Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Like a lot of partners who have made lateral moves recently, intellectual property litigator Jim Shimota has spent his first days at K&L Gates' Chicago office working remotely.

Unlike his counterparts, however, Shimota has been virtually meeting his new colleagues and clients from hundreds of miles away. The former Haynes and Boone partner, who lives in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, has been working out of his father-in-law's house in Venice, Florida; his wife was concerned about her father when the COVID-19 pandemic started.

"It is impressive that K&L got me up and running in spot where I definitely don't have a home office," Shimota said.

Furthermore, the stay-at-home order issued by the governor of Illinois and Big Law's decision to begin working remotely in light of the COVID-19 pandemic means that Shimota wasn't able to empty his old office at Haynes & Boone, where he was the Chicago managing partner, before he left. Nearly five years' worth of personal possessions are stuck in there.

"Once this is all done, I'll need to get those," Shimota said.

Even though major law firms have been taking steps to mitigate the financial impacts of the pandemic—by reducing partner draws and cutting salaries, furloughing and laying off staff, or cutting associate programs—Shimota said the opportunities provided by K&L Gates were "too good to pass up."

A major focus of Shimota's practice is plaintiff-side patent infringement work. He works with a lot of midsize companies and will occasionally pair them up with litigation funders if he thinks they have a good patent infringement case but lack the funding to pursue it. Shimota said the lawyers at K&L Gates' Chicago office—which Shimota said make up the largest concentration of IP lawyers in the Windy City—have a lot of interest in that kind of work.

"I was extremely attracted to the fact that there were a number of really talented young professionals who share some of the same interests and practice areas I have, in trying to match up strong IP portfolios from midsize companies, as an example, with litigation funders," Shimota said. "There was some real synergies between my practice and the practice of the group there."

Among the clients Shimota has represented is Lynk Labs, an Elgin, Illinois, lighting company. With Shimota at its side, Lynk Labs sued Acuity Brands, the largest lighting manufacturer in the U.S., for alleging violating one of its patents for AC-LED technology. The two sides settled in 2017.

Shimota said he does a lot of work with litigation funders, including GLS Capital and Longford Capital.

"Patent infringement is expensive. And it requires sophisticated entities at all stages of the game. In these times where cash flow is going to be key, there's a lot of people who are looking to sources to help them manage the risk associated with that litigation," Shimota said.

K&L Gates saw relatively modest growth in 2019, according to preliminary reporting for The American Lawyer's Am Law 100 rankings. The firm's overall revenue increased by 1.9% to $1.026 billion, but it lost a net 65 lawyers—a 3.7% drop in head count. Haynes and Boone, meanwhile, saw a slight drop in overall revenue, which the firm attributed to the 35-day government shutdown that began in December 2018 and a slowdown in the energy sector.

"We thank Jim for his service to Haynes and Boone and our clients, and we wish him well at his new firm," Haynes and Boone managing partner Tim Powers said in a statement.

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Government Shutdown, Energy Slowdown Made for a Flat 2019 at Haynes and Boone