John Herman, of Herman Jones in Atlanta.

National plaintiffs firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd has shuttered its Atlanta office, because John Herman, who opened it 11 years ago, and another partner, Peter Jones, have started their own firm.

The two former Robbins Geller partners opened HermanJones on Monday. The new firm will continue handling large plaintiffs matters, some in collaboration with Robbins Geller, but it will also represent clients on the defense side of business disputes and in compliance matters, said Herman, the new firm's chairman.

“John and Peter are fine lawyers,” said Robbins Geller co-founder Darren Robbins, based in San Diego. “We've done a lot of good work together over the years, and we look forward to continue working with them. Their practice is more diverse than what we focus on, and this gives them the opportunity to do work that doesn't fit within our sphere.”

Associate C.J. Jones and Robbins Geller's Atlanta office staff have joined HermanJones, which is taking over the firm's lease in Buckhead's Monarch Tower at 3424 Peachtree Rd.

Herman said he and Jones wanted to broaden their practice into general business and compliance work. “We've had a lot of experience working for both big defense and big plaintiffs firms, so we have a unique perspective to offer clients in big-case litigation,” he said.

The main focus for Robbins Geller, which has about 170 lawyers nationally, is securities class actions, anti-trust and consumer actions, all on the plaintiffs side. HermanJones will continue representing plaintiffs in those type of cases and intellectual property actions, Herman said, adding that his new firm is co-counseling with Robbins Geller on about 10 cases.

“Our intent is to continue to work closely with Robbins Geller, and at the same time, go back to the clients we represented for many years in other contexts,” he said.

Herman, 51, spent the first decade of his career at King & Spalding and then six years at Duane Morris, where he co-chaired that firm's intellectual property group and handled patent litigation for both plaintiffs and defendants.

Herman started the local office for Robbins Geller in 2008 with another Duane Morris patent litigation partner, Ryan Walsh, who departed for Jones Day four years ago.

At Robbins Geller, Herman led the intellectual property and tech practice, while serving as its Atlanta managing partner. As lead counsel for SIPCO and investors David Petite and Edwin Brownrigg, who pioneered wireless mesh technology, he handled licensing and litigation of their nearly 100-patent portfolio for more than a decade, which he said produced more than $100 million in revenue.

Jones, the HermanJones co-founder, also began his career at King & Spalding before joining Robbins Geller a decade ago.

Herman and Jones were part of the Robbins Geller team that won a $108 million cash settlement from defense contractor Orbital ATK, approved last month by a federal judge for the Eastern District of Virginia. That resolved a proposed securities class action for shareholders that Robbins Geller filed three years ago, after the defense contractor announced it was restating its financials to reflect $400 million in losses over a 2013 bullet-manufacturing contract for the U.S. military.

Herman said he's considered the potential for conflicts in handling both plaintiff and defense matters, but he said it depends on the subject matter. For patent cases, “it's very easy to go from representing patent owners to parties sued for infringement,” he said. Tort claims present more conflict issues, he added, but that's not an area HermanJones plans to go into.

HermanJones also includes a partner, Serina Vash, in New Jersey, and Greg Wesner in Seattle as of counsel. Vash was the general counsel of RANE Corp, a risk advisory startup, and spent 12 years at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey, where she was chief of the office's general crimes unit.

Wesner is CEO of Receptor Holdings, whose subsidiary Receptor Life Sciences is a  biopharmaceutical company developing cannabinoid medicines, and the former chair of IP litigation at Washington state firm Lane Powell.

“We are looking to grow,” Herman said.