to build out an already-strong white-collar group, and I am confident they will be of great value to our clients,” he added.