FisherBroyles, a 250-attorney firm that bills itself as the world's largest "distributed" law firm, has opened its first non-U.S. location in London.

The office, located on 1 Ropemaker St., will be occupied by Robert Boresta, Peter Finding and Rory Graham, who live in London full time. Global corporate managing partner Michael Pierson will be splitting his time between New York and London.

Boresta joined the firm a year ago from Gibbons and advises financial institutions on securities laws and regulations. Finding is an international employment attorney who worked at law firms Taylor Vinters and Withers, among others. Graham jumped over from Kerman & Co., where he was the head of the firm's tech and outsourcing practice. Both Graham and Finding were hired in January.

Pierson said the firm has long had to refer its clients' work in the U.K., and so a year and a half ago it began laying the groundwork to expand into London in order to handle the work itself.

Pierson added that the firm has three more lateral partners slated to join in the next week and bring experience in mergers and acquisitions, funds and general corporate representation. The firm plans to grow the London office to a full-service outpost with up to 20 lawyers.

"We dedicated a lot of resources to going to London and meeting a lot of recruits, as well as setting up a separate English partnership. All those efforts paid off," Pierson said.

When Pierson says FisherBroyles is a distributed law firm, he means that the firm is "not bound by geography," but rather by practice area. As a corporate partner, the attorneys Pierson works with every day are in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, London, Washington, D.C., and Palo Alto, California.

Although it has small physical offices in 22 U.S. cities, including Atlanta, New York and Cincinnati, Ohio, most of the firm's attorneys work remotely. The arrangement cuts down on overhead costs by a third, according to Pierson, allowing partners to bill at lower rates than the large law firms FisherBroyles pulls its talent from.

In April, the firm hired Rebecca Rettig, who formerly worked for a decade at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. The firm also opened a Miami office last year with four new partners, its second in Florida.

The firm has no billing targets, and if a practice needs new overhead, such as real estate or hiring, it pays for it itself. The firm also heavily encourages sharing and cross-selling, with the partners who share the work getting a third of the revenue and the partner performing the work receiving half. According to the firm, 60% of its 2016 annual revenue derived from partner collaboration.

The London office is just the beginning of the firm's global growth, Pierson said. FisherBroyles also has its eyes set on Singapore, which the firm says also grants access to markets in India and Hong Kong, and Milan, which has a robust banking, finance and securities market.

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