Nearly a year after calling off merger talks with Crowell & Moring, New York-based Herrick Feinstein has hired Morris DeFeo Jr., a key Crowell partner in the merger due diligence talks, to serve as co-chair of the firm's corporate practice.

DeFeo was co-chair of Crowell's corporate group and led Crowell's Middle East and North Africa practice. He will now help lead Herrick's corporate practice alongside co-chair Stephen Jacobs, and will help re-open the firm's Washington, D.C., office. He will split his time between New York and Washington.

DeFeo and his new firm's leaders said the move shows Herrick's ambitions to grow outside its traditionally strong areas of real estate and sports law.

In a statement, a Crowell spokesman said the firm wishes him well.

“Our capacity to advise on sophisticated mid-market transactions across a host of industries does not change. We remain a full-service practice serving industry-leading clients,” the Crowell spokesman said.

Amid smaller head count and cost-cutting measures, Herrick began merger talks with Crowell in the first half of 2016. Crowell was seeking to expand outside its well-known Washington and government contracts practice into profitable New York corporate practices, while Herrick would have benefited from Crowell's much larger platform. Crowell, with about 440 lawyers, is roughly triple Herrick's size. But the talks broke down last spring.

DeFeo declined to discuss any specific factors that derailed the deal. “Mergers between law firms, sometimes with the passage of time, begin to look at little different,” he said. “The parties just recognized that it wouldn't be the right time to combine the firm in the way that was being discussed.”

While DeFeo did not help initiate the merger discussions, he was brought in on the deal team because of his background in real estate and corporate matters. DeFeo focuses on capital markets and M&A transactions, corporate governance and compliance counseling. His clients include public and private corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies and real estate investment trusts.

When the deal talks stopped, DeFeo said he stayed in touch and over time the firms would refer matters back and forth.

In the process of getting to know each other well, “I began to see how I would fit in a firm like Herrick,” he said. While Herrick is smaller, DeFeo said, it's more transactional-focused compared with Crowell.

“It's easier for a transactional lawyer like me to play a larger role” at Herrick, compared with Crowell, which is more regulatory- and litigation-focused, DeFeo said.

While he said he “thinks the world of Crowell,” DeFeo said moving to Herrick presented an opportunity to continue his capital markets practice with a firm known for its corporate and real estate expertise and its New York presence. Much of what he will be doing at Herrick, he said, is “exactly what I would have been done if the combination would have taken place.”

DeFeo's exit comes about four months after Angela Styles, Crowell's former chair, abruptly quit. She ultimately joined Bracewell. However, DeFeo said Styles' exit was not a factor in his own move. He said he and Styles were friends and she “left for her own reasons; my decision really was very specific and unique.”

Last year, Herrick closed its Washington office, following the closure of its Princeton, New Jersey, location. DeFeo said he intends to help Herrick re-open in the capital and expand to “a more fulsome practice” there, including in transactional, litigation and employment legal services.

Scott Mollen, a longtime real estate partner at Herrick, said Herrick had a “strong financial year” in 2017, leading to increased profits per partner. He said the figures, which he declined to disclose, were “particularly impressive given that we had a significant amount of resources dedicated to the merger talks,” including time that could have been spent on billable hours.

Last fall, Herrick hired Patrick O'Sullivan, former executive vice president and head of real estate transactions at the New York City Economic Development Corp., joining from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. But Herrick has seen several partner departures in the last year, including two just last month, when Jonathan Adler and Adam Stein left to launch their own boutique, Stein Adler LLP. The two could not immediately comment Tuesday, except to confirm the launch of their boutique. Nancy Mertzel, former chair of the intellectual property practice at Herrick, left Herrick last year to set up her own shop in Manhattan.

DeFeo said he would not have gone to Herrick if he didn't feel certain the firm was committed to a “smart, strategic growth” plan.

Mollen said the firm is not engaged in merger talks now.

“You never know what the future holds,” Mollen said, adding, “right now Herrick is devoting 100 percent of its resources to internal growth.”