A Chicago location has long been a priority for lawyers at Everlands Sutherlands, even before the combination that created their firm in 2017.

Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, the U.S. legacy firm, had been looking for a Chicago office for years because it had so many clients in the region. The Eversheds tie-up accelerated the impetus to be there since the firm's U.K. lawyers serve many international clients investing in Midwestern deals, said Eversheds Sutherland's co-CEO Mark Wasserman.

The firm announced its new Chicago office on Wednesday, its first new U.S. location since the combination of U.K.'s Eversheds with Atlanta-based Sutherland in February 2017.

The firm has more than 100 clients in the Midwest and Chicago, including Texaco and Mondolez. Wasserman said the firm handles office, retail and hotel deals for real estate developers and hospitality clients and also represents a lot of insurance companies in the region.

“We needed to be physically on the ground in Chicago,” he said. “We plan for it to become a significant focal point for us.”

Eversheds has recruited real estate partners Marc Benjamin from White & Case and Susan Kai from Kirkland & Ellis to start the office. Eversheds partner Robert Owen, a litigator, will relocate to Chicago from New York.

Now that Eversheds has sufficiently integrated the roughly 2,300 lawyers on its global platform, Wasserman said, it wants to expand its U.S. operation to capture more work for clients.

The Chicago office gives the trans-Atlantic firm seven offices in the United States out of 68 total globally. The other U.S. offices are in Atlanta, Washington, New York, Texas and California.

The firm reported a 10% increase in global revenue for 2018 of $1.175 billion. About 18% of its lawyers are in the U.S., according to ALM's Legal Compass.

“Given the global footprint of the organization, it would be good to be larger in the U.S.,” Wasserman said. “But we're not going to be opening 10 offices in the next year or anything.”

“We're looking at different cities and opportunities,” Wasserman said, adding that the firm will continue to add lawyers to its existing offices and is interested in expanding in California, where it has a Sacramento outpost.

Eversheds Sutherland has initially subleased roughly a floor of space at 900 North Michigan Ave., Wasserman said, and is focusing on recruiting practitioners in real estate, private equity, M&A, litigation and tax.

The firm doesn't have a specific growth target in Chicago, but instead is focused on getting the “right people in the right practices,” Wasserman said.

Benjamin, who is partner-in-charge for the Chicago office, said the key opportunity for him was “to be the lead person in growing an office in the city. It's not an opportunity that comes up that often.”

Eversheds has a lot of European clients doing deals in the Midwest, Benjamin said, so he was attracted by the opportunity to help the firm's international partners expand those client relationships in the region.

Benjamin and Kai, the other new partner in Chicago, both represent real estate investors. Benjamin declined to name his clients because they are still in transition, but he said they include real estate opportunity funds and family office clients.

He added that he “immediately connected” with Wasserman and the co-head of Eversheds' real estate law practice, Victor Haley, when they met. “We really liked each other and felt comfortable with each other,” he said. “It's an important intangible—the fit.”

He noted that Eversheds Sutherland has a similar profile to his prior firm, White & Case, since both are trans-Atlantic firms with an “excellent reputation in real estate law.”

White & Case made its own foray into Chicago last year, opening an office there in June, and then in October scooped up the 13-lawyer office of Pircher Nichols & Meeks, including Benjamin, who had spent 24 years at Pircher, an LA-based real estate law firm.

Benjamin and Kai had worked together at Pircher until Kai moved to Kirkland. Benjamin, who recruited Kai to Pircher from law school, said he was looking forward to “getting the band back together.”