Cozen O'Connor forms state attorneys general practice with Dickstein Shapiro hires
Cozen O’Connor is adding more lawyers to its ranks after announcing last month that it was acquiring 60 lawyers in a merger with a Chicago law firm.
Cozen is forming a state attorneys general practice with its hire of eight lawyers and two professionals from Dickstein Shapiro, the National Law Journal (sub. req.) reports. Cozen’s press release is here. According to the National Law Journal, Dickstein Shapiro “struggled with head count in 2014 as more than 20 percent of its lawyers left the firm.”
The National Law Journal calls state attorney general practices “a controversial but growing practice area.” Stories by the New York Times stories last year (see summaries here and here) questioned the influence of lobbyists over state attorneys general.
One Times story opened with a Dickstein Shapiro lawyer representing 5-Hour Energy who buttonholed Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster at a conference. By the end of the weekend, Koster had ordered staffers to pull out of a probe of the company. The lawyer, Lori Kalani, is among the group moving to Cozen.
Also leaping from Dickstein to Cozen is practice chief Bernard Nash. He told the National Law Journal the group decided to leave Dickstein for a larger law firm in early 2015 and spoke with several law firms before deciding to join Cozen O’Connor. Though Dickstein has shrunk, it was never larger than Cozen is now, he said. Dickstein’s chairman is “fabulous,” Nash said, and “we didn’t leave because we don’t like them,”
Nash said his group is a litigation team and is separate from Dickstein’s lobbying department. His group, he told the National Law Journal, won “with our briefs, with our white papers, not because we know people.”
