View of the morning commute March 24, 2020, showing San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)

To meet client needs, U.K. firm Kennedys expanded its U.S. reach to the West Coast by launching an office in San Francisco on Thursday with a four-partner maritime team from Hinshaw & Culbertson.

Clients have been asking the firm to open an office in California, Christopher Carroll, a partner in New York and Basking Ridge, New Jersey, who is on the firm's global strategy board, said in a statement.

"We have seen significant demand from our existing U.S. clients over the last few years to open in California, and this sees us respond to that," Carroll said.

San Francisco is the firm's seventh U.S. office. Others are in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia and Austin.

Meg Catalano, the U.S. managing partner for Kennedys, wrote that it is "especially exciting and gratifying" to move forward with the new office during difficult and challenging times.

The lateral partner hires are Forrest Booth, Erik Kowalewsky, Pamela Schultz and Jonathan Thames. They join with three associates, including two from Hinshaw & Culbertson.

Booth, who had been senior partner of Hinshaw's maritime and energy practice, said it made a lot of sense to move their admiralty, maritime, and oil and gas practice to Kennedys, because of the firm's reach.

"Kennedys has the largest maritime practice in the world and are extremely well thought of in the London insurance market, where we get a lot of our business as well," Booth said.

Booth declined to identify clients, but said they include London-based insurance companies, U.S.-based insurance companies, ship owners in Europe and the U.S., and a variety of insurance intermediaries and brokers.

The group's practice is varied. Booth focuses on insurance and reinsurance, Kowalewsky on insurance coverage, Schultz on maritime with some insurance coverage and general liability litigation, and Thames advises business and insurance clients on maritime, property, regulatory and transportation matters.

Noting that Kennedys is responsive to client requests to be in specific locations, Booth said he would not be surprised if the firm expanded elsewhere in California.

In 2017, Kennedys had an office in Miami, but it expanded in the U.S. in a big way in a merger with New Jersey insurance firm Carroll McNulty & Kull, which had five offices. The firm, known as Kennedys CMK in the U.S., has 110 lawyers in the seven offices.

A Hinshaw spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the departures.

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