Barnes & Thornburg offices in Indianapolis.

Months after the first lawyers trickled into a new office on Park Avenue, Barnes & Thornburg's New York outpost is officially up and running, the firm announced Monday.

The Indianapolis-founded firm poached 11 lawyers from other New York firms to launch in the Big Apple. The office will focus on asset management and representing financial institutions in transactional, litigation and investigation work.

"It got to the point where not being in New York was a hindrance," Robert J. Boller, partner in charge of the New York office, said in an interview. "If you have a big, white-collar practice but aren't in the Southern District of New York, that can present issues. if you have a big corporate practice, clients want local corporate counsel. The time was right to launch an office in New York."

Boller said Barnes & Thornburg's more affordable pricing structure will allow it to compete with more expensive firms.

"In the entirety of the middle-market investment management space, you have great clients with really complex litigation and corporate issues that are feeling squeezed by the rate structures that just go up and up at Am Law 50 firms," he said. "If we can bring in high-quality attorneys, who were experts in their respective fields, and put them on Barnes & Thornburg's platform, we can also leverage the firm's resources in other geographic areas where the firm's rate structures are different and be competitive in how we structure transactions."

In this way, Boller said it actually made sense to sign a lease and launch a new office in the midst of a global pandemic and the country's first economic recession in more than a dozen years.

"The firm made a meaningful capital commitment to come here, and we've been able to attract talent and bring laterals on at a time when every other firm in New York is retreating a little bit," he said, adding that Barnes & Thornburg also added new offices, in Dallas and California, during the last recession. "The firm is in great shape financially, and it was part of the long-term business plan to expand to New York. When everyone else is selling, that's when you buy."

Although the firm officially launched the office Monday, Barnes & Thornburg has had a presence in New York for months now: Law.com reported in early February that the firm had opened an office at 445 Park Ave. with lateral hires from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Davis Polk & Wardwell; and Cahill Gordon & Reindel.

While Boller and two colleagues began working in the New York office in February, other new hires were completing obligations at their old firms and could not yet announce their moves, and Barnes & Thornburg wanted everyone officially onboarded before making an external announcement.

Besides Boller, who joined from Akin Gump, other hires include Lawrence Gerschwer from Fried Frank; David Slovick from Cahill; Niraj Parekh from Wollmuth Maher & Deutsch; Jahan Sharifi, Andrew Fried, Dominique Gallacher, Stefan McGrath and Cary Reiss from Richards Kibbe & Orbe; Scott Beal from Davis Polk & Wardwell; and Michele Alexander from Bracewell.

Boller acknowledged the difficult timing of launching an office right now.

"It's been challenging to launch this in the middle of a global pandemic—trying to generate office cohesion and organic relationships between new colleagues in a brand new office without being physically near each other," he said. "But an unexpected positive that's come from it has been that, immediately, the entire team developed camaraderie and came together to problem solve. There is still litigation pending, deals waiting to be closed and briefs that need filing, and it's been challenging but a lot of fun."

Bob Grand, Barnes & Thornburg's managing partner, said expanding into New York was part of a strategic plan that has allowed the firm to grow into new markets even during economic downturns. He pointed to the firm's steady financial performance as a reason expansion made sense. Barnes & Thornburg ranked 83rd on the 2020 Am Law 100, and its revenue ($406 million in 2019) has been steadily increasing for two decades.

"2019 was a huge year for us, and as we came into 2020, our growth plan was on the front burner," he said, adding that, despite the pandemic, the firm "was and is positioned pretty well."

Grand said that while the coronavirus pandemic did present some challenges in getting the new office off the ground—namely, virtual recruiting—the firm as a whole has resisted austerity measures and felt confident moving forward with the new location. He added that the firm has additional offers out to more lawyers in New York and plans to keep growing in the city.