Top row: David Danovitch, Peter Ginsberg, bottom: Scott Miller and John Riley

Seven lawyers, including four corporate and litigation partners, have left New York's Robinson Brog Leinwand Greene Genovese & Gluck to start a regulatory compliance group at Sullivan & Worcester.

Partners David Danovitch, Peter Ginsberg, Scott Miller and John Riley and associates Nicholas Chionchio, Michael DeDonato and Nakia Elliott joined Sullivan's New York office, the firm said May 22, growing its expertise in transactions, financing and securities compliance, as well as litigation and white-collar matters. The 170-lawyer Boston-based firm now has about 40 lawyers in New York.

Sullivan managing partner Joel Carpenter said the new lawyers complement the firm's existing areas of expertise and are poised to help grow the services it can offer to the broad sweep of Israeli companies that need legal help tapping U.S. markets. In the past, he said, a business about to sell stock or bonds might have turned to Sullivan only for the transaction, but the new team can keep working with that company as it grows.

“We'll do offerings, but then if they need an investigation or compliance manuals, these guys can bring that to the party,” Carpenter said. “If one of the clients, for example, ran up against some sort of SEC investigation, we wouldn't have been necessarily looked to by these clients in the first instance.”

One possible area of growth, he said, was advising Israeli companies that have been introduced to Sullivan through its joint venture with the Israeli firm Zysman, Aharoni, Gayer & Co., an entity known as ZAG/Sullivan. Through that entity, Sullivan lawyers work for clients including medical device maker Mazor Robotics, the data management firm Attunity and the telecommunications technology company Radcom.

Danovitch, who previously led Robinson Brog's capital markets and corporate transactional departments, works with issuers, broker-dealers and investment funds on both deals and the regulatory work that comes with growing a company. Ginsberg, a former prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York U.S. Attorney's Office, is known for having worked on several high-profile criminal and civil disputes involving athletics, including golfer Vijay Singh's suit against the PGA Tour over doping allegations that settled last year.

Miller works for investment banks, broker-dealers and issuers in their transactions and financing efforts, as well as on employee stock ownership plan issues. Riley advises funds on deals and regulatory issues and advises companies on raising capital, corporate governance and mergers and acquisitions.

Carpenter said Danovitch and the other lawyers would be kept busy through a mix of working with Sullivan's existing client base and by offering the firm's services to their own clients. “These guys do have a large amount of work that they bring to the firm that we weren't already doing, but they also offer a skillset that we know there's demand for in our client base,” he said.

Ronald Goodman, managing partner of 50-lawyer firm Robinson Brog, said Danovitch had a different vision for Robinson Brog's capital markets team than other firm leaders but wished him well.

“He was a good attorney and a good friend, but he wanted to go in a different direction and expand the capital markets group beyond what the rest of the executive committee thought was a good idea,” Goodman said. “He was looking for a bigger platform … and I wish him the best.”