Greg Krafka, partner, Rimon Law, Houston (Photo: Courtesy Photo)

International alternative firm Rimon Law has expanded into Texas with a new office in Houston and plans to add lawyers in Dallas and Austin.

The new location gives the fast-growing, cloud-based Rimon entree into a market it has eyed for years, said managing partner Michael Moradzadeh.

Rimon launched the new location with Winstead corporate shareholder Greg Krafka. The expansion comes as firms begin to look differently at office space and the use of technology as lawyers, forced to work remotely under COVID-19 pandemic stay-home orders, realize they can work efficiently from home. Husch Blackwell, for example, just launched The Link, a virtual office comprising 50 lawyers and staff from eight brick-and-mortar offices.

Moradzadeh said the opportunity to hire Krafka led to the office opening. Additionally, partner Thomas Fawell recently moved to Houston from Chicago, he said.

"Everything came together very nicely," he said. "We've now got the wind behind us."

Krafka, who has been working remotely since mid-March, said the midsize Rimon gives him flexibility with where he works, but the firm's model allows him to easily collaborate across the firm. Plus, he said, the firm's low overhead allowed him to "meaningfully" reduce his billing rates.

He handles M&A, securities offerings, joint ventures, corporate governance and commercial agreements for companies ranging from start-ups to public companies in the oil and gas, energy and technology sectors. He declined to identify clients.

Krafka, who started at Rimon on June 30, said the firm's model has been working "excellently" for his clients.

"The model is a successful one. It's a very innovative firm. Their IT and infrastructure is first-class," he said.

Moradzadeh said the San Francisco-based firm will add more lawyers in Texas this year, a task made easier as lawyers begin to embrace remote work and what technology can offer.

"It's all about getting the word out there. It all comes down to finding the right folks, but what's happened is, quite clearly, COVID-19 and the stay-home orders, and the law firms dealing with the economic fallout, has brought us a lot of great opportunity," he said.

In 2020, Rimon added five other corporate partners—Debbie Klis in Washington, D.C., Alan Chen in Los Angeles, Richard Ernest in Dubai, Dirk Hamann in Berlin and Andrew Reilly in Sydney, Australia.

Moradzadeh said the COVID-19 experience is likely to prompt more traditional firms to consider the value of his firm's model, which is not totally virtual. The 12-year-old firm has 32 offices, including 24 in the United States, but allows for more flexibility in where and how its lawyers work. The firm touts on its website that its cloud-based technology allows attorneys and staff to plug in anywhere in the world with little equipment needed. The brick-and-mortar offices are set up near where the firm has clusters of attorneys, the firm said on its site.

"The other firms that are starting to transition, they will find it very painful. They have all of these leases, maybe not everyone working remotely, and the [need for] the technology.  We were designed for this from scratch," he said.

Krafka, who had been a Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong and before Winstead was an associate with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Beijing and with Baker Botts in Houston, said he was ready to try something new.

"I talked to the recruiter who reached out to me and the more I listened, the more I liked it," he said.

When asked for a comment on Krafka's departure, Winstead CEO David Dawson wrote, "Greg is an excellent attorney and we wish him well as he joins Rimon Law."

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