It was a busy year for the Atlanta legal market, with several established local firms closing or reconfiguring and others opening, but the city's biggest law firm news of 2019 was a deal that has not yet happened: Atlanta-based Troutman Sanders' prospective merger with Philadelphia-based Pepper Hamilton.

The two firms confirmed in November that they are in talks. If the Troutman-Pepper merger goes through, it would create an Am Law 50 firm with about 1,100 lawyers and combined revenue of $855 million, based on the firms' 2018 financials.

Shook and Akerman

Atlanta continued to attract interest from Am Law 200 firms. In June it gained another one, when the Midwest's Shook Hardy & Bacon (No. 103 in the Am Law ranking based on revenue) opened an office with three products liability partners from Alston & Bird: Colin Kelly, who's heading the office, Josh Becker and Anna Sumner Pieschel. The Atlanta office, now up to six lawyers, is the first incursion into the Southeast, outside of Florida, for Shook, a 500-lawyer, litigation-focused firm.

Shook's entry into the Atlanta legal market followed another Am Law firm, Florida-based Akerman (No. 94), which quietly opened an Atlanta office in September 2018 with three health care partners from Polsinelli: Sidney Welch, the local managing partner for Akerman, Jeremy Burnette and Amy Jeon McCullough.

That office grew rapidly in 2019, landing corporate partners Bill Ide and Amanda Leech, plus litigators Anthony Morris and Robin Johnson from Dentons, and then several labor and employment partners: Erica Mason and Sul Kim from Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, and Peter Spanos from Barnes & Thornburg. Anne Marie Garavaglia and Kinan Obeidin, who have real estate finance practices, joined in the fall from Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough.

Akerman's Atlanta office had grown to 14 lawyers, including 12 partners, by its one-year anniversary in September, and the firm leased a full floor of space at 999 Peachtree St. N.E. in Midtown. Welch told the Daily Report in September that Akerman's goal is to build a full-service location in Atlanta.

Atlanta is now home to 48 Am Law 100 and Second Hundred firms, The American Lawyer's designation for the 200 highest-grossing firms in the country, with local offices ranging from several hundred lawyers at homegrown giants King & Spalding and Alston & Bird to outposts with just a handful.

Atlanta Firms Disband

Three established Atlanta firms closed in 2019, all in March.

Commercial real estate boutique Pursley Friese Torgrimson disbanded, which co-managing partners Stephanie Friese and Christian Torgrimson said was because the 12-lawyer firm was at a point where it needed to get much bigger or become part of a larger firm.

The boutique had launched in 2013, when Friese, who handles real estate law, joined forces with Torgrimson and Charles Pursley, likely the most eminent eminent domain lawyer in Georgia. It added a zoning team when Julie Sellers and Doug Dillard, the eminence grise of Georgia zoning law, joined in 2015 from Weissman.

Torgrimson joined Charlotte-based Parker Poe Adams & Berstein as a partner with the rest of Pursley Friese's eminent domain team. Friese went to another large general practice firm, Texas-based Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Aughtry, as a partner along with her colleague of 18 years, Christine Norstadt, as senior counsel.

Sellers and Dillard eschewed Big Law and started their own zoning law firm, Dillard Sellers, located in south Buckhead at 1776 Peachtree St. N.W., bringing Pursley Friese's other two zoning lawyers and staff.

A high profile political law and litigation boutique, Strickland Brockington Lewis, also disbanded after 18 years. Frank Strickland and Bryan Tyson joined Taylor English Duma as partners, while Oscar Persons joined as senior counsel. The three are Republican stalwarts who've worked on election campaigns, in party positions and on a variety of political law issues.

One of Strickland Brockington Lewis' name partners, Anne Lewis, died in April after a long battle against cancer. Lewis was a well-respected voting law expert and the general counsel for the Georgia Republican Party.

Insley & Race, a 14-lawyer insurance defense shop, was the third boutique to close in March. After 20 years practicing with Brynda Insley, Kevin Race started his own solo plaintiffs practice, The Race Law Firm. That followed the departure of another partner, Jim Myers, to plaintiffs firm Pratt Clay on Feb. 1. Three partners who worked with Race on the hospital defense team—David Johnson, Kevin Spainhour and Kim Woodland—and an associate joined Bendin Sumrall & Ladner, which focuses on medical malpractice defense.

Insley opted to join Taylor English with three associates to continue her broad-based insurance defense practice.

Local Mergers and a Big Lease

The year was marked by several local law firm mergers.

