Labor and employment firm Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart added San Diego as its 43rd U.S. location on Wednesday when the firm announced it would open an office in the Southern California city with a partner hire from Fisher & Phillips.
“We’ve been looking to open in San Diego for some time,” managing partner Kim Ebert told The Am Law Daily on Wednesday. “We wanted to fill out that market in California.”
The state’s tight labor and employment regulations, especially with respect to wage and hour rules, overtime restrictions, and the classification of manager and contract employees, make it a popular venue for collective actions against employers, Ebert says. “It’s a challenging place to do business,” he says.
The firm already has California offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orange County, and Torrence.
While zeroing in on the San Diego market, the firm conducted due diligence to find a qualified partner to lead the new office. Spencer Skeen’s name, Ebert says, “bubbled to the top.”
Skeen, a former Fisher & Phillips partner who defends employers in harassment, discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, and wage and hour suits, will serve as founding and managing partner of the new office, which Ebert expects to grow to at least 15 lawyers in the next year and a half. Skeen says that the growth the firm has experienced in the last few years caught his attention, as did the firm’s dedication to client service. “The firm’s approach to the practice of law mirrors my own,” he says.
The San Diego officewhich will cater to the hospitality, retail, and defense contractor clients the firm has in the areais the fourth location Ogletree Deakins has opened in the past yearjoining the Berlin, Stamford, Connecticut, and New York offices the firm established last year.
The firm’s accelerated growthit netted a gain of 19 partners in 2011 according to The American Lawyer‘s 2012 lateral datais supported by a steady need in the overall legal market for labor and employment legal services. According to the most recent Hildebrandt Institute’s Peer Monitor Economic Index released in November, demand for labor and employment grew 2.5 percent in the third quarter of 2012 whereas demand for legal services overall fell by 0.8 percent.
Other labor and employment firms are also growing to meet the increasing appetite for their services. Skeen’s former firm, Fisher & Phillips, announced the opening of its Columbus, Ohio, office on Tuesday, making it the firm’s 28th U.S. office and its second in Ohio.
Helping to fuel demand in the labor and employment practice area is the National Labor Relations Board, which has been especially active under the Obama administration, handing down decisions that have typically strengthened individual employee rights. Such decisions, Ebert says, along with the aggressive enforcement postures of other federal agencies in the labor and employment area, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Occupational Safety and Heath Administration, have prompted employers to seek out labor and employment attorneys as they grapple with tightened rules and regulation.
Ebert hopes Ogletree can ride that wave of demand in the Northwest. The firm is hoping to open a Seattle office this year, Ebert says, to tap into work generated by large employers in the area. It’s now in the process of finding a lawyer to start the firm’s office there.
Seattle is the firm’s last target market in the United States, Ebert says. After opening there it plans to turn its attention overseas. Late last year, the firm announced plans to launch its first international outposts in Berlin and in London. Its Berlin office is up and operating and the London office will open once it clears a few regulatory hurdles. The firm’s next overseas destination likely will be China, Ebert says. The firm is in the process of working through the regulatory process there too. “We hope to have an office in China by the end of the year,” he says.
