Ex-Managing Partner, 3 Others Leave Pierce Bainbridge to Start New Firm
The former acting managing partner at Pierce Bainbridge has formed a new boutique with three others, as their prior firm appears on increasingly shaky ground.
April 20, 2020 at 06:14 PM
3 minute read
Four Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht lawyers, including Tom Warren, who had been acting managing partner, plan to launch their own law firm by next month, the latest in a slew of lawyer departures from the unraveling litigation shop.
The four lawyers leaving Pierce Bainbridge—Warren, Dan Terzian, Daniel Dubin and Erick Kuylman—will form the new boutique, Warren Terzian. Before arriving at Pierce Bainbridge, Warren co-chaired Baker & Hostetler's national appellate practice.
The boutique lists locations in Cleveland, where Warren lives, and Los Angeles, where Terzian, a name partner, and associates Dubin and Kuylman are based. The firm's website was created earlier this month, according to domain registration records.
In an interview, Warren said the firm is set to launch on or around May 1 and will represent both plaintiffs and defendants in litigation. He said the plan is to do a mix of hourly cases and contingency cases, in the vein of Pierce Bainbridge or Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
"We're taking some cases with us that we'll be working on [and] we've got some new cases that we're working on," said Warren, who declined to specify the matters. "We're very excited. Pierce Bainbridge has been an amazing training ground."
The departures come as Pierce Bainbridge appears on increasingly shaky ground. Chief financial officer Kevin Cash and chief operating officer Camille Varlack told lawyers on a call April 13 that the firm was winding down, according to a person who was on the call and others who spoke to people on the call. Those sources said the firm plans to cease operations, though the timeline is uncertain.
The source who was on the April 13 call said lawyers at the firm were originally told it would shut down by April 15. But the source said that wasn't enough time to take steps such as informing clients and transferring cases. Some lawyers have been asked to stay on longer, the source added.
Varlack, Cash and John Pierce, the firm's founding partner, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Pierce last week denied the firm was closing, calling reports of the firm's dissolution "fake news." He said the firm was still litigating major cases and said it laid off associates and staff because of bad economic conditions related to the pandemic.
One source estimated that eight or fewer lawyers remain at Pierce Bainbridge, a precipitous drop from December, when the firm had more than 60 lawyers. While dozens of lawyer profiles are still on the firm's website, many of those people have left the firm, according to court notices of withdrawal, source interviews and LinkedIn profiles.
Law.com reported in March that Pierce was on leave from his firm after questions were raised about his and the firm's finances. Lawyers who left the firm since then include three name partners: Carolynn Beck, Maxim Price and David Hecht.
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Pierce Bainbridge Leader John Pierce Is On Leave Amid Financing Questions
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