Michael Cochran, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton has landed Dentons partner Mick Cochran to lead its private equity team.

Cochran said he made the move to Kilpatrick, announced Monday, because his private equity and corporate clients would benefit from the firm's extensive tech practice. Cochran will co-chair Kilpatrick's private equity team. Until last year, he was chair of Dentons' U.S. corporate practice.

"In the current economic climate, tech-oriented and growth-oriented businesses are going to be very active from a corporate finance perspective, so it's a great time to drive those combined practices," he explained, noting that "clients are looking for holistic solutions to their needs."

While "deal activity slowed materially in March" because of the COVID-19 crisis, Cochran said, he's observed a recent uptick in deal activity. Cochran said he expects that to increase in the second half of the year and that private equity will play a financing role. "There is a liquidity crisis right now for companies, so private equity firms are a good partner for their businesses," he explained.

Cochran said his relationship with Kilpatrick's lawyers goes back to when he was the firm's client for the Atlanta-based private equity fund he founded in 1997, Equity Capital Partners. "It feels like coming home," he said, adding that the Kilpatrick attorneys he worked with then, David Stockton, Ben Barkley and Lynn Fowler, are still at the firm.

In 2003, when Cochran returned to private practice, he joined Dentons' predecessor firm, Atlanta-based McKenna Long & Aldridge, which Dentons acquired in 2015. At McKenna and then Dentons, he headed the U.S. corporate practice until stepping down a year ago. Don Hammett in Dallas became Dentons' U.S. corporate practice group leader in July 2019.

Cochran, who was just named one of the Daily Report's Most Effective Dealmakers, said representative clients include Millenium New Horizons, a New York-based venture capital firm, and Next Frontier Capital, a Bozeman, Montana-based venture capital firm.

He described his practice as "a corporate-finance, transaction-based practice focused on private companies," adding that "the core of my practice is transactionally driven, whether M&A work, growth equity work or mezzanine financing." He represents buyers, sellers and lenders.

"Mick's addition presents us with a unique opportunity to grow our already robust private equity practice with a partner who is well known to many of our existing corporate partners," said Barkley, Kilpatrick's corporate department chair, in a statement.

"I think this is a good move for Mick, and we wish him the best," said Dentons' Atlanta managing partner Sharon Gay, noting that last week Dentons welcomed back a former corporate finance partner (from predecessor firm McKenna), Lenny Silverstein, who co-founded Preferred Apartment Communities, a publicly traded REIT, with Atlanta apartment guru John Williams.

In his nonprofit work, Cochran is outside general counsel for the Westside Future Fund, a nonprofit started in late 2014 to promote positive development for Vine City, English Avenue, Ashview Heights and Atlanta University Center after the City of Atlanta approved the new Falcons stadium to be located adjacent to those neighborhoods.

BRIEFLY

Veteran family law attorneys Dawn Smith and Kristen Files have formed a new firm, Smith & Files. Smith was previously a name partner in Decatur family law boutique, Smith & Lake, with Sheri Lake, who now has a solo family law and mediation firm. Smith has also been a partner at one of Atlanta's largest family law firms, Boyd Collar Nolen & Tuggle. She serves as chair of the DeKalb Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, where files is also a board member. Files, who had been an associate at Smith & Lake, was named a "Top 40 Under 40" lawyer by the National Black Lawyers association in 2016.

Smith and Files launched a podcast on knotty family law issues, Untying the Knots, after forming their firm earlier in July. In addition to the name partners, Smith & Files has an associate, Laura Sclafani, also from Smith & Lake. Sclafani is a former staff attorney for the Atlanta Legal Aid Society in its domestic relations unit.

Tax and bankruptcy boutique Wiggam & Geer has added a new partner, Alyssa Maloof Whatley, who previously had her own firm representing individuals and small to medium-size businesses. Whatley is a former president of the Metro Atlanta Consumer Bankruptcy Attorney Group and the 2019 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys.

Swift, Currie, McGhee & Hiers has added four lawyers since June to its workers compensation and business litigation practice groups. Traci Teer from Vernis & Bowling joined as a senior attorney, while Kristin Tucker from Baker, Donelson, Caldwell & Berkowitz, Chris Beerman from David West & Associates and Gerond Lawrence from Thomas Kennedy Sampson & Tompkins joined as attorneys.

Bersinger Law has hired an associate, Nicola Rossi, from family law firm Stearns-Montgomery & Proctor. Bersinger Law is a litigation boutique handling insurance coverage disputes for policyholders, business disputes and personal injury cases. Rossi earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia in 2015, then clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land of the Middle District of Georgia and Senior Judge R. Lanier Anderson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Larry Kunin of Morris Manning & Martin has been elected president-elect of the State Bar of Florida's out of state division, which represents 14,000 lawyers practicing in Florida. Kunin will become the division's president next June. He was a corporate litigator in Miami before joining Morris Manning, where he heads the tech and intellectual property litigation practice.

Bryan Ramos of the Ramos Law Firm has been appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' Georgia advisory committee for a four-year term. Ramos Law Firm represents workers in workers' compensation cases.