(L to R) Top row: Matt Baker, Jonathan Patchen and Cheryl Cauley. (L to R) bottom row: Lily Chinn and Mike Torosian. (Photo: Courtesy Photo)

In the past two months, Baker Botts has added five partners in Northern California, where the Texas-based firm has offices in San Francisco and Palo Alto.

The latest is Michael Torosian, a former corporate partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, who joined the firm Monday. His arrival was preceded by litigators Cheryl Cauley and Jonathan Patchen, who joined from Taylor & Patchen, a litigation firm Patchen founded. Lily Chinn, managing partner of Katten Muchin Rosenman's San Francisco office, also joined Baker Botts along with her colleague Matt Baker. The two partners are both experienced in handling environmental litigation and investigations.

"We are targeting and are being successful in talking to potential lateral partners about the platform that we offer out here," said Patricia Stanton, managing partner of Baker Botts' San Francisco office, where four of the five latest partners are based. (Cauley is based in Palo Alto, while Torosian splits his time between the two offices.)

"I think we have a momentum now," Stanton said.

Stanton moved to San Francisco from the firm's Dallas office in 2016, when Baker Botts decided to open a second office in the Bay Area. In the three years since, the firm's San Francisco office has grown to 36 lawyers. The 708-lawyer firm has a total of 65 lawyers across Northern California, split between San Francisco and Palo Alto.

"We have focused, really, in both offices on building to the firm's strength," Stanton said. "We are very strategic in the partners that we are seeking to have join us."

According to Stanton, key areas of focus in the Bay area include technology, intellectual property, energy, litigation, corporate and environmental.

Making Inroads

"We have long been looking to California because of the economy, and more importantly because of our strengths in intellectual property and technology," said John Martin, who was elected as Baker Botts' 15th managing partner earlier this year. Martin relocated from Dallas to the firm's Palo Alto office in 2013 and previously served as partner-in-charge of the office.

Martin said the firm handled matters for Bay Area clients before it first opened in the region a decade ago, but "as our work for those clients continue to grow, we felt like if we were going to be making meaningful inroads with respect to those local, Silicon Valley-based clients, we needed to be present here."

Baker Botts opened its Palo Alto in 2008 as part of the firm's plan to expand its intellectual property practice. The firm transferred four lawyers Dallas to set up the Palo Alto office, which has now grown to nearly 30 lawyers.

"We quickly started growing into other areas, including commercial litigation," Martin said. As the firm's work continued to expand in the region, he soon found the need to open a second office in San Francisco.

"There were similarities between the two markets, between Silicon Valley and San Francisco, but there were also some differences," he said, pointing out that in addition to the corporate and patent prosecution work that the firm was already doing in Palo Alto, the San Francisco market presented opportunities for the firm to expand into other areas, including antitrust, commercial and class action litigation, real estate, renewable energy and environmental matters.

Stanton said the the firm was guided by the same forces persuading some tech companies that they needed to be in both Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

"We found that if we were going to be able to compete for talent that we needed to be in San Francisco," he said.

Branching Out

All five of the firm's most recent partner hires have a practice focus outside of IP litigation. Torosian joins Baker Botts as a partner of its emerging companies and venture capital practice. Both Cauley and Patchen are experienced in commercial litigation, while Chinn and Baker focus on environmental law.

"Now they have this major initiative in growing the firm, and particularly in my area, which is emerging company, venture capital, tech in Silicon Valley," Torosian said. "So that's very exciting with such a strong firm looking at this initiative strategically for them."

Baker Botts said it has a total of 63 lawyers dedicated to emerging companies and venture capital work, and 11 of them are based in either San Francisco or Palo Alto.

"I've been personally at every stage of the life cycle of a company," Torosian added, noting Baker Botts has resources and expertise that will allow him to better support the needs of his clients.

"We view ourselves as problem-solvers," Martin said. "Our clients come to us, looking for holistic solutions to problems, and one of our strengths is to bring to the table a combination of expertise—it could be environmental and litigation, it could be energy and litigation, it could be corporate and technology. It is that intersection between different practice areas, in our view, that helps us stand out."

Pillsbury did not respond to request for comment regarding Torosian's departure.

While Baker Botts has been in growth mode lately, it did experience a loss in the Bay Area last year when a three-lawyer intellectual property group, led by partner Harper Batts, left to join Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton's Silicon Valley office.

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