Eric Blanchard, who led the capital markets and securities practice at Covington & Burling, has moved to Cooley's New York office. He said the firm's deep bench and growing clout made sense for his clients in the European biotech space.

Blanchard said he's frequently been across from Cooley partners over the course of his career, including Div Gupta and capital markets group co-chairs Charlie Kim and David Peinsipp. The latter was his co-counsel on last year's Uber initial public offering. He said Cooley offers "a comprehensive service model for people who are innovators."

A key difference, he said, is that Cooley's capital markets team is much bigger. His practice group joined Covington from Dewey & LeBoeuf in 2012 but he said Covington has become more focused on white-collar cases and major litigation since then, becoming "the core" of the firm.