July 5, 2011 5:31 PM

Firms in L.A., Colorado Snapped Up by Larger Suitors

Posted by Brian Baxter

Polinselli Shughart and Sherman & Howard acquired more than a handful of lawyers from two firms over the holiday weekend.

Polsinelli Shughart has opened an office in Los Angeles with the acquisition of six lawyers from local boutique Quateman, which specializes in municipal bond work and is one of California's largest women-owned boutique firms, according to the St. Louis Business Journal.

Quateman managing partner Lisa Greer Quateman and partners Tracey Ginn and Timothy Reimers, announced the firm's intention to merge with Polsinelli Shughart in a statement released Friday. Quateman will become the local managing partner for Polsinelli's L.A. office. (The National Law Journal, a sibling publication, has more on Quateman's merger with Polsinelli.)

Joining Quateman at Polsinelli are Ginn and Reimers, senior counsel Michael Connell, and associates Eric Blum and Donna Mo, according to a statement by the firm. The merger with Quateman brings Polsinelli's head count to more than 470 lawyers. Earlier this year the firm recruited an 11-lawyer health care team from Faegre & Benson in Denver.

According to the most recent Am Law 200 financial data, Polsinelli saw gross revenue increase 31 percent in 2010 to $219.5 million. The firm, which grew out of an October 2008 merger between Kansas City, Mo.-based firms Polsinelli Shalton Flanigan Suelthaus and Shughart Thomson & Kilroy, had profits per partner of $630,000 last year, a 27.3 percent increase from 2009.

Also active on the acquisition front was Denver-based Sherman & Howard. The 190-lawyer firm picked up a new criminal defense practice by acquiring Colorado Springs-based Tegtmeier Bednarski, according to the Denver Business Journal. Name partners Richard Tegtmeier and Richard Bednarski specialize in white-collar criminal defense and civil litigation work.

In 2009, Sherman & Howard added an office in Phoenix, the firm's ninth, by acquiring local boutique Mohr, Hackett, Pederson, Blakley & Randolph, according to The NLJ.

Sherman & Howard, which did not make the Am Law 200 this year, was ranked as the 208th-largest law firm in the nation in 2010, according to The NLJ's annual ranking of the nation's largest 250 firms by attorney head count.

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