McDermott Will & Emery

Nelson Mullins Broad and Cassel partner Ben Curtis has jumped to McDermott Will & Emery's Miami office as a member of the firm's litigation practice group.

Curtis spent the majority of his career as a federal prosecutor, with stops at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami and the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He focuses his practice on white-collar health care litigation, a subject he grew familiar with in the course of his career investigating health care fraud.

“The main driving force for wanting to come over is McDermott's significant health care platform,” Curtis said.

Indeed, McDermott's Miami office has doubled to 60 attorneys in just two years, and the outpost employs 20 health care attorneys alone, according to Miami managing partner Jerry Sokol.

Despite its size, the outpost was lacking a local white-collar health care litigator, meaning the firm had to outsource that work to out-of-state partners. Curtis fills that niche, Sokol said.

“We've been looking for white-collar health care expertise in the Miami area,” he said. ”And we have a very high threshold for finding attorneys who we think can perform at the level that our clients are demanding.”

Nelson Mullins did not immediately respond to a request for comment.