Sixteen months after Howrey dissolved, the firm’s bankrupt estate has finally turned its attention to former partners and the firms that now employ them in hopes of raising revenue to help repay creditors.

In a filing submitted Monday, Howrey trustee Allan Diamond requested San Francisco Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali’s approval to subpoena 70 law firms for information related to how much work they received when they collectively hired at least 211 Howrey partners in the months before and after the firm’s demise.

The list of those being targeted includes several partners who launched their own practices, as well as those who were part of larger group moves to Baker Botts, Baker & Hostetler, Jones Day, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, Winston & Strawn, and other firms. Howrey’s filing [PDF] describes those named as “the originating or relationship partners with regard to certain Howrey clients.” The list, which Diamond said in an interview Tuesday is not exhaustive, includes partners who left as early as June 2010. Additional departures may also be included as the process moves along, Diamond says, contingent on his team determining the date when Howrey became insolvent. (In a story published last week, Reuters explored the issue of determining when law firms that end up filing for bankruptcy protection actually become insolvent.)

The half-dozen Howrey partners who moved to the now-defunct Dewey & LeBoeuf in 2011 were also not included in Monday’s filing because of additional complications they raise, but Diamond says they will definitely be targeted. “No one is getting a free pass,” says Diamond. “What you saw is really the start of it.”

Under a California statute known as Jewel v. Boxer, bankrupt law firms can seek to recover proceeds from unfinished business that departing partners bring with them to their new firms. The bankruptcies of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, Heller Ehrman, and Thelen have all managed to collect some funds thanks to the law, and a New York federal judge involved in the Coudert Brothers bankruptcy recently ruled that Jewel applies in the Empire State as well.

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