Karen Dunn and Bill Isaacson may work in D.C., but when people think about the blue chip clientele these litigators bring to the table, there’s a bit of a West Coast vibe. The pair boast clients from a wide array of industries, but are perhaps best known for representing Apple in its throwdown with Qualcomm and their recently announced move to Paul Weiss is likely to bring significant business from Oracle and Uber as well.
So it should come as no surprise that the unveiling of this lateral move was packaged with an announcement from firm chair Brad Karp announcing a planned expansion to the Northern California market.
“We have been thinking about entering the Northern California market for a while,” Karp said. “This is an exciting first step in that direction.”
To date, Paul Weiss has focused on its New York and D.C. presences, with an outpost in Wilmington for good measure. Taking the firm to the West Coast will be big news when they eventually put the plan in action.
And one that coincides with the West Coast downsizing of Dunn and Isaacson’s former firm, Boies Schiller. The firm has experienced a number of high-profile departures over the last several months, with many of the moves flowing out of the West Coast offices. This does generally track the message from Boies Schiller’s leadership, which has said that the transition from a firm based around the named partners would see big changes in the footprint of the firm and a revamping of its compensation model. Losing Dunn and Isaacson was probably inevitable in this reorientation process — whether getting out of this area sets up the firm better in the long-run remains to be seen of course.
For now, Paul Weiss is casting its eyes westward and the Bay Area mainstays will soon have a new kid on the block to deal with.
Earlier: Everyone Seems To Be Overreacting To These Boies Schiller Departures
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.