In February, one of Atlanta's largest firms, Smith, Gambrell & Russell, acquired Mazursky Constantine, a 12-lawyer employee benefits boutique. Mazursky Constantine's founder, Don Mazursky, became the co-head of Smith Gambrell's employee benefits and executive compensation practice with its existing leader, Andy Fawbush.

That followed Smith Gambrell's announcement that it had signed a lease with Selig Enterprises to become the anchor tenant for a new luxury office tower in Midtown at 1105 West Peachtree St.

The firm initially agreed to take floors nine through 12 of the tower but in September announced that it would add the eighth floor for a total of 120,763 square feet in the 31-story office tower. Smith Gambrell's chairman, Stephen Forte, said the addition of the Mazursky Constantine lawyers and staff was one reason it needed more space, adding that the firm intends to keep growing locally.

Smith Gambrell, which has about 240 lawyers, including 125 lawyers in its Atlanta headquarters, expects to move in mid-2021 from the Promenade building at 1230 Peachtree St., located a few blocks away.

One of Marietta's largest firms, Gregory Doyle Calhoun & Rogers, merged with Moore & Reese, a five-lawyer Atlanta boutique in November, giving the combined firm 40 lawyers. Moore & Reese co-founder Clay Reese joined Gregory Doyle as a partner, and the firm's other four attorneys joined as counsel. Reese launched Moore & Reese at the beginning of 2008 with L. Hugh "Hutch" Moore III, who died in January of complications from cancer.

Litigation defense boutique Hanks Brookes disbanded in May after principal Craig Brookes took his four-lawyer, long-term-care defense team to Huff Powell & Bailey. Brookes said they joined the larger litigation defense firm, which now has 45 lawyers, because of "skyrocketing" plaintiffs litigation against nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Hanks Brookes' other name partner, Jerald Hanks, who has a general liability defense and commercial litigation practice, started his own firm, Hanks Law Group.

Carlock Relocates

In a big change for the defense bar, Tom Carlock officially retired from Carlock Copeland & Stair on June 30—but then in August he joined Huff Powell & Bailey as of counsel. "I like practicing law—and you can only play so much golf," Carlock told the Daily Report.

The veteran trial lawyer co-founded Carlock Copeland, one of Atlanta's largest defense litigation firms, in 1970. The Daily Report named Carlock a Lifetime Achiever in 2016 for his involvement in some of the city's most high-profile civil defense cases.

Following Carlock's departure, Carlock Copeland changed its name to Copeland, Stair, Kingma & Lovell in recognition of the contributions of firm leaders Joe Kingma and Gary Lovell over more than 30 years.

Other Big Name Departures

In other big name departures, well-known trial lawyers Tony Cochran and Tom Bever announced in December that they will leave litigation boutique Chilivis Cochran Larkins & Bever on Jan. 6 with two associates to head a white-collar practice for Smith Gambrell.

The Chilivis firm will become Chilivis Grubman Dalbey & Warner, led by new name partners Scott Grubman, John D. "Randy" Dalbey and Lauren Warner, who handle white-collar defense, qui tam matters and commercial litigation with a focus on health care providers.

Nick Chilivis, who co-founded the high-profile litigation boutique in 1984, died in 2016 and the other name partner, John Larkins Jr., retired last year.

Also in December, Dan McGrew left medical malpractice defense firm Weathington McGrew with his team to launch a new six-lawyer firm, McGrew, Miller, Bomar & Bagley, which primarily handles medical malpractice defense along with general civil liability litigation. Heather Miller, Spencer Bomar and Andrew Bagley are the other name partners in the firm, which launched Dec. 9. The partners bring two associates and three staff with them from Weathington McGrew, which reverted back to its original name, The Weathington Firm.

National Firms Shut Outposts

Two Colorado-based firms closed their local outposts. Denver-based Sherman & Howard shuttered its small Atlanta office at the end of 2018 when John Wymer III and Bryan Stillwagon moved their labor and employment practice to another Am Law Second Hundred firm, Thompson Hine. Wymer had left Paul Hastings in 2013 to open the office—Sherman & Howard's only outpost east of the Mississippi.

Denver litigation boutique Wheeler Trigg O'Donnell did the same in June, after Bobby Shannon, who'd opened the office a year earlier, took his trial defense team to Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz.

National plaintiffs firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd also closed its Atlanta office in June after John Herman, who opened it 11 years ago, and another partner, Peter Jones, started their own firm, HermanJones, which took on the office staff and lease from Robbins Geller in Buckhead's Monarch Tower at 3424 Peachtree Rd. In addition to large plaintiffs matters, Herman and Jones are also representing clients on the defense side of business disputes and in compliance matters.