Andrea Hwang and Leonard Klingbaum of Ropes & Gray. Courtesy photos

Two finance partners at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, including the former chair of the practice, have joined Ropes & Gray's finance team as partners in New York.

Andrea Hwang, who made partner at Willkie this year, and Leonard Klingbaum, Hwang's mentor who was chair of Willkie's finance group until he left the firm, started at Ropes on Oct. 4, two days after they gave notice at Willkie that they were leaving. Ropes' talented lawyers and impressive client base in deal work attracted them to the Boston-based firm, they said in an interview.

Both lawyers represent a wide array of investors and lenders, with Klingbaum's practice skewed toward firms and credit funds in distressed situations and Hwang working for a number of direct lenders, or nonbank lenders.

"My biggest corporate clients," said Klingbaum, "appreciate the move to Ropes."

Compared with Willkie, he said, Ropes has a much deeper bench of finance lawyers globally, almost 200 around the world, and the Ropes group could serve his biggest clients well. He noted that Ropes has established relationships with "dozens" of credit funds that he looks forward to working with.

He added that he has long admired the firm's finance practice and said he and his colleagues were "acutely aware" of its "prominence and dominance" in the field. "Ropes has the stable of clients already there and Ropes is credible to those clients," he said. "It's a natural fit for me."

According to Ropes, Klingbaum's 20-year career has made him a go-to lawyer for specialty and distressed lending, debtor-in-possession financings, work-outs and restructurings. He works with public companies, hedge funds, and specialty and direct lenders, among others. He has previously worked at McDermott Will & Emery and Kirkland & Ellis.

Hwang said she has represented GSO Capital Partners and other companies in the direct lending field, an area where she said Ropes is growing, and has represented private equity firms in connection with leveraged buyouts. She has also represented Insight Venture Partners and Genstar Capital in financing transactions, according to Ropes' announcement of her move.

Over the years, she said she has had positive experiences being across the table from Ropes partners like Byung Choi, the co-head of Ropes' global finance practice group, Michael Lee, and Kevin Jarboe.

"I think Ropes just is kind of a dominating force in private equity," she said. "What I'm looking forward to is more deal flow."

Top partners at Ropes praised their new colleagues in a statement. Stefanie Birkmann, who along with Choi leads the finance group, said the two "excel at handling complicated financing transactions."

David Djaha, the firm's managing partner-elect, highlighted the array of clients they worked with and noted that they would be talented additions to the Boston-heavy firm's growing New York office, which has 350 lawyers.

A representative for Willkie wasn't immediately available to comment on the moves.