San Francisco-based labor and employment firm Duckworth Peters Lebowitz Olivier has split into Duckworth & Peters and Olivier Schreiber & Chao, while name partner Noah Lebowitz has started his own practice in Berkeley, California.

When the lease of Duckworth Peters' San Francisco office was ending in March, two of its name partners, Lebowitz and Monique Olivier, ended their partnership with the firm and struck out on their own in the Bay Area. The firm's website has since been directing visitors to the new homes of Duckworth Peters' former founders.

“It used to be that having a San Francisco address and having a physical presence in San Francisco had value and had meaning in the kind of status in the business and in the legal world,” said Lebowitz about his decision to leave Duckworth Peters. “But again, the time has changed, and I don't think that is nearly as valuable as it used to be, or it once was.”

Lebowitz's own Berkeley-based firm opened on April 2. With housing prices in San Francisco continuing to skyrocket, Lebowitz explained, the financial cost of keeping an address in the city for a plaintiffs' firm has far outweighed any benefits. He added that modern technologies, such as cloud computing, also now allow lawyers to collaborate virtually from any office.

Lebowitz was at the San Francisco firm for more than 11 years since founding partners Thomas Duckworth and Mark Peters brought him on in 2007. Olivier came aboard three years later.

As an employment law litigator, Lebowitz has focused his practice on representing employees in discrimination, wrongful termination and other workplace issues. He said all of his clients have followed him to his new firm, including a gender bias suit he filed last summer on behalf of former Winston & Strawn partner Constance Ramos.

“The firm was in existence for over 11 years. It was a great run,” Lebowitz said. “We all remain very good friends, colleagues and confidants, and the split is and was completely amicable.”

Olivier has also opened her own firm with fellow employment litigators Christian Schreiber and Katharine Chao in San Francisco. Schreiber was most recently a partner at Chavez & Gertler in Mill Valley, California, while Chao had her own practice for six years in Oakland.

“The lease coming up was sort of an opportunity for all of us to assess where we were and what we want to do next, and I very much wanted to say in San Francisco and being in a full firm environment,” Olivier said.

Her new firm focuses on employment, consumer and individual class action cases and civil appeals, which is a bit more diverse than Duckworth Peters, Olivier said.

“This is an opportunity to branch out more into the consumer class action world and also develop my civil appellate practice,” she said.

Olivier is also representing Dawn Hassell, a managing attorney at San Francisco's Hassell Law Group, which is suing ex-client Ava Bird for posting defamatory reviews of her firm on Yelp. The high-profile case saw a trial court issue an injunction against Yelp, advised by Davis Wright Tremaine, ordering the online review website to take down the reviews.

Duckworth and Peters have since formed Duckworth & Peters and moved into a new office at 369 Pine St. in San Francisco toward the end of April.

“I don't think there is any major adjustment,” said Duckworth. “Mark and I are going to continue to represent individual employment cases, and we are gonna continue to conduct mediation.”

Although it won't be as convenient as it used to be, Duckworth said they are still working with Lebowitz and Olivier even after they have left the firm.

“I am still going to call them for advice and counsel,” he said